Octodad: Dadliest Catch developer reflects on $5M in sales and 460K copies sold

A game about a dad who is definitely not an octopus debuted 12 months ago, and developer Young Horses is looking back on the game’s accomplishments.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch, which puts players in the role of the titular aquatic invertebrate who must convince those around him that he is human, generated nearly $5 million in gross revenue. That was on 459,735 copies sold on PlayStation 4 and PC as well as Mac and Linux. The studio shared an infographic that breaks down the split between the various platforms, and it reveals that the bulk of the sales and money came from PC (likely Valve’s digital-distribution store Steam) — although PS4 customers paid more per copy than their PC counterparts. Octodad was one of many independently developed games that is finding success on the newer consoles as well as on computers. While they are not making as much as many mobile games, releases like Octodad are generating enough to support small teams. Gaming is a multi-billion dollar business, but it’s difficult to tell what portion of that is made up of indie games.

Young Horses also shared some figures about Octodad’s development. It took 2 years and 7 months to complete production of Dadliest Catch. In that time, the core team of 9 worked 28,208 hours. The team started out with $24,320 from a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, and then the studio owed $530,000 in backpay wages after it started earning money.

Oh, and the team made four trips to the emergency room during the development of Octodad: Dadliest Catch.

Check out the full infographic below for more about Octodad, and check out our review of this unique and moving game to see why it’s worth playing.