Vincke and Barnson are boasting a bit prematurely, half-a-mil isn't going to make most publishers turn their heads, do a double-take, and give their best impression of the Tex Avery wolf in Red Hot Riding Hood. The return of the mid-budget single-A is welcome of course.
Who gives a shit about publishers anymore ? What matters is if game is created or not. Also 5mln€ is not even A game now. Middle budget is something more like 25-40mln now where AAA games can be at 40-50mln+. And that is not even counting marketing which is often many times bigger than dev cost.
Developers thanks to DD finally can cut middleman and eat all profits creating portfolio of games that can sustain them even if they will take 2-3 bad games.
DOS
they sold in two months 500k coppies. Game costed around 5mln€ to make.
If you can count:
500k * 30€ = 15 000 000 € - 30% steam cut = 10 500 000€ probably some taxes (if they are profitable).
In two months they got whole game dev budget + ton of money to devide it for them-self and investors.
And that is just two months without any sale. RPGs have very strong legs and most of them are still bought well over decade (especially if game is good). With few more months they could easily fund not one game but even two games that cost 5mln€. And that is funding game alone without investors or KS. If they would again reach to KS and investors to partially fund their next game they could as well do 3-4 games.
Next up is team experience in DOS creation and tools/toolset they created and have experience in. Cost of creating DOS2 should be a way lower than DOS due to team getting experience in creation of that game, better workflow and so on. That is naturally if game will be same content wise but i bet they will make it even bigger.
So they are boasting because they should. They secured their future on market creating RPG for almost next decade with, they build actually community around their game and with glowing reviews from users DOS2 should be smash hit.
All of that with measly 500k on steam.
PoE
On other hand DOS experience and Vinke post tells us much about what is coming to Obsidian in near future. Because they got 4mln$ they have bigger fanbase and game is much more talked about (same with W2). Later part about experience and toolset also does count for Obsidian so making PoE2 should be faster/better/cheaper same content wise. If they sell 1mln in 2 months it will secure PoE2 and 3 and could be enough to set whole Obsidian on self funded RPGs without Armored warfare bullshit or sucking publishers money making dick.
Obisdian with 2-3 ind. RPGs like PoE should be profitable enough for their size.
W2
And finally Wasteland 2 which also generated money and backers + more media coverage. After DOS it is pretty safe to say that they will also secure their nearest future and that future will be full of RPGs. Even if W2 will be good to mediacore they can always improve and i don't see problems with their team trying to for example put in cinematics at cost of gameplay.
