Outriders Developer Has Not Received Royalties from Square Enix, Despite Game Pass Deal - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 17 August 2021 / 2,314 Views
Outriders developer People Can Fly on its investor website has revealed the developer has not received any royalties from publisher Square Enix during the game's first quarter on sale, despite the deal with Microsoft to put the game on Xbox Game Pass.
People Can Fly says it was due royalties once sales for Outriders have recouped all costs for the game. This includes development, distribution, promotion, and QA.
"We do not have any sales figures for Outriders – we estimate it at between 2 and 3 million units and assumed that this was a result that would ensure profitability for this project in the first quarter of sales," said People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski. "The lack of payment by the Publisher probably means that, according to Square Enix, this is not the case."
Publisher Square Enix previously said releasing Outriders on Xbox Game Pass on day one had worked out in their favor with a high number of digital sales and high player count. The game had surpassed 3.5 million unique players worldwide in its first month.
Wojciechowski added the game is still being supported and he expects royalties to arrive later this year.
"[The lack of payment] may have been determined by some elements of Square Enix's sales policy, the details of which we do not know, such as partnerships concluded by the publisher with distribution platforms or entities offering the Outriders game as an add-on to their products," he said.
"The failure to achieve a level of profitability may also mean that the costs incurred by the Publisher are higher than we expected. But I don't want to speculate; we will continue to analyze the situation. However, it is worth noting that such explanations take time and our influence on the publisher’s position is limited."
Outriders launched for the Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC, and Google Stadia on April 1.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Wonder if the GamePass deal was something SquEnix pocketed and for whatever reason isn't including it in their 'recouped all costs'. SquEnix thought the money was for them to put the game on GamePass, not essentially 'sales' of the game which it is and should be. Very bad if SquEnix did that.... or maybe I'm over thinking it.
The developer doesn't seem to be worried about it at this point. So, I'm not sure why we'd be worried about it. They're just telling investors that they haven't received this revenue yet, and they expect this revenue to turn up later in the year. If they allege that Square was screwing them out of money owed, that would be a different story. But they seem to have taken great care in their word choice not to make such an allegation.
If they do Outriders 2 or an equuivalent game because I don't know if they own the IP, People Can Fly should just go to MS directly. They will get GP money plus sales money.
SE becoming EA
I really wish PFC could make a true sequel to Bulletstorm. I don't want a successor like Apex to Titanfall ugh
its the gamepass problem
whether its good or not in the long run this is just the beginning
Sounds like the situation with Ninja Theory and Sony , they moaned that even with 1.5 million Heavenly Sword sales they made no money but it turned out they did well but had to wait for the royalties , same with that game company they went way over budget with Journey being a year late and laid off staff at the end but made a lot of money when the royalties came in and rehired their staff and admitted that Sony were great in supporting them and not pulling the plug, the story seems to be that neither studio had a clue how money flows and seem to think it should be near instant.
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