As you some of you know, Risen was 50% on Steam during this past weekend, for a total of 3 days. The sale was such a hit that they ran out of CD Keys to sell, which forced limited Risen's sales for almost an entire day.

However, it seems that Risen sold far more than anyone could ever expect. From the mouth of a Manager of Deep Silver, Risen's publishers:

"I just got notice that a big set of keys were sent from us over the big pond to Valve. Not sure how long it will take Valve to put them into their system but you should give them some hours to wake up, drink some coffee and get to work. After all we're again dealing with different timezones, but this time the other way round.

For the last stage, I'm going to need your help. Please give me a shout here if you got your key from Steam so we can report a "Mission Accomplished" to everybody.

By the way, putting all this into perspective and why we were that surprised: The game sold more copies over the last 4 days than since its release in October 2009 in total(over almost one year) on Steam! It's like earning a year's salary in 4 days and that is truly something no one anticipated from our side."

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=18645116&postcount=73

Although he said 4 days, the reality is that Risen's sale lasted only 3 days, and it also ran out of CD Keys for almost an entire day in one of those days.

Just think how many extra it would have sold had they not put that stupid TAGES protection on in the first place. There was a lot of bad feeling about them running out of keys and the DRM on the title, which must have put quite a number of people off.

Why dont they price the game cheap to begin with?

It's not that hard if the game doesn't sell that well in the first place. It's not like the game could have been a huge hit, and the DRM scheme is certainly not helping. Also, being advertised as the main deal of a weekend on Steam is like winning in lottery.

That said, despite not having played the game, I have a feeling it deserved the sales it got. Nice to hear they were happy with the sales.

Unless you have sales figures, how do you know it didn't sell well in the first place? It's from the same developers as Gothic 3, which sold at least 350,000, and is Gothic 4 in all but name. I'd imagine the 360 version flopped big time because it was crap, but PC Risen got some good reviews and word of mouth.

Regardless, the title was discounted by 50%, and sales increased by 9000% according to this post-

"I don't know how many keys Steam had left when the big wave hit them but I reckon we had a sales increase of like 90 times the normal sales."

For the same reason no one else does- you get people willing to pay a premium to have the game early on, then reduce the price over time to keep sales going amongst the less interested.

This just demonstrates how a Steam sale can really help a title sell, though- and be good to both consumers and publishers.

I hope this helps them make a better game next time round (not saying risen is bad but it could be better) the power of a steam sale surprises me still and with steam now peaking over active users 3 million each day they will only get more powerful.

Great news. Nice to see that Steam sales can really help out developers. Like Zarx said, hopefully they can produce a more polished game next time with this extra money comming in. It's a fun game that's full of potential.

If VGChartz numbers are anything to go by, even bigger releases don't get that great sales. Also, like you said, this is Gothic 3 in all but name, but name is an important factor.

Let's say this game sold 200,000 during the Steam sale. That would put the sales of the whole year before it at less than 200,000 copies. Say what you want, but I call that a high estimate. 200,000 copies in a few days for a year-old, relatively unknown game? Maybe, I just don't think so.

Fewer