We recently explored the problems developers were having making money on the Xbox Live Indie channel, with Zeboyd Game's Robert Boyd talking about moving his two indie RPGs onto Steam in order to broaden his audience and sales. It has been a little over two weeks since that story ran, and we wanted to catch up with Boyd to see how things had been going for his excellent RPGs, Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World.

It turns out things have been going better than even he anticipated. If you're sitting on something special, Steam and other PC-based digital distribution platforms offer many more opportunities for smaller developers.

Like others who have worked with Valve, Boyd can't discuss the terms of his contract. "I can't go into any great details here due to our contract with Steam, but I will say that it was both easier and harder than I expected" he told Ars. He did point out that the people he dealt with made the process as painless as possible. "The members at Valve who we worked with to get our game working in Steam were very helpful and very patient with all of my many questions."

Once the games were released, Boyd hit the street. He sent press releases to gaming news sites, offered review codes to the press, and even gave copies of the games away on Twitter. Soon, the games were featured on the front page of Steam, and that lead to a huge amount of interest from both consumers and the press. All that work and the prominent placement on Steam paid off in a very real way.

"In less than a week, our Steam revenue has actually exceeded over a year and a half of XBLIG revenue for us," Boyd told Ars. "We're still a little stunned at how well it's been selling. I can't say how it's doing on Gamersgate yet, but I imagine it's selling well there also."

There are other things that come with this level of success. "Also, apparently, people are starting to pirate our games. If that isn't proof that we've hit it big, I don't know what is," he announced on Twitter. "And yes, it is very sad that people are pirating a two game combo that can be purchased for under $3."

He also noticed the difference in pricing attitudes between Steam and the Xbox Indie channel: on the 360 a $3 indie is considered expensive and treated with skepticism. On the PC, people are ecstatic about games of such high quality priced so low. On Twitter he also praised Steam's tools for tracking the performance of his games, in comparison's to Microsoft's efforts.

Another thing that impressed Boyd was the "gazillion" codes Steam gave him to use to promote his game, versus the 50 codes Microsoft gives to indie releases.

So what's next?

Robert Boyd and Zeboyd Games are in a good position. They're making money off the release of two games that are proving to be very popular. The "donate" button has been removed from the official website, since they're not supporting themselves solely by selling games. Boyd said that any return to the 360 would be only to continue to support their fans there‚ although it's also possible Microsoft might be interested in releasing a Zeboyd Games title as an Xbox Live Arcade release.

I asked him about his next game, which he began working on before the PC release of the Cthulhu Saves the World bundle. "I can't give many details on that game yet due to a nondisclosure agreement, which in and of itself should tell you a lot," he said. "I can say that it is another comedy RPG and that is should come out by the end of the year. We're trying out some new things with the gameplay that have me very excited—I'm looking forward to the time when we can speak more openly about it."

Boyd doesn't want to be part of a big company, and only plans on having six or so members of the team. "Success should give us more flexibility though. If our next game is a success, there's no reason why we couldn't take a few years to work on making a single game as amazing as possible rather than having to release a game every few months just to try to make enough money to pay the bills," he said.

Robert Boyd has done everything right. He started with good games, learned all he could by releasing them on Xbox Live Indie Games, and then made the jump to a wider release on Steam when it made sense. A combination of savvy promotion and good placement on Steam helped make the games a hit, and now he's supporting himself by creating games. We live in a very good time for video games, when a tiny team can create funny, classically styled RPGs and release them on multiple marketplaces to find an audience.

Boyd's story also points out the limits of what can be done on Xbox Live Indie Games: the prices are kept low, promotion can be hard, and Steam offers better tools to track your sales. This is a success story because of the monstrous amount of work put into the games and promotion by the team at Zeboyd Games, but there are also many lessons here for developers looking to make the same jump.