Video Games

Dave the Diver cracks three million sales half a year after launch

Not bad for a small and humble indie title

Marco Wutz

Dave the Diver cracks three million sales half a year after launch
Dave the Diver cracks three million sales half a year after launch /

Dave the Diver has sold over three million copies since launch, developer Mintrocket announced. This unique adventure game featuring fishing expeditions, cooking, and restaurant management was released in June 2023 for PC and came to Nintendo Switch in October 2023, becoming one of the year’s surprise hits. Recently, it was crowned as winner of the Sit Back and Relax Award during the Steam Awards 2023.

“Thank you so much for the support and love,” the developers stated on social media.

Dave the Diver passed one million copies sold back in July 2023, shortly after its graduation from Early Access.

Though not due to its own fault, Dave the Diver also got into a little bit of controversy last year: It was nominated as the best indie game at The Game Awards 2023 (eventually losing out to Sea of Stars) despite Mintrocket being the subsidiary of Nexon, one of the biggest video game companies in South Korea – making the title very much not an indie game by the traditional definition of the term.

Evidently Geoff Keighley and his organization thought differently and argued that it was an indie game based on its visual style and spirit, which opens a whole different can of worms.

That whole episode aside, one thing is for certain: Dave the Diver deserves all the commercial and critical success it’s been getting, providing players with a well-executed game that is both fresh and incredibly relaxing to play. It certainly deserves to be remembered outside of that whole indie or not indie debate for being a unique and refreshing mix that really hits just the right spot when it comes to its atmosphere and mechanics.

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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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