The giant spotlight that Notch (Minecraft) brought to the project and to Tim via the Psychonauts 2 funding "offer" helped a lot too. Must admit, I'd never heard of Tim's name before despite being familiar with his games until Notch was going on about it.
Scare quotes are tricky :-) But they indicate something "does not signify its literal or conventional meaning" and while Notch mentioned it and they might be talking, I didn't see an "offer" per se, hence my quotes (but admittedly I was thinking of "offer" from a contractual point of view at the time).