barriers. Recently, Western publishers have been picking up these games for release in other markets, with one of the first known successful examples being Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, developed originally by EasyGameStation in 2007, and then localized and released by Carpe Fulgur in 2010 for English audiences, which had a modest success with over 300,000 units sold in these markets. Recettear release on the digital storefront Steam, which at the time had begun opening its catalog to third-party developers, further helped to introduce doujin to the West. This approach has been used to bring other doujin games, particularly visual novels and dating sims, to the West. Some titles sell well enough that their creators can make a full-time job out of what is typically an amateur hobby: For example TYPE-MOON and 07th Expansion originally released games as doujin games. One game, French-Bread's brawler Ragnarok Battle Offline, a homage/spoof of the MMORPG Ragnarok Online so impressed Gravity Corp., the original game's designers, that it has been given an official release outside Japan. Notable digital doujin game companies 07th Expansion: specializes in visual novels, most notable for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Umineko no Naku Koro ni ABA Games: specializes in shoot 'em ups with an abstract look. Most of their games are open source. EasyGameStation: produces a wide variety of games, from brawlers to role playing games to strategy games, most notably released Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, the first doujin game to be distributed on the Steam platform overseas to great success French Bread: former doujin studio that specializes in 2D fighting games Team Shanghai Alice: specializes in curtain fire scrolling shooters, most notable for Touhou Project Twilight Frontier: specializes in a wide variety of games including fighting games and platformers Type-Moon: former doujin studio that specializes in visual novels most notable for Tsukihime and Fate franchises Yotsubane: Creator of shoot 'em up Crimzon Clover See also Fangame History of Eastern role-playing video games RPG Maker References External links Event report on doujin/indie soft event Digital Games Expo Bordersdown (formerly NTSC-UK) looks at Doujin soft fighting games John Szczepaniak on The Escapist looks at the Doujinsoft genre Video game culture Popular culture Unofficial adaptations Fangame Video game development Fan labor