Introversion credits Steam for company's salvation

In a candid post on Introversion Software's DEFCON forums, company co-founder Mark Morris admits that the Darwinia+ developer was close to closing up shop following disappointing sales of the game's XBLA port. "Internally we knew within about an hour of Darwinia+'s launch that it hadn't done well enough," Morris wrote. "It took us about two weeks to really accept that and the awful realisation that we didn't have enough to continue with the office or the staff. We had a bunch of creditors knocking at the door, but worse than all of that we were absolutely shattered."

Having let its staff go, closed it office and retreated to the bedrooms of its three remaining employees, the company made a last-ditch move to generate some income. "We put together a rescue plan involving creating Steam achievements for DEFCON so we could convince Valve to run a promotion with it," explained Morris. Turns out, a seemingly small tweak and some promotion delivered major results, Morris revealed: "The promo exceeded all of our expectations and when combined with our low burn rate (no office or staff now) we had gone from being fearful about paying our mortgages to having a year's operating capital in the bank."

Introversion is still running lean, but is back on track to release its "most ambitious project so far," Subversion, in 2011.