Outriders developer People Can Fly don’t know if their co-op action RPG shooter has turned a profit yet, despite publisher Square Enix having made plenty of positive noises about the game’s sales and engagement since its release in April this year.
The reason for People Can Fly’s uncertainty comes from the publishing agreement that they have with with Square Enix. Under the terms of the partnership, Square Enix will only pay out royalties from Outriders to People Can Fly once all of the costs that they incurred while funding the game’s development and marketing its release have been met. Per the agreement, any royalties made by the game have to be paid to People Can Fly within 45 days of the end of the quarter, but they have yet to see any payments made. The game launched on 1st April, so the first royalties should have arrived in their bank accounts by Monday 16th August.
In a statement to investors (translated by Google), the studio states “This probably means that, according to Square Enix, the game Outriders did not break even after the first quarter of sales.”
However, that’s not to say that the game has not been at least a moderate success. Square Enix proudly announced that the game reached 3.5 million unique players in its first month of release, though that player count does not relate directly to sales, as it launched into the subscription service Xbox Game Pass. The game also struggled with severe server issues during that time, and they took a month to restore accidentally deleted items back to player inventories.
Despite these caveats, People Can Fly president Sebastian Wojciechowski, still estimates that Outriders has sold between two million and three million units. They can draw upon server statistic to draw such conclusions, looking at players on PC and PS4 as roughly equating to sales and estimating those on Xbox. The studio “assumed that this was a result that would ensure profitability,” so they might have some questions to ask of Square Enix, who previously said that Outriders’ launch was “on track to become the company’s next major franchise.”
Hopefully they’re not employing any creative accounting to avoid paying up…
So is Outriders worth playing? It’s not perfect, but if you’re after a new looter shooter that strays away from the endless Games as a Service model of the likes of Destiny it could be worth a look. In our Outriders review, Jim wrote:
“Outriders juggles some truly captivating ideas for the looter shooter genre, yet fails to deftly execute them. While it succeeds in combining traditional third person shooting with rewarding dungeon crawling, its messy matchmaking, repetitive mission design, and a dull sci-fi story hold People Can Fly back from delivering to their fullest potential.”
