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The Witness is on pace to sell more in its first week than Braid did in its first year

Even in the face of piracy, The Witness is rapidly turning into a success for creator Jonathan Blow, which bodes well for future projects.

Ozzie Mejia

February 1, 2016 12:16 PM

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There was genuine concern from creator Jonathan Blow that piracy would potentially derail The Witness. At $40, if too many people decided to cheat the system, Blow felt it would kill future prospects of making a game of that size again.

It seems The Witness is the #1 game on a certain popular torrent site.
Unfortunately this will not help us afford to make another game! :(

— Jonathan Blow (@Jonathan_Blow) January 28, 2016

However, just days later, Blow got some much brighter news. Even in spite of seemingly rampant piracy, it appears that The Witness is doing very well for itself. In fact, Blow is back on Twitter saying it's on pace to outsell Braid in just its first week of release.

It's hard to talk about numbers without breaking NDAs, but The Witness is on track to sell more in a week than Braid sold in its first year,

— Jonathan Blow (@Jonathan_Blow) January 31, 2016

Gamasutra pointed out that Braid sold over $4 million in revenue, but notes that exact first year sales numbers were not available. Blow followed his tweet up by stating that such positive sales could lead to his next project aiming as high or even higher than The Witness. Given the way he's capturing imaginations (and breaking brains), this is certainly good news for anyone that's followed the creator over the years.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?