Would Deep Rock Galactic or Valheim exist without Goat Simulator? Hilariously, the answer might be no.

The ever-present dominoes of fate fall in ever-interesting ways, but sometimes they’re pushed, and sometimes they’re pushed by a goat at the heart of a buggy, meme-filled physics sandbox game. I’m talking about Goat Simulator.

There’s a lot of interesting domino effects across the games industry, but one minor one is how the massive success of Coffee Stain Studios’ Goat Simulator way back in 2014 has led to the release of major hits such as Coffee Stain’s own Satisfactory, but also indie darlings such as Valheim and Deep Rock Galactic.

Speaking to VideoGamer to celebrate 11 years of Goat Simulator, which “ragdolled” the studio into gaming history, Goat Sim producer Joel Rydholm admitted that the silly physics game is partially the reason why Valheim, Deep Rock Galactic and more could be published by Coffee Stain so many years later.

Prior to the release of Goat Sim, Coffee Stain worked on the RTS games Sanctum and Sanctum 2, but neither of these were huge hitters. In fact, while working on Goat Sim, the studio’s finances were in dire straights, and the physics game saved them from going under which, in turn, allowed them to publish some of the coolest indie games around.

“Goat Simulator launched at a time when our studio was six months away from potentially risking bankruptcy” Rydhold explained. “So it’s true that without Goat Simulator and its success, other games we’ve since published, like Satisfactory and Valheim, may not have come to be.”

Of course, Deep Rock Galactic, Valheim and others could’ve found another publisher, but in the current games industry they also might not have. As Rydhold explains, “we’ll never know” whether these games would’ve existed without Goat Simulator, whether they would’ve hit at the same time as hard as they did, or not. That’s the beauty of the domino effect.

“Honestly, no-one expected it to be as big a success as it was because it was ultimately just a fun project made off the back of a game jam April Fools’ joke,” Rydhold said of the game’s success. “We are very happy though with how well things turned out, and how many great Coffee Stain titles have been launched since thanks to it being such a hit.”

Coffee Stain’s latest published game is the early access card strategy game As We Descend, which launched in May of this year. The Swedish game developer and publisher is far from done, and we have that damn goat to thank.