Braid developer Jonathan Blow has said the recently released anniversary edition of the indie puzzle platformer has sold “horribly,” and indicated he is now struggling to employ staff full-time.
Blow, who also created The Witness, catapulted into the upper echelons of indie video game development after Braid enjoyed enormous success on Xbox Live Arcade in 2008. It’s since become known as one of the greatest indie games of all time, with a number of perfect review scores under its belt.
16 years later, in May 2024, Blow released a remaster with fully repainted artwork, new puzzles, and in-depth commentary, across PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, Android, and iOS, with the mobile version released by Netflix to those with an active subscription. The Anniversary Edition was announced during Sony’s State of Play event in August 2020.
As surfaced by a user on ResetEra, a YouTube channel called “Blow Fan” published a compilation of commentary from Blow on Braid, Anniversary Edition’s sales performance, made during a number of livestreams in the months since launch. The picture Blow paints here is clear: Braid, Anniversary Edition has flopped.
In one stream dated June 17, Blow said Braid, Anniversary Edition had sold “horribly.” “It has sold like dogs**t compared to what we need to make for the company to survive,” he continued. “So the future is uncertain, let’s put it that way.”
Then, on July 21, Blow was asked again about sales. “No, they’ve been terrible,” he replied. “Utterly terrible.”
In another stream dated July 22, said releasing Braid, Anniversary Edition on so many platforms “made a difference, but the problem is most of those platforms are f***ing dead now.”
“Steam is easily still our biggest platform,” he continued. “There would have been something to be said for just not porting to half those platforms.
“It's a really interesting thing that we did. We did commentary in a way that nobody’s ever done it, at a much more thorough level than anybody’s ever done it. And at some point, you just have to know that what you did was a good thing, even if the world doesn’t really acknowledge it. And this is one of those cases, I think.”
Then, in a stream on July 27, Blow once again addressed the Braid, Anniversary Edition sales, but this time cast doubt on his company’s ability to employ staff. Responding to a question on how many people at his company were working on the compiler for programming language Jai full-time, Blow said: “None, because we can't afford to pay anyone because the sales are bad."
“The whole game industry is having a hard time,” he said.
Blow’s comments have sparked something of an inquest online about why Braid, Anniversary Edition has struggled. In one stream, Blow discounted the impact that bringing the game to conventions and putting it in front of people might have had on the success of the game, saying cons don’t do much to help promote video games. He also said promoting the game on podcasts and YouTube interviews wouldn’t have helped, either. There are others who suggest there was little demand for a Braid remaster in the first place, with the original perfectly playable still all these years later.
Blow’s studio is Thekla, Inc., which also developed and published 2016 first-person puzzle game The Witness. It is said to be working on a number of unannounced projects, including a VR game.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
