In a small ray of light for our fallen world, an indie dev who poured their heart and soul into their game seems to have actually been rewarded for it. As spotted by Dexerto (via GamesRadar), solo dev Cakez learnt his game Tangy TD had made $250,000 in a week while he was streaming, and he seemed truly unable to believe it.
Cakez has been documenting the process of making Tangy TD on his YouTube channel and streams for the past four years. A clip of him opening his day-one sales report and seeing it had made $30,000 went viral all by itself, and when the time came to check out his week-one report, he invited the community to see it with him.
And, well, an already-emotional Cakez couldn't really believe what he saw: $245,123 gross lifetime Steam revenue ($197,847 net revenue). That's from 28,078 copies sold. Our hero couldn't believe it, and was immediately overcome by tears as his wife whooped in celebration beside him. It was, I must admit, an incredibly wholesome sight.
In a stream, Cakes stayed humble about the whole thing: "Thank you very much. I feel like I really don't deserve this. But I appreciate it... It's so amazing to see how many people have come out to support me, essentially, and what I do. It's just crazy, I really don't know what to say. I don't know why people are so nice."
Game dev Cakez77 and his wife react after finding out his game earned $250,000 after going viral pic.twitter.com/pIWHWyLCMaMarch 17, 2026
Which is all rather heartwarming, if you ask me. As for Tangy TD? It's doing pretty well on Steam: 89% of its reviews at the time of writing are positive, with one player writing "Saw the reaction vid. Bought the game. It's pretty good. Love a game dev that doesn't expect anything. GG's my dude."
