The title made more financial progress after Double Fine regained the publishing rights and released the game on Steam, so that today the title has gained a cult following in the gaming industry (Cifaldi). Despite positive critic reviews, Psychonauts would only sell 100,000 copies, making it a commercial failure (Staff). They finally released the title in April 2005 with a budget of 11.8 million, after four and a half years of development (Esmurdoc). Wright’s aid allotted enough time for Double Fine to score the publishing deal with Majesco (Becker).
The company’s finances dwindled and they risked closure, so that Tim Schafer resorted to calling upon Will Wright, previous owner of Maxis, for financial help (Orland). Schafer’s primary contact at Microsoft eventually left the company, which was shortly followed by Microsoft pulling their deal with Double Fine (Esmurdoc). Schafer scored a publishing deal with Microsoft, but they asked for parts of the game to be changed, which created disagreements between the publisher and Schafer’s team (Rignall, McElroy). Double Fine was a new independent company during the production of Psychonauts, so that they had many internal struggles regarding publishing deals, deadlines, and money. He decided to create his company Double Fine, and then started on their first title, Psychonauts. Tim Schafer was previously a designer at LucasArts, and explained in an interview that he was persuaded by his friends that he should leave to start Double Fine (Gordon). Schafer is a popular computer game designer, and was the head designer for Psychonauts.
Psychonauts was the first title released by Tim Schafer’s company, Double Fine.
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