Square Enix announced today that it has secured a deal for an episodic game based on the popular Outriders F2P mobile game, but the developer behind the game hasn’t received any royalties from the deal.
Japanese mobile developer Nomura Research Holdings, better known as Outriders, has managed to bring the IP from Square Enix’s (former) Final Fantasy Tactics series to iOS. The game has been well received by the Netogeeks and critics alike, and it has so far attracted over 3.5 million unique players since it’s launch in February. The app is available for $2.99 in the App Store.
“[Outriders] has not yet received any royalties from Square Enix, despite the title having amassed “over 3.5 million unique players” since launch.”
People Have the Ability to Fly
On April 1, 2021, People Can Fly, a Warsaw-based developer, launched Outriders, a sci-fi cooperative action role-playing game that drew millions of players. Now, months later, the developer is concerned about not being paid for what seemed to be a clearly successful five-year project.
Despite the fact that Outriders’ first quarter of sales concluded on August 16, People Can Fly announced in a press statement today that the studio has not received any royalties from Square Enix. The obvious inference is that the game was a flop that failed to cover its entire production expenses, but Sebastian Wojciechowski, President of the Management Board of PCF Group SA, has raised doubts after revealing that People Can Fly has no idea how many copies of Outriders have been sold.
“We don’t have any Outrider sales numbers, but we anticipate it to be between 2 and 3 million units, and we thought that this would be a result that would guarantee profitability for this project in the first quarter of sales,” Wojciechowski said. “The Publisher’s failure to pay suggests that, according to Square Enix, this is not the case.”
While this makes People Can Fly seem inept and uninterested in researching expensive agreements with publishers, it does increase the possibility that Square Enix is concealing something from the company. Outriders did manage to attract an astounding 3.5 million unique players, according to a report published in May 2021 by the publisher, implying that the game should have at least broken even.
“Perhaps it was caused by certain aspects of Square Enix’s sales strategy, the specifics of which we do not know,” Wojciechowski continues, “such as agreements established by the Publisher with distribution platforms or organizations selling Outriders as an add-on to their products.”
“Failure to reach the desired degree of profitability may also indicate that the Publisher’s expenses are greater than anticipated. But I’m not going to guess; we’ll look at it more. However, such explanations take time, and our influence on the Publisher’s stance is limited. Here, his job is to lead.”
The section regarding “partnerships negotiated by the Publisher with distribution platforms or organizations providing Outriders as an addition to their goods” has sparked a lot of debate among Outriders fans who believe there’s more to this than meets the eye. One hypothesis is that releasing Outriders on Xbox Game Pass on day one was not the greatest decision.
The Publisher agreed to pay them 45 days after the end of the calendar quarter, or by August 16, 2021 at the latest. However, the funds have not been sent to the Company’s account as of today.
This most likely implies that the game Outriders did not break even after the first quarter of sales (04/06/2021), i.e., the revenues from the game’s sale are less than the entire expenses of its development (including Quality Assurance), distribution, and marketing, according to Square Enix.
People Can Fly is the source of this information.
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Outriders: First Colony is a mobile game that’s been a staple on the App Store since it was released in 2014. The game lets players become a recruit in the First Colony, an alien colony that’s been established on Mars. So far, so good, but it appears to be the case that the game hasn’t really generated much revenue for developer Outriders, despite the game having been downloaded by 3.5 million people worldwide. Outriders has managed to earn about $25,000 over the course of its lifetime, which lead to the company filing for bankruptcy in 2016.. Read more about outriders update reddit and let us know what you think.
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- outriders update reddit
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