Outriders from developer People Can Fly has yet to earn a profit as of March 2023, the developer confirmed.
A third-person shooter that combined what were actually rather good cover-based combat, class based abilities, and some Destiny-style looting, Outriders had all the makings of a good game, but had issues that injured it at launch, and it seemingly hasn’t recovered since.
A report from TweakTown found in People Can Fly’s most recent quarterly report following an announcement that it will develop a game for Microsoft, the studio confirmed it had yet to receive royalties from Outriders publisher, Square Enix.
People Can Fly will only begin receiving royalties once Outriders turns a profit, and as of March 2023 it has failed to cover the cost of its expenses.
“Furthermore, in accordance with the development and publishing agreement signed on February 16th 2016 between the parent and Square Enix Limited to develop Outriders, since the game was completed and released on April 1st 2021 the Group is entitled to receive consideration in the form of royalties.
Their amount is directly linked to and represents a percentage of the profit earned on the sale of the game.
The Group received no royalties from the publisher for the period to March 31st 2023, which means that as at the reporting date net proceeds from the sale of Outriders were insufficient to recover the costs and expenses incurred by the publisher to develop, distribute and promote the title.”
Outriders launched in 2021, and it wasn’t long after that the game’s financial issues became clear. Four months after launch, People Can Fly couldn’t say how much the game had sold.
Just seven months after launch, Outriders was asking players to give the game “a fresh start,” after putting in a lot of work to update it and fix the technical issues it had from the beginning.
And after it had been out for a year, People Can Fly reported that the game had failed to turn a profit in its launch year. Clearly, things haven’t improved.
Considering how much Outriders does right from a gameplay perspective, it is disappointing to see it continue to struggle. It tried to straddle both a single-player and live service focus, and that did more to confuse its tone while adding to its technical issues.
Despite that and its narrative failings, at its core Outriders is a good cover-based looter-shooter that can be a lot of fun. It just shows how difficult it is for live service-focused titles to survive in a genre that’s already over-saturated.
Source – [TweakTown]