Can we get sales numbers?

[Labadal]

I know it's none of my business, but it would be interesting to get info on how the game is doing in sales.

[evilcat]

Not sure how viable is that, but better that than nothing:

http://steamspy.com/

[MunoValente]

I assume it's selling pretty well on GOG on top of steam, it always seems to be among the top sellers there and the style of game seems to fit their clientele.  I read somewhere that Witcher 3 actually did better on GOG than steam, don't if that is true of not but GOG sales might be better for RPGs than a lot of people assume.

[Fëanor]

My analysis from the RPGCodex:
 

One thing we have to consider is that many of these were backers already and part of the game's budget, so that's 77,000 people who didn't buy the game afterwards. The Witcher 2 had 80% of its copies sold on Steam and The Witcher 3 had about 45% (more copies sold on GOG), but that's the absolute best case scenario for a game on GOG, as it's the developer's own store, the game gets a few extras, loyal fanbase wants to support them, etc.
I'd guess at least 80% activated their copies on Steam, so that's ~62.000 copies out of the equation. That equals $12,500,000 in revenue for Obsidian/Paradox, but that's assuming all copies were standard editions, so if anything, they made much more than that.

Best case scenario, let's assume 20% of the copies were deluxe editions (I'm guessing here, I've seen some similar numbers for physical limited editions, but not digital only), 15% for the Champion Edition and 5% for the Royal one. That would put it at $13,794,684.

On a different note, I'm not sure, but it does seem to me that PoE was funded by Kickstarter/Paypal alone, unlike other crowdfunded RPGs. Wasteland 2 had its budget doubled (3 to 6 million) with InXile's own money, but I couldn't find anything to suggest it was the case here.

 

 

(then one user told me Obsidian had to spend some of their money)

 

That's true, several tiers got multiple copies of the game. As for the budget, I didn't know about that, but they made 4.3 million including PayPal, I doubt it was as much of their own money as Wasteland 2. If we assume the same budget of $6 million, that's 2 million out of their own pocket that were no problem to recover.

Ok, so let's assume on everage that each backer got 3 copies of the game (between the single copy backers and the ones with a bunch): that's 186,000 Kickstarter copies on Steam.
Using the same 15/5% cut for the deluxe editions, they'd get $9,498,084. Considerably less, but still a good profit on steam alone.

 

 

 

(3 copies is very high, maybe too high, considering only very expensive tiers got more than 2 copies, but that was meant to show the worst case scenario in this regard)

 

The only problem with my analysis is that it was based on 460k copies, but now SteamSpy says it's closer to 448k. You want actual sales numbers, though, so let's see:

 

The $110 tier got two copies of the game, so I'll assume that's the first one and the ones above had 2 or more.

That's 7432 copies up to the $750.

$1000 and above got more than 2, adding up to 812 extra copies including all of them.

 

This adds up to 8244 extra copies on top of the ~77k backers.

If we assume the highest percentage on GOG (15%, much like The Witcher 2's ~16%), that's 7007 copies on Steam.

 

447,894 - 72,457 = roughly 375,437 new copies sold on Steam.

 

If we assume the same percentage but with players decided to purchase the game on GOG, that's 441,690 copies sold overall.

Edited August 18, 2015 by lordfairfax

[Labadal]

It would be nice to have official word at some point.

SteamSpy has been showing very different results for the game. Then there's GOG and whatever non-Steam platform there is. 

[Fëanor]

They'll probably share it when it reaches 500,000 copies.

Edited August 18, 2015 by lordfairfax

[Cantousent]

Interesting read, lordfairfax. Do companies usually give out hard numbers about these things? I thought that they usually referenced the numbers in generalities, but I don't really know how it works. Sadly, now that you're not on new member moderated status, I won't get the heads up. ...But now that my curiosity is peaked, I'll have to keep checking this thread. Like Labadal, I'm keenly interested in the sales figures now.

[Gromnir]

Interesting read, lordfairfax. Do companies usually give out hard numbers about these things? I thought that they usually referenced the numbers in generalities, but I don't really know how it works. Sadly, now that you're not on new member moderated status, I won't get the heads up. ...But now that my curiosity is peaked, I'll have to keep checking this thread. Like Labadal, I'm keenly interested in the sales figures now.

companies frequent do give out hard numbers.  quarterly reports is filled with hard numbers.

 

obsidian is not public traded, so...

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Katarack21]

My analysis from the RPGCodex:

 

One thing we have to consider is that many of these were backers already and part of the game's budget, so that's 77,000 people who didn't buy the game afterwards. The Witcher 2 had 80% of its copies sold on Steam and The Witcher 3 had about 45% (more copies sold on GOG), but that's the absolute best case scenario for a game on GOG, as it's the developer's own store, the game gets a few extras, loyal fanbase wants to support them, etc.

I'd guess at least 80% activated their copies on Steam, so that's ~62.000 copies out of the equation. That equals $12,500,000 in revenue for Obsidian/Paradox, but that's assuming all copies were standard editions, so if anything, they made much more than that.

 

Best case scenario, let's assume 20% of the copies were deluxe editions (I'm guessing here, I've seen some similar numbers for physical limited editions, but not digital only), 15% for the Champion Edition and 5% for the Royal one. That would put it at $13,794,684.

 

On a different note, I'm not sure, but it does seem to me that PoE was funded by Kickstarter/Paypal alone, unlike other crowdfunded RPGs. Wasteland 2 had its budget doubled (3 to 6 million) with InXile's own money, but I couldn't find anything to suggest it was the case here.

 

 

(then one user told me Obsidian had to spend some of their money)

 

That's true, several tiers got multiple copies of the game. As for the budget, I didn't know about that, but they made 4.3 million including PayPal, I doubt it was as much of their own money as Wasteland 2. If we assume the same budget of $6 million, that's 2 million out of their own pocket that were no problem to recover.

 

Ok, so let's assume on everage that each backer got 3 copies of the game (between the single copy backers and the ones with a bunch): that's 186,000 Kickstarter copies on Steam.

Using the same 15/5% cut for the deluxe editions, they'd get $9,498,084. Considerably less, but still a good profit on steam alone.

 

 

 

(3 copies is very high, maybe too high, considering only very expensive tiers got more than 2 copies, but that was meant to show the worst case scenario in this regard)

 

The only problem with my analysis is that it was based on 460k copies, but now SteamSpy says it's closer to 448k. You want actual sales numbers, though, so let's see:

 

The $110 tier got two copies of the game, so I'll assume that's the first one and the ones above had 2 or more.

That's 7432 copies up to the $750.

$1000 and above got more than 2, adding up to 812 extra copies including all of them.

 

This adds up to 8244 extra copies on top of the ~77k backers.

If we assume the highest percentage on GOG (15%, much like The Witcher 2's ~16%), that's 7007 copies on Steam.

 

447,894 - 72,457 = roughly 375,437 new copies sold on Steam.

 

If we assume the same percentage but with players decided to purchase the game on GOG, that's 441,690 copies sold overall.

You're a little bit off there; I got a copy of the game and a copy of the expansion, together, for about $55. That  would be two at $110, but I'm not sure if the split makes any difference in the calculations.

[Fëanor]

Interesting read, lordfairfax. Do companies usually give out hard numbers about these things? I thought that they usually referenced the numbers in generalities, but I don't really know how it works. Sadly, now that you're not on new member moderated status, I won't get the heads up. ...But now that my curiosity is peaked, I'll have to keep checking this thread. Like Labadal, I'm keenly interested in the sales figures now.

As Gromnir said, publicly traded companies do, but private ones don't have to share them, and that is most often the case. With Obsidian it's hard to say because all of their previous games had a traditional business model and the usual publisher relationship, so it was always up to them to release sales figures.

Still, several independent studios do share hard numbers, and PoE's publisher Paradox does it all the time.

 

I said 500k because it's the first milestone and a good, round number to share. It's also the first number Larian shared for Divinity: Original Sin, which was even more successful than PoE.

 

 

My analysis from the RPGCodex:

 

One thing we have to consider is that many of these were backers already and part of the game's budget, so that's 77,000 people who didn't buy the game afterwards. The Witcher 2 had 80% of its copies sold on Steam and The Witcher 3 had about 45% (more copies sold on GOG), but that's the absolute best case scenario for a game on GOG, as it's the developer's own store, the game gets a few extras, loyal fanbase wants to support them, etc.

I'd guess at least 80% activated their copies on Steam, so that's ~62.000 copies out of the equation. That equals $12,500,000 in revenue for Obsidian/Paradox, but that's assuming all copies were standard editions, so if anything, they made much more than that.

 

Best case scenario, let's assume 20% of the copies were deluxe editions (I'm guessing here, I've seen some similar numbers for physical limited editions, but not digital only), 15% for the Champion Edition and 5% for the Royal one. That would put it at $13,794,684.

 

On a different note, I'm not sure, but it does seem to me that PoE was funded by Kickstarter/Paypal alone, unlike other crowdfunded RPGs. Wasteland 2 had its budget doubled (3 to 6 million) with InXile's own money, but I couldn't find anything to suggest it was the case here.

 

 

(then one user told me Obsidian had to spend some of their money)

 

That's true, several tiers got multiple copies of the game. As for the budget, I didn't know about that, but they made 4.3 million including PayPal, I doubt it was as much of their own money as Wasteland 2. If we assume the same budget of $6 million, that's 2 million out of their own pocket that were no problem to recover.

 

Ok, so let's assume on everage that each backer got 3 copies of the game (between the single copy backers and the ones with a bunch): that's 186,000 Kickstarter copies on Steam.

Using the same 15/5% cut for the deluxe editions, they'd get $9,498,084. Considerably less, but still a good profit on steam alone.

 

 

 

(3 copies is very high, maybe too high, considering only very expensive tiers got more than 2 copies, but that was meant to show the worst case scenario in this regard)

 

The only problem with my analysis is that it was based on 460k copies, but now SteamSpy says it's closer to 448k. You want actual sales numbers, though, so let's see:

 

The $110 tier got two copies of the game, so I'll assume that's the first one and the ones above had 2 or more.

That's 7432 copies up to the $750.

$1000 and above got more than 2, adding up to 812 extra copies including all of them.

 

This adds up to 8244 extra copies on top of the ~77k backers.

If we assume the highest percentage on GOG (15%, much like The Witcher 2's ~16%), that's 7007 copies on Steam.

 

447,894 - 72,457 = roughly 375,437 new copies sold on Steam.

 

If we assume the same percentage but with players decided to purchase the game on GOG, that's 441,690 copies sold overall.

You're a little bit off there; I got a copy of the game and a copy of the expansion, together, for about $55. That  would be two at $110, but I'm not sure if the split makes any difference in the calculations.

 

Well, I checked only the tiers that gave two digital downloads of the game, but I might be off. IIRC the $250 still doesn't mention a second copy in the Kickstarter page, but we know that tier did gave two copies, so it was just an oversight.

Edited August 18, 2015 by lordfairfax

[rheingold]

@lordfairfax... Quick question, if we accept the figure of roughly 450000 sales (don't worry won't hold you to it), is this a good performance for a game like Pillars? Put another way, have you any idea what Obs would regard as worthwhile?

I don't know much about the game industry which is strange considering how much time I spent playing them, but being conservative, say Obs has made $11 000 000, it does seem quite low and not likely to keep them going, mainly because,

- presumably paradox take a cut of the profits, no idea how much though.

- it's been some time and a whole lot of work for Obs, again I don't know how big the studio is, but there are salaries to paid.

Also not sure if you took Steam and Gogs cut in to account?

[Labadal]

Don't forget that the game has been in the top 10 best seller list on GOG for some time. I don't know how many copies it has sold there, but surely, the game has sold over 500k copies by now. I have no idea if that's good enough in Obsidian's point of view.

[evilcat]

I checked a little more steamspy, and both Divinity Original SIn and Shadowrun got like 900k copies on steam alone (acording to steamspy). On GOG they probably do better than avarage. However these games was around year or more, and was already on steam sales. PoE is like 6 months out.

Both D:OS and Shadowrun just keep making new versions. And so is PoE.

I think it is safe to asume that PoE did "good enought".

 

Not sure why it should matter for player. There is expansion in motion, so game is not dead. And Obsidian plans to expand game at least for another year.

Edited August 19, 2015 by evilcat

[MunoValente]

I think estimating GoG sales as only 15% scales low.  This game fits right in with their audience and has been a top seller there since it was released and GOG in general sells more new games and has grown in profile compared to 3-4 years ago.  But maybe not, and without knowing for sure it's hard to get a clear picture of it's sales. 

[Zoraptor]

Don't forget that the game has been in the top 10 best seller list on GOG for some time. I don't know how many copies it has sold there, but surely, the game has sold over 500k copies by now. I have no idea if that's good enough in Obsidian's point of view.

 

I would have thought it was over 500k including kickstarter/ slacker backers, probably not quite if you exclude them though.

 

In terms of GOG sales numbers, PoE is doing twice as well there relatively as DivOS is doing- DivOS has 2x the sales on steam but it and PoE have near identical sales ranking on GOG; and KS backers are excluded from those numbers for PoE but not DivOS as well. If we assume steamspy is correct and that Larian would announce one million sales that puts the upper limit of GOG sales for DivOS at around 100k and therefore the upper limit of PoE sales at around 100k as well or roughly 20% of Steam's sales numbers.

 

Particular types of title certainly sell better on GOG than others, eg despite being steam key bundled multiple times System Shock 2 still has more sales on GOG than Steam. But even as someone who dislikes steam it's hard to see GOG getting much more than 20% of sales on a new release title unless there are very specific circumstances for it.

[Fëanor]

@lordfairfax... Quick question, if we accept the figure of roughly 450000 sales (don't worry won't hold you to it), is this a good performance for a game like Pillars? Put another way, have you any idea what Obs would regard as worthwhile?

I don't know much about the game industry which is strange considering how much time I spent playing them, but being conservative, say Obs has made $11 000 000, it does seem quite low and not likely to keep them going, mainly because,

- presumably paradox take a cut of the profits, no idea how much though.

- it's been some time and a whole lot of work for Obs, again I don't know how big the studio is, but there are salaries to paid.

Also not sure if you took Steam and Gogs cut in to account?

I'd say it's a good performance, yes. It's a game that should have legs and it hasn't been in any of Steam's major sales, unlike the rest of the Kickstarter RPGs.

The thing is, it depends on how much Obsidian had to spend on the game. Wasteland 2 made $3 milliion in crowdfunding, but InXile had to spend another 3 out of their own pockets, so the profit there was definitely smaller, considering WL2's sales on steamspy.

 

If Obsidian didn't spend a lot of money, $11 million is still a lot, because with Kickstarter the budget and the profit are different. The people funding the project don't get their money back, they get the full game, so the profit margin is very high because they're not expecting a return on their investment. Backers basically place pre-orders that pay for the game.

 

You're right about paradox, we don't know how much they make, but I doubt it's a high percentage.

 

I took both Steam and GOG into account for the number of sales, but not total income. The 9, 10 and 13 million figures were based on steam sales after Valve's cut.

 

I checked a little more steamspy, and both Divinity Original SIn and Shadowrun got like 900k copies on steam alone (acording to steamspy). On GOG they probably do better than avarage. However these games was around year or more, and was already on steam sales. PoE is like 6 months out.

Both D:OS and Shadowrun just keep making new versions. And so is PoE.

I think it is safe to asume that PoE did "good enought".

 

Not sure why it should matter for player. There is expansion in motion, so game is not dead. And Obsidian plans to expand game at least for another year.

Divinity OS did have a better performance, it reached 500k faster than PoE. It was a slightly cheaper game, however. Shadowrun even more so. Both have been part of multiple steam sales, while PoE hasn't.

 

But yes, PoE did good enough, and Fergus said recently that they're looking forward to making more Eternity stuff.

 

I think estimating GoG sales as only 15% scales low.  This game fits right in with their audience and has been a top seller there since it was released and GOG in general sells more new games and has grown in profile compared to 3-4 years ago.  But maybe not, and without knowing for sure it's hard to get a clear picture of it's sales. 

 

I used 15% because that was the percentage for The Witcher 2, a game made by CD Projekt, which also owns GOG and included extra stuff for the game there. IIRC it also had a free copy of the first game and all. Other publishers have said that Steam makes up more than 90% of their digital sales on PC, so I thought 15% was optimistic, but it could be more. As someone said, it's definitely that type of game the average loyal GOG costumer is interested in.

 

[joshua43214]

Considering how Act III falls flat on its face, I think we can assume that Obsidian spent little if any of it's own money on development.

Don't get me wrong, I love the game, it just has the feel of something that was developed until they ran out of money, and is now using sales profits to continue development.

 

Obsidian is not a huge company, if they have $10,000,000.00 in sales at this point, I am sure they are quite happy.

[rheingold]

I'd say it's a good performance, yes. It's a game that should have legs and it hasn't been in any of Steam's major sales, unlike the rest of the Kickstarter RPGs.

 

 

I hope - only interested because there are not that many companies which cater for my taste in games. Hate to lose another one....

Edited August 20, 2015 by rheingold

[Fëanor]

Considering how Act III falls flat on its face, I think we can assume that Obsidian spent little if any of it's own money on development.

Don't get me wrong, I love the game, it just has the feel of something that was developed until they ran out of money, and is now using sales profits to continue development.

 

Obsidian is not a huge company, if they have $10,000,000.00 in sales at this point, I am sure they are quite happy.

Considering the game was delayed and took 2 years and a few months, I think they might have used some of their own money, but not much.

And yeah, 11mil is a lot, and it's kind of a niche genre (even more so than turn-based ones like Shadowrun and Divinity, if you ask me), so they're probably very happy indeed.

 

 

I'd say it's a good performance, yes. It's a game that should have legs and it hasn't been in any of Steam's major sales, unlike the rest of the Kickstarter RPGs.

 

 

I hope - only interested because there are not that many companies which cater for my taste in games. Hate to lose another one....

 

Oh, don't worry about that, they're going to make more PoE games, and there's a secret RPG project they're working on. Maybe it's something to be announced soon.

[Labadal]

I am almost 100% sure that they said that they had to pitch in with their own money.

[Katarack21]

I am almost 100% sure that they said that they had to pitch in with their own money.

Yes, I remember hearing that as well, but I believe it was late in the development cycle when most of the expensive, time-consuming assets had already been developed.

[PaintingInAir]

I know it's none of my business, but it would be interesting to get info on how the game is doing in sales.

 

Any particular reason you want to know this? Just curious.

[Cantousent]

When you shell out the cash, you hope that the endeavor met with some success? :Cant's wink and grin icon:

[ManifestedISO]

 

I know it's none of my business, but it would be interesting to get info on how the game is doing in sales.

 

Any particular reason you want to know this? Just curious.

 

 

I don't have kids, but if I did, I would want to know how well they're doing in school. 

[Labadal]

 

I know it's none of my business, but it would be interesting to get info on how the game is doing in sales.

 

Any particular reason you want to know this? Just curious.

 

I want the game to be successful and if it was, it makes me happy. That's why I'm asking.