Though the team at developer Campo Santo have worked on numerous big-name games in the past, and publisher Panic has experience of publishing mobile apps and software, Firewatch was actually the maiden video game release for both companies. Judging by the early Firewatch sales and the rapturous critical response, it’s fair to say their breakthrough release has been a success.
In a blog post on their site, Panic have revealed that Firewatch sales stand at “around 500,000 full-price copies in its first month” and that it even topped the PlayStation Store download chart for February, which is a massive achievement by anyone’s standards, and certainly not one that needs to even carry the caveat of it being both the developer and publisher’s first release. Panic also state that they made their investment back in about one day, which is great news for the and the continued success of the Campo Santo team. Well done to everyone involved.
It’s fair to say that there were a few niggles and performance issues with the PS4 release (that Campo Santo have since patched out) but other than that, we absolutely loved Firewatch (and so did pretty much everyone else). Based on the quality of the experience its no surprise to Team Thumbsticks that the Firewatch sales have been so strong – we’re already looking forward to the difficult second album.
