Frostpunk 2 Hits 350,000 Copies Sold, Which Is Enough for the Dev to Break Even but Not Enough to Prevent a Share Price Collapse
Frostpunk 2 developer 11 bit studios says it’s already broken even amid a collapse of the company’s share price.
In a tweet, 11 bit studios said its self-published city-building survival sequel has already sold over 350,000 copies since going on sale on September 20. That milestone was announced just a few days after launch.
What’s more, revenue made from the game so far is already enough to cover the cost of development as well as marketing. “The total estimated sales revenue has already covered the costs we spent on producing and marketing the game,” 11 bit studios said.
“Big, big thank you to you all for your support! It (almost) melts our frozen-solid hearts. The work doesn’t stop here, we are continuously working on improving your experience with hotfixes and patches, and your feedback here is invaluable.”
However, the Polish video game maker’s share price collapsed following the launch of Frostpunk 2. Reuters reported a fall of 38% on September 23 with analysts saying the number of players on Steam failed to meet expectations. Over the past five day period, the share price has fallen 50.88%, at the time of this article’s publication.
According to SteamDB, Frostpunk 2 has so far peaked with 35,533 concurrent players on Steam. That’s higher than Frostpunk 1’s Steam concurrents peak of 29,361, set six years ago at launch
“We expected a significantly higher players peak in the 80,000-100,000 range, so we consider 35.5k as a negative surprise,” said Erste Group analyst Piotr Bogusz, adding that “relatively poor” ratings may also affect the purchasing decisions of players who have Frostpunk 2 on their wishlist.
“A drop in the average rating below the 80% threshold affects the game’s visibility on Steam, which could translate into sales,” he said.
Frostpunk 2 currently has a Steam user review rating of 71%, which is enough to earn the ‘mostly positive’ rating.
“We were maybe counting on slightly higher scores, but this negative sentiment or disappointment among players is due to the fact that it is not simply a sequel to Frostpunk 1, but Frostpunk 2… maybe we didn’t articulate enough that it’s not a clone, that it’s not a simple sequel but a different game,” 11 bit studios’ investor relations manager Dariusz Wolak told Reuters.
“We, as a product, feel very good about it. We have implemented the plan, our internal goals when it comes to the quality of the game. The sales in this period around the premiere are also as we expected,” Wolak added.
IGN’s Frostpunk 2 review returned an 8/10. We said: “Thanks to a ground-up rethinking of its ice-age city builder mechanics, Frostpunk 2’s larger scale is less intimate but more socially and politically complex than the original.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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