Outriders Developer Hasn’t Received Any Royalties from Square Enix Despite Drawing Over 3.5 Million Unique Players

Tsing

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Image: People Can Fly



Warsaw-based developer People Can Fly released Outriders on April 1, 2021, a sci-fi cooperative action role-playing game that managed to attract millions of curious players. Now, months later, the developer is worried about how it hasn’t been paid for what seemed like an obviously successful five-year effort.



People Can Fly revealed in a press release shared today that the studio has not received any royalties from Square Enix despite Outriders’ first quarter of sales having ended on August 16. The immediate implication here is that the game is a failure that never met the total costs of its production, but Sebastian Wojciechowski, President of the Management Board of PCF Group SA, has raised questions after admitting that People Can Fly has no clue how many copies Outriders has actually sold.



“We don’t have any sales figures for Outriders – we estimate...
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Game wasn't my cup of tea, so...

Also, if you read the article, it does say the Developer doesn't get paid until the Publisher realizes a profit - which is what they are speculating has happened. Not sure if that's a typical contract or not between a developer and publisher, but I've seen similar clauses in other contracts where funds waterfall down through parties, those on top get paid for and those on bottom have to wait, and if the money runs out, well ****.
 
Denpepe said:
At least it's on the epic game store where the developpers get more money, oh wait... guess not.
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It wasn't an exclusive. So it just means they are dealing with whatever cut epic games gets. Problem is the pie is being divided out before profits are realized.
 
There was a free demo, I don't know if the 3.5 million players includes that or not. Frankly I really hope the game isn't a success, because it is bellow average. They deserve a slap with a shovel, not bonuses for it.
 
Expected and good riddance!

Now, fly your as-x in a cave for good!

Get woke, go broke!
 
Read a bit more into this

The developer got paid for development. There was some contract in place that did up-front funding. The issue here is strictly in royalties.

The contract states the Publisher won't pay royalties until all their (Publishers) costs are paid. So that's the cost to list on every single console and store front they did, the cost to the developer for the up-front funding, the cost for advertising and premium placement, etc.

So Square/Enix hasn't made any money yet - at least that's what this infers. People Can Fly may or may not have, depending on how much that undisclosed up-front funding was.
 
And just a bit more research, because contracts intrigue me.

Apparently this style of contract that PCF / SE have is very common.

www.gamasutra.com

Contract Killers: What developers should eliminate from their publishi

Part 2 in a series looking at video game publishing agreements and what developers should look to change if possible to protect their game and their business.
www.gamasutra.com www.gamasutra.com

The most common approach is for the publisher to recoup its publishing costs from game revenues first at 100% with royalties only being paid to the developer after this time.
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That's exactly what hollywood is doing. That's why on paper even billion dollar movies loose or make very little money.
 
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