Valve’s marketing director Doug Lombardi said in an interview with FiringSquad that Tripwire’s Red Orchestra product became profitable through Steam pre-orders.

FiringSquad: Even more attention is being made over Valve’s Steam service. Has Valve been surprised by the amount of interest in using Steam to distribute games?

Doug Lombardi: What’s been surprising is how successful Steam has been for the 3rd parties. The Red Orchestra team saw their project become profitable through Steam pre-orders alone. It’s always nice to turn a profit before your game has shipped. The Introversion guys made more from Steam sales of Darwinia in two weeks than from months of retails sales of the same product. Also, after forming a relationship with us to ship their games via Steam, both the Rag Doll and Red Orchestra teams found retail distribution deals.

This is great news for any fan of Red Orchestra let alone Tactical Realism games. Read the interview here.