Prison Architect has been a massive hit on Steam’s Early Access program and is the game that has saved Introversion from going out of business. Speaking to Eurogamer, founding director Mark Morris revealed that the game has made over $19m since it launched on Early Access back in 2012.
That $19m has been generated from 1.25m sales, making it Introversion’s most successful game and one they think will remain their biggest hit for the next 15 years.
Back in 2010, british game developer Introversion were close to a complete financial collapse and close to going out of business. Having Defcon on Steam and features in sales and a Humble Bundle managed to keep the developer afloat which allowed Prison Architect to be born and to ultimately, change the studios fortunes.
Prison Architect is due to leave Early Access on October 6 but despite launching officially, Morris revealed that the game will be updated for almost all of next year at the very least.
“We’ve been in this business for 15 years and Prison Architect is the hit, you know,” said Morris. “So we would be silly to kill it off too early. We know we’re going to be updating this game and we know we’re going to be updating this game for almost certainly the whole of next year.”
Despite the amount of money Prison Architect has generated for the studio, they are very humble about it and having experienced rock bottom, they are being extremely careful with the money and spending it wisely.
“The company is very, very healthy”, said Morris. “Also, we think that Prison Architect could be the biggest hit of the next 15 years at Introversion, so we’ve been very prudent with what’s happening with the resources that it’s generating, because we know that we can never run out of money again now. Not because we’ve made so much but because it would be criminally negligent if we ever had to go back cap in hand.”