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Editorial Swen Vincke reflects on the development of Div:OS, reveals that it's sold over half a million copies

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Divinity: Original Sin; Larian Studios; Swen Vincke

Larian CEO Swen Vincke updated his blog today, for the first time since the release of Divinity: Original Sin back in June. His new post is a long and dense rumination on various aspects of the game's development and reception. Swen talks about the game's success, about the lengths he had to go in order to achieve that success, and also reveals a little bit of what Larian has planned for the future. And, yes, there are sales figures. I'll quote the most interesting bits:

Divinity: Original Sin did pretty well. At the time of this writing its Metacritic critic rating is at 87%, it’s user rating at 89% and it’s been at the top of the Steam charts for most of the summer, occupying the nr. 1 spot for around a month.

It has sold well over half a million units by now– mostly from Steam, with 10% from retail. ”Break even” has been reached, our debts have been paid and we are now in the profitable zone. While not all of the money is for us as we had private investors on board, the game did sufficiently well for us to envision funding our next endeavors with it, meaning we’re pretty happy about its performance.

So much for turn-based fantasy RPGs not selling, crowdfunding not working and a developer like us not being capable of bringing a game to market without the help of seasoned publishers!

[...] The release of D: OS was one big crunch period with all the good and bad that come with it. If the game ultimately did well, it’s because of the outstanding performance of the team when “the going got tough and the tough got going”.

A lot of the crunch was caused by our decision to listen to the feedback we received through our Kickstarter and Steam Early Access communities. While it often was tough to read through all of the criticism, it was clear that integrating the best parts of the feedback would be well worth the effort and improve the game massively. We didn’t hesitate for a minute.

This meant extra delays however, which in turn meant a need for extra budget. Steam Early Access was getting us some money but unfortunately that wasn’t sufficient. We needed to pay back our creditors who were all under the conviction that the game would be out sooner. When, to my surprise, it turned out that they didn’t share our belief that everything was going to be ok and even better if we listened to the feedback, I had to engage in a lot of fun conversations. Between “it’s ready when it’s done” and actually following up on that mantra, there unfortunately lies a big gap that can only be bridged with financial stamina.

I think we would’ve continued development even longer, but when I had to dash to a far away place where lived the one last bank director who still wanted to give us sufficient credit to pay a part of what we owed to another bank, it was clear that we needed to finish. I wasn’t joking when I said it was all in.

[...] We worked on D:OS until the very last day before release, and while that in itself isn’t for the meek of heart, it did have some interesting consequences. For one, we didn’t have any review code to share with reviewers prior to release. This meant that it would take several weeks before we’d actually know what the review scores were going to be. It also meant that anybody interested in the game would have to either wait or check what other players were thinking.

I don’t know if there was any correlation between our ultimate review scores and the user reviews, but the latter were really good and when you went to the Steam page on the day of release, it was loaded with over 1500 user reviews, 93% being thumbs up. I think that fuelled a lot of the initial success of the game and I also think it made some reviewers pay a bit more attention to the game.

[...] Our plan is to continue supporting D: OS for quite some time as this is the RPG framework on which we’ll build our next games. We’re fooling around with controller support to see if a big screen version with cooperative play would work well, something I’m silently hoping for as I think it’ll be a lot of fun, more so perhaps than playing coop in LAN with a friend sitting next to you. We’re also improving the engine itself as well as adding a bunch of extra features that not only make D: OS more fun and more friendly to players, but that will also improve whatever our next offering will be. We’re also adding extra content, like for instance the big companion patch, voiced et al, and I imagine that won’t be the last of what we’ll add.

The foreseeable future for Larian (i.e. the next couple of years) is going to see us making further progress in improving our RPG craft and creating dense game worlds with hopefully new and innovative gameplay systems based on old school values. These last months I’ve been very busy expanding our development force so that we can continue to compete in tomorrow’s market.

As I mentioned in this interview, the current thinking is that we shouldn’t go back to Kickstarter. That’s not because we’re ungrateful of the support we received through our Kickstarter community or because all those rewards caused a bit of extra work, but because I think the crowdfunding pool is limited and it should be fished in by those who really need it. Since we now can, I think we should first invest ourselves and then see if we need extra funds to fuel our ambitions. Only then it makes sense to look at crowd funding. I know several of our backers will be displeased by this, so it could be that we still change our minds, but if that is the case, I do think the the format we’ll use or the way we’ll do it will be different than how we did it for Divinity: Original Sin.
Swen ends the post with a recap of the lessons he's learned over the course of Original Sin's development, with regard to content creation and the solicitation of community feedback. His maxim about content is something I can definitely get behind.
 

Fry

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I find the idea that crowd funding is a limited pool of cash with developers patiently lining up for their turn at the trough and then never going back a bit bizarre. Crowd funding is just an alternative funding source. If a studio can fund a game entirely with cash on hand, great, but given the choice between signing on with a publishers or going back to the crowd, I don't see a moral problem with the latter.
 

Morkar Left

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I don’t know if there was any correlation between our ultimate review scores and the user reviews, but the latter were really good and when you went to the Steam page on the day of release, it was loaded with over 1500 user reviews, 93% being thumbs up. I think that fuelled a lot of the initial success of the game and I also think it made some reviewers pay a bit more attention to the game.

This. Actually, I thought Larian did this on purpose because I suspected that players would be far more enjoying the game than your usual professional reviewer theses days.
Personally I think gamedevelopers don't need to rely on "professional" reviewers any longer. An intereseted player base is a far better marketing tool these days, at least for "indies" and "niche" games.
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Jay Barnson comments: http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=7883

Game Dev Quote(s) of the Week: So Much For Common Wisdom Edition
For today, here’s a super-fresh quote from Swen Vincke or Larian Studios, which strikes near and dear to my heart. After hitting a home run, selling more than a half-million units, paying all the debts and investors and being able to fund the next game with the proceeds, Vincke snarks:

“So much for turn-based fantasy RPGs not selling, crowdfunding not working and a developer like us not being capable of bringing a game to market without the help of seasoned publishers.”​

This is from today’s post, “Thoughts after releasing Divinity: Original Sin and what comes next.” I recommend reading the whole thing, if you are either a fan of Divinity: Original Sin, or a game dev, or just interested in game development. The whole article is awesome, combining some temporary business-related thoughts as well as nuggets of wisdom about building games in the modern era. Here is one nugget of wisdom I couldn’t help but quote:

“If content is the king, polish is the queen. The best content in the world will get low ratings if you have a poor UI and no gloss, or if players don’t understand your systems. These are easy things to say, but they are very hard to put in practice and sometimes you find that you may have to backtrack a lot. Don’t hesitate about this, just do it.”
I could comment on both, but as usual, I feel like I’m only a poor follow-up to an expert. But I do remember being told by one the executives at Infogrammes (now Atari) after they acquired us around early 1999 that they did not believe there was a market any longer for role-playing games. He told me this when I could look at the chart of the best-selling games of the previous year, and I remember seeing something like six of the top 20 games being RPGs. Or maybe I’m combining console and PC game sales in my mind. But I remember Diablo was getting long in the tooth and cloned, that Baldur’s Gate had been a big hit, and Final Fantasy VII on the Playstation had rocked the world pretty thoroughly. His information was about five years out-of-date, and hadn’t really been true even then. Of course, when they finally realized RPGs really were selling, it was because “the market changed.” No, they were never wrong, the market simply changed around them.

Pesky market.

There’s a lot of factors involved in what sells or doesn’t. Content and polish, as Vincke says. The marketplace. The competition. The mass appeal. Sheer luck. Who would have thought that a game with giant block environments and characters that looked like 8-bit game characters rendered in 3D blocks would become a mega-hit? Nobody. Not even Notch.

And as for polish – well, as he says, easier said than done. It can be hard to see when you are really close to it, and it’s hard to know when enough is enough. Great companies have fallen because they couldn’t settle for “good enough.” Many more have fallen because what they thought was good enough… wasn’t.

Either way, though, I’m thrilled by the success of Divinity: Original Sin. Not only is it a great game (from as much as I’ve played, which isn’t nearly enough), but it “sticks it to the man” (and to “common wisdom”) in all the right ways.
 
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in a short is 500.000 good or bad??.. or not good or bad???

Good, though between retail and taxes and with debts and investments to pay off, its hard to make a buck. For themselves, I doubt they'll keep much more than Divinity: Original Sin's total budget.

Which is basically what Sven said. On the plus side, they have all the tools they developed to make Original Sin, so they won't need as much money to make their next game.
 
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HiddenX

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Divinity: Original Sin Shadorwun: Hong Kong
This game will sell over a million when time goes by.
A good addon would speed up sells even more :)
 

Paul_cz

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Seriously, this 500K is just the start. Roll on the first steam sale it will do another few hundred Ks. Within two years it will be at two million. RPGs sell for years, sometimes decades.
And it is super awesome.
Even if personally, I would like if Larian made 3D (third person or first) RPG again, I enjoy that perspective more for exploration. And that is probably not going to happen anytime soon.
 

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I guess 500k sold is good, but I actually thought it would sell more. Considering how long it was on top sales. Maybe I overestimate steam.
 

buzz

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Yeah, same here. For the millions and tens of millions that Steam keeps bragging about having, they don't seem to move an extremely impressive amount of initial sales.
 

Eddard Stark

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Hmmm... it may be wishful thinking on my part but Sven's choice of phrasing aka "well over half a million units" might imply that the sales are actually in the range of 600-700k. That would be nice. A million should be reachable in a sale or two in any case.
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I guess 500k sold is good, but I actually thought it would sell more. Considering how long it was on top sales. Maybe I overestimate steam.

Yeah, same here. For the millions and tens of millions that Steam keeps bragging about having, they don't seem to move an extremely impressive amount of initial sales.

Adjust your expectations. Steam doesn't change the fact that this is a niche turn-based RPG we're talking about here.

A game at #1 on Steam can be selling just a bit more than the games beneath it, or it can be selling tens or hundreds of times more. In D:OS's case, it was at one point being outsold by a newly released Payday DLC for a few hours, so we know it wasn't much more successful than the games below it.
 

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I guess 500k sold is good, but I actually thought it would sell more. Considering how long it was on top sales. Maybe I overestimate steam.
The number of units that move through steam vary wildly depending on conditions. If there is not a big AAA release, crazy indie fad, or crazy sale going on, chances are you're selling good not great.

I expect ~1 million copies sold ~12 months after release. A million copies in 1 year is not bad at all.
 
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For a budget of around EUR 4m to have sold over 500k, before even reducing the price and hitting the sales, is pretty sweet. Steam may take 30% but compare that to what Larian would be getting if a publisher was involved. As Tuluse and others have said it'll surely hit a million over time, but now that all debts are paid everything can just go straight into the bank account to keep the company in good health for (hopefully) some time.
 

Perkel

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I guess 500k sold is good, but I actually thought it would sell more. Considering how long it was on top sales. Maybe I overestimate steam.

Yeah, same here. For the millions and tens of millions that Steam keeps bragging about having, they don't seem to move an extremely impressive amount of initial sales.

Adjust your expectations. Steam doesn't change the fact that this is a niche turn-based RPG we're talking about here.

A game at #1 on Steam can be selling just a bit more than the games beneath it, or it can be selling tens or hundreds of times more. In D:OS's case, it was at one point being outsold by a newly released Payday DLC for a few hours, so we know it wasn't much more successful than the games below it.

Mind you that steam bestseller top10 is based not on coppies sold but revenue.

DOS for a month generated better revenue than any other game in that timeframe
 

SausageInYourFace

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I am very happy for Larian that the game sells so well.

I was wondering if we know anything similar about the success (or failiure) of Divinity: Dragon Commander. I fucking loved that game but I assume it sold much worse? (Any possibilty of a sequel?)
 

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Volourn has spoken. Larian should lay off everyone and close their office. They are doomed.
 

TheGreatOne

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So much for turn-based fantasy RPGs not selling, crowdfunding not working and a developer like us not being capable of bringing a game to market without the help of seasoned publishers.
The most beautiful sentence I've ever read. This needs to happen to all genres, and it kind of is happening, though it's too early to celebrate the dawn of a renaissance era yet
 

Roguey

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Vincke and Barnson are boasting a bit prematurely, half-a-mil isn't going to make most publishers turn their heads, do a double-take, and give their best impression of the Tex Avery wolf in Red Hot Riding Hood. The return of the mid-budget single-A is welcome of course.
 

Darkzone

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Hmm around 600k not bad. So i can be even more arrogant about my guesses of numbers. DOS has perhaps generated around 6%-10% of the sales revenues of all games on steam for the first month of its release, selling around 6k-10k per day.
Naturally it will sell over a million times, but i do not believe that it will be for this price, and only the Xmas sales can have the necessary impact to raise it higher, and prove this wrong.
Nevertheless, this is very good for all.
And as HiddenX has stated an addon would be not a bad move. (From my limited perspective.)

Roguey
You have more and more sawyer tags every time i check hier in. How are you doing this?
 

Roguey

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They're doing it, I have no input. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

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