author: Michael Kulakowski
People Can Fly Doesn't Know Outriders' Sales Figures
Developers from People Can Fly still do not know how many copies of Outriders they have officially sold. They have not received any information from the publisher, Square Enix. This data is very important to them because it is the base on which they can demand royalties from the Japanese company.
Outriders was released on April 1 on PC, PS4, PS5, XONE and XSX|S. Despite technical issues, the game attracted a huge crowd of players. Thje game was developed by People Can Fly. It was the first new and independent project of the team, after it parted ways with Epic Games. Today in the official press release [in Polish] the devs confirmed some quite surprising information. They still do not know the exact sales figures for the game, and thus do not know how close they are to the break-even point, after which they should start receiving royalties from the publisher.
According to the provisions of the agreement with Square Enix, if in the first quarter the number of game's copies bought by the players exceeds the profitability level (income from sales is greater than the sum of the costs of the development and promotion), the studio is entitled to previously established royalties. The Japanese company had 45 days to make the payment, and its deadline passed this Monday. Sebastian Wojciechowski, the CEO of People Can Fly, commented on the situation as follows.
"We don't have any sales figures for Outriders. We estimate it on the level between 2 and 3 million copies and we assumed that this is the result ensuring the project's profitability in the first quarter of sales. The lack of payment from the publisher probably means that Square Enix believes this is not the case."
Interestingly, in May Square Enix boasted that the game was played by a total of 3.5 million unique users on all platforms. It is worth noting that the game was made available on the release day also in Game Pass. We can suspect that this reflected quite significantly on the game's sales figures which People Can Fly expected. Titles downloaded as part of a subscription, the are probably treated differently by the publisher. We also do not know what percentage of the money coming from the contract with Microsoft could go to developers.
The studio's CEO tried to reassure the investors, stressing that Outriders will continue to sell for a long time to come.. The players will be encouraged by further support of the title, most likely in the form of DLCs, which we will hear about in the near future. Wojciechowski is also convinced that in the second quarter of sales the studio will definitely receive first royalties from Square Enix.
"The whole sales tail of Outriders is still ahead of us. We mentioned in the prospectus that we are working on further support for the game, and hopefully we will be able to tell you more soon. We also look forward to furthering promotional efforts on the publisher's side. Despite this disappointing information, we believe that the first royalties from Outriders's sales will come to the company this year."
Let's add that at the moment the studio is also working on two complex new IPs from AAA segment. One of them is being developed in cooperation with Take-Two Interactive (project Dagger), and the second with Square Enix (project Gemini).
