Eternity PoE II: Deadfire Sales Analysis Thread

[J_C]

* Character options are really too complicated. I've been playing CRPGs since the 80s and it took me over 30 minutes of going back and forth trying to decide if I was happy with my choices during character generation.

It is not a good cRPG if you don't spend at least an hour on character creation.

 

[jf8350143]

Those Critical Role guys seem extremely expensive.

On the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised if they worked for peanuts, seeing how enthusiastic they were about this game and the first one.

What was the total budget for PoE1 anyway? 4 mil from Kickstarter, how much did Obs give out of their own pocket?

Didn't they say that they had to put 1 million into the game from their own pockets?

They are actors, no? Enthusiasm is part of the contract I'd say.

So if PoE1 is $5 mil, Deadfire is at the very least also 5 mil, likely on the tune of 7-8 mil, they sold 100k copies for 50$, Steam + Uncle Sam take 40%, Feargus pockets 10% etc. - looks like several millions lost, they for sure haven't broken even yet. I doubt the excluded Fig shenanigans would be favourable.

Looks like a pretty Dumpsterfire to me.

Well they actually play the game(at least Matt plays it quite a lot I believe), which is more than you can ask for most of the voice actors.

Also DoS 2 gets a sales bump because it announce the Chinese localisation is coming out this week. Deadfire sales quite well in China as well, right now of all the reviews on steam, around one third of them is Chinese

 

[Lahey]

You realize that Mercer's streaming is a business and not just a hobby right? Large streamers such as he are part of the industry's marketing wing.

 

[jf8350143]

except he didn't play PoE 2 on streaming but on his own time?

 

[Lahey]

wtf I love Mercer now.

 

[MicoSelva]

If you pledge on Patreon. You get more accurate (or at least, refined) data.

It reads 111,000.

Thanks for this. Can you give us readouts on BattleTech and Frostpunk also?

Codex should just chip in to Steam Spy's Patreon to get the most accurate data possible, since we are pretty obsessed with sales figures on RPGs.

I would donate to a fundraiser for this myself.

 

[Curratum]

It can't be selling too well when GreenMan, which I think is a legit site, still sells it for 37 EUR vs the 46 EUR Steam wants me to pay for it.
PCGamer just put up an article that Fanatical, formerly BundleStars, another site which I think is legit, sells it 22% off for a week.

Even shadier third-party key resellers are full of entities racing each other to the bottom, constantly driving the price down, because it doesn't seem to sell too well even when priced at around 50% off from the Steam price.

I can't honestly imagine it's meeting Obsidian's expectations at this rate.

 

[Parabalus]

Those Critical Role guys seem extremely expensive.

On the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised if they worked for peanuts, seeing how enthusiastic they were about this game and the first one.

What was the total budget for PoE1 anyway? 4 mil from Kickstarter, how much did Obs give out of their own pocket?

Didn't they say that they had to put 1 million into the game from their own pockets?

They are actors, no? Enthusiasm is part of the contract I'd say.

So if PoE1 is $5 mil, Deadfire is at the very least also 5 mil, likely on the tune of 7-8 mil, they sold 100k copies for 50$, Steam + Uncle Sam take 40%, Feargus pockets 10% etc. - looks like several millions lost, they for sure haven't broken even yet. I doubt the excluded Fig shenanigans would be favourable.

Looks like a pretty Dumpsterfire to me.

100k? Whats the point of being so purposefully disingenuous? Id be willing to bet it sold almost 100k just on GOG.

250k would be my bet.

Steamspy says 100k-200k (yes it's broken but range is still correct for most games), GoG is usually <20% of Steam. I'm pretty sure 250k is a fever dream.

 

[Infinitron]

Is there any even marginally accurate way to find out how much the game has sold on GoG, other than waiting for official announcements with the numbers?

Both versions of Deadfire (plain or "Obsidian Edition") are at the top 2 spots of the "most popular" list over there, but I don't know if this list is formed by taking sales numbers into account.

Not that I'm aware of. And why would there be? It's not really public information, so it's up to the particular companies to release that if they want.

Actually, there is. If you know the GOG sales figures for another game, you can see if PoE2 has sold more or less than that. This is more-or-less a ranking of lifetime sales: https://www.gog.com/games?sort=bestselling&page=1&as=1649904300

 

[MicoSelva]

As far as I understand, the story is Gods+Politics+Pirates (and I am not even counting companion quests, which seem to have impressed noone). It sounds like a recipe for disaster.

There has been a precedent.



And yes, it was a recipe for disaster indeed.

 

[Riddler]

You realize that Mercer's streaming is a business and not just a hobby right? Large streamers such as he are part of the industry's marketing wing.

True, but Mercer is genuinely a massive nerd who really liked PoE. Among all the fake nerds in hollywood and the gaming industry in general (and the rest of the cast of Critical Role) Mercer stands out as a true gamer and Nerd of the old school (bleeding heart liberal as he might be).

 

[Mexi]

Looking at how extremely low PoE1's achievement %s are - only 43% finished Act 1 - it probably suffers from the same issue as Legend of Grimrock: a lot of people bought it blindly due to the hype but found out that they don't like IE-style games.

You just described most games on steam. There are a lot of gamers out there buying games on the heat of the moment just because they can, even if they have no real interest or time to play said games. This is great for developers, but bad for armchair critics like us because we have no idea what is going on. Moreover, there is the sequel's curse. I will repost a comment from the other thread.

I think it is because the novelty effect wore of. Uncle Vince got it right.

What is hilarious is that Vault Dweller invited Feargus I-like-to-Mismanage-my-Own-Company Urquhart to give advice in the same update and he said exactly the opposite!

That's great business advice Mr. Urquhart. You really know what you are talking about, don't you?

Vault Dweller is a hack. No one would buy AoD: 2 because the first game sucked.

 

[Infinitron]

Codex should just chip in to Steam Spy's Patreon to get the most accurate data possible, since we are pretty obsessed with sales figures on RPGs.

I would donate to a fundraiser for this myself.

It's a monthly subscription, not a one-time payment, so our regular yearly fundraiser would cover that expense anyway.

I was thinking of asking DarkUnderlord to subscribe for us, but don't know how critical that is since Galyonkin plans to show the exact numbers for free again once his algorithm is accurate enough.

 

[Keith Brown]

Steamspy is completely broken now after the Steam privacy changes, subbing is going to do nothing but provide confirmation bias.

 

[MicoSelva]

It's a monthly subscription, not a one-time payment, so our regular yearly fundraiser would cover that expense anyway.

I was thinking of asking DarkUnderlord to subscribe for us, but don't know how critical that is since Galyonkin plans to show the exact numbers for free again once his algorithm is accurate enough.

Just for the sake of argument, we do not know when that will be, and we could cancel the Patreon donation when it happens.

On the other hand, we do not really need this access, and Codex members such as Morality Games can fill in the details for the time being, so why bother.

 

[MicoSelva]

I bet they don't think that full VO was a good idea anymore. It was one of the stupidest decisions, and I don't know how could Feargus think that it is the way to go. I can honestly say that I have barely encountered anyone on the net who said that he will buy the game now that it has full VO. Nobody else cared, nobody. Just imagine the amount of money and time went into this, instead of other parts of the game.

Similarly to D:OS 2, full VO is a feature mostly for console versions of the game, where players DO care about this (reading a lot of text off your TV is incovenient).

It is actually cheaper to do full VO right away then do a partial one and then re-do from scratch it for console release (like D:OS 1 did... and Wasteland 2, I think?).

 

[Bigg Boss]

Codex should just chip in to Steam Spy's Patreon to get the most accurate data possible, since we are pretty obsessed with sales figures on RPGs.

I would donate to a fundraiser for this myself.

It's a monthly subscription, not a one-time payment, so our regular yearly fundraiser would cover that expense anyway.

I was thinking of asking DarkUnderlord to subscribe for us, but don't know how critical that is since Galyonkin plans to show the exact numbers for free again once his algorithm is accurate enough.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Vault Dweller is a hack. No one would buy AoD: 2 because the first game sucked.

Little attitude problem over here. Let me send you to Siberia put you on my ignore list. There. Problem solved. His first game sold more than 134k, by the way. We are talking about the first game made by nobodies (team of fve people) and a hard game at that. 134k. Let that sink in.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

You guys shoud look for data about refunds.

 

[DemonKing]

* Character options are really too complicated. I've been playing CRPGs since the 80s and it took me over 30 minutes of going back and forth trying to decide if I was happy with my choices during character generation. Good luck to your average punter working it out.

I call bullshit. NWN/2 had the same if not more complexity in character creation and the player base worked it out fine. There the actual help to sort things out was even less because tooltips were not as informative.

NWN2 was a D&D game. Tons of players were already familiar with the rules set either via Pen N Paper or playing the original game or Baldur's Gate. Hardly a fair comparison.

* Setting is appealing to me but possibly not to your average Joe hoping to "hunt some orc" in a quasi-medieval fantasy setting. I think they would have been better off going either full on FR-like (elves, dwarves, orcs, wizards etc) or completely in another direction (with the firearms, Godlike race, Chanter class etc). Instead they try to keep a foot in both courts and it's really satisfying to no one.

Seriously dude? Are you saying this to the people who played PST and MotB? Compared to that this setting a baby..

No - I'm saying that mainstream success would have been more likely with a more mainstream approach. If PoE was more generic it probably would have had a higher completion rate and more people willing to punt on a sequel.

 

[DemonKing]

How is this not a fair comparison? PoE literally advertises itself as a nostalgia game, so it is bringing back people who played those games. At this point saying that the complexity put players off is weird to say the least. These players most certainly played BGs, NWN/2.

It's not fair because the PoE system is unique to this series. It requires time and study for even experienced Crpgers to get their head around it. NWN2 as a D&D game meant a lot of players would already be familiar with the system before starting character generation.

You are joking right? How much more generic you want PoE to be? It has Tolkien-lite world. It is more generic at the moment than FR.

PoE has weird races, classes and gunplay as well as the more traditional stuff. Also you're not fighting generic orcs, goblins, ogres etc that even non-Crpgers could relate to. Hardly more generic than FR.

 

[fantadomat]

You guys shoud look for data about refunds.

It dropped bellow 100,000 sales,this is your refund data .
https://steamspy.com/app/560130

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

You guys shoud look for data about refunds.

It dropped bellow 100,000 sales,this is your refund data .
https://steamspy.com/app/560130

Thanks!

 

[Rev]

Regarding PoE2 and its seemingly lackluster sales, I think they made some mistakes that impacted on that.
Now, people have already talked about being a direct sequel to PoE, and I agree that it's a factor, but also I think announcing console portings even before the game was out affected negatively the PC sales, both because there are some (not many tbh) who would rather wait to play it on their ps4 (even if it's a kind of game which is basically unplayable with a pad) instead of playing it now on the PC and, most of all, because announcing something like that creates distrust and discontent among your dedicated supporters, who get angry because now it's been made for consoles as well and it's not made precisely for the PC anymore and they fear it will get simplified for consoles (which usually happens, when such a port gets made).
Also, announcing the DLCs so long before the game is out was a mistake as well, unless you're called CoD or AC: in fact, the only answers I saw when they announced their DLC release plan were "well, I guess it's another game that will take 6 months to be complete" and "why should I buy it and play it now, instead of waiting six months to have the definitive package?".

Also, marketing for the game was extremely dull: I remember D:OS2 was much more featured in gaming sites and had more ads, I was interested in PoE2 so I knew about it and kept myself informed but if that was not the case I'm sure I would even know it's out.

 

[fantadomat]

I am curious what a buggy mess it will be the console ports. My pc is a lot more powerful than most consoles and it have some problems with the game,can't imagine how the switch version will look .