Pillars of Eternity II - Flopped

Yes, most of the time the games will be lacking, but finding creative ways to spend less is a good idea. How? Well, unfortunately (or fortunately…), I'm not a game designer.

Surprising!

tbh though I found it hard to get into… seemed a little more of a drag, and their class mechanics are a little unusual tbh. I played it for some time, but after a bit got tired of it, and havent played it since.

Noted however that it is more about marketing if it didn't sell well! Again it may have been timing… or people are just not that interested in this sort of game as much as they used to be….

interesting nonetheless

At least they supported it and went ahead with the promised DLC; something to be said for that ….

Probably closer to 2 or 3 million when you consider publisher take, kickstarter take, sales, …

Originally Posted by rjshae
110,000 x $50 = $5.5 million sales over 7 months is bad?

PoE 2 is easily my GotY for 2018 so this is disappointing to see. The ship battle minigame got old quick, and not all of the story was super interesting but I enjoyed the factions, the different endings, and the new companions. I've just been waiting for the last DLC to replay it which is something I never do.

And you've got to consider the cost of the wages and resources of production over a couple of years.

This has been discussed now for months, based on the number of active steam players and such, but suddenly a random website writes a click based article based on a tweet and it suddenly is not only news, but something everyone agrees on and is hardly surprised?

Deadfire flopped because it was a bad sequel. Period. For every step it took forward from the first game, it took three backward, with the end result an enjoyable mess. Also biggest failure was the writing, a cardinal sin for a WRPG.

Originally Posted by Polyester
This has been discussed now for months, based on the number of active steam players and such, but suddenly a random website writes a click based article based on a tweet and it suddenly is not only news, but something everyone agrees on and is hardly surprised? .

Yes because official word from an Investor means more then random Steam numbers posted on a forum. Don't mean to offend but that's the truth and not forum gossip.

Originally Posted by rjshae
110,000 x $50 = $5.5 million sales over 7 months is bad?

Well if these numbers are correct (and who knows how many they sold since September and how many will still buy the game later, especially in a complete edition) this is extremely bad. The game surely cost like 15 Million to make (probably more, at least it looks like it did and they are still very actively supporting it - none of that is free obviously) and they got only like… what? ~3 Million from Fig? I'm surprised the company is still active. And they don't have any other games right now, do they? Maybe there is still some cash flowing in from older titles or something…

Originally Posted by you
Probably closer to 2 or 3 million when you consider publisher take, kickstarter take, sales, …

There was no kickstarter. They did Fig - and no one had ever heard of Fig.

They created a lot of goodwill with their perfect marketing of PoE 1 and showed the world how to do a perfect kickstart campaign. They pay it forward idea was brilliant.

So why Fig? Kickstarter and Indiegogo money is not something you have to pay dividends for.

But like any obsidian game I find it too expensive for what you get. There was such good reports coming back here that I bought the first one.

I am definitely going to buy the sequel but I am still sour from the combat and the class system of the first one. The novelty has worn off. I also could have done without the swearing.

As soon as the DLC's bundled and finished and the price drops I'll grab it and probably enjoy it from what people here say.

Fig, kickstarter, indie it is all the same (unless they do really well and then have to pay investors). Btw there should be a sec filing regarding the payout to fig investors.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
There was no kickstarter. They did Fig - and no one had ever heard of Fig.

They created a lot of goodwill with their perfect marketing of PoE 1 and showed the world how to do a perfect kickstart campaign. They pay it forward idea was brilliant.

So why Fig? Kickstarter and Indiegogo money is not something you have to pay dividends for.

But like any obsidian game I find it too expensive for what you get. There was such good reports coming back here that I bought the first one.

I am definitely going to buy the sequel but I am still sour from the combat and the class system of the first one. The novelty has worn off. I also could have done without the swearing.

As soon as the DLC's bundled and finished and the price drops I'll grab it and probably enjoy it from what people here say.

It's taken me a while to jump in with this game due to all the patches and rebalancing work. The ship combat system definitely needs an overhaul, but otherwise I'm satisfied that I got my money's worth. The character creation and leveling system is much improved. Combat… well it's RTwP, so feels a bit chaotic as those always do.

Ouch this thread might be interesting:
https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/st…51700155789312

I'm another one waiting for it to be done. The industry trained me to do this years ago so, if it's causing them problems, I really don't have any sympathy at all. If your business model doesn't follow your business practice, you'll fail.

Bought the game with the season pass. I still haven`t played it as I am waiting for the last DLC, which is coming out this month. That is an issue with modern games. Expansions used to be big and encouraged you to play the game again. In many cases they were separate stories that you could play even after finishing the base game (e.g. Mask of the Betrayer). Current DLC are small by comparison and most of then are a few new areas and quests that you are supposed to do during the main game. The only real way to enjoy them without replaying the game is to wait for all the DLC to come out and buying the Gold/GOTY/Ultimate/Director's Cut/etc edition, but by that time the hype is already over.

What? They had to sell 580,000 units(29 million dollars @ $50/unit) to break even with investors?

Twenty nine million dollars spent on a sequel worse then it's predecessor which had what, one fourth of that money to be spent on it's development?

Some reasons that put me off from buying it:

The setting was interesting but not really going to have widespread appeal to fantasy fans…one major problem. The Caribbean and Caribbean Indians/tribes, ok, you are creative, but is that going to be a big draw for classic rpg players? Nope.

Also, ship combat is ridiculously dumb and terribly done. They should not have put any ship to ship combat in the game if they were going to do it so badly.

The story also sounded pretty bad and uninteresting, and I saw several complaints about it when reading steam reviews.

I remember checking the FIG investor document back when the crowdfunding started and I'm pretty sure the value was 26$ or 28$ and not 50$ per copy. The game budget was also near 14m in it.

A budget of 29m (580k * 50) makes no sense.

Originally Posted by rjshae
110,000 x $50 = $5.5 million sales over 7 months is bad?

It's less than 5 months, this info only runs through the end of September.

Also, don't forget the $2.15M of copies they "sold" to Kickstarter backers (just backers not investors), which (best I can tell from reading the offering) wouldn't be counted for the purposes of the investor income - so the person who wrote this tweet wouldn't be including those.

So assuming this guy's info is accurate, roughly $7.65M of sales to 144K customers in the first 4.75 months of the game being out.

That's not too bad and doesn't even necessarily mean that this game will be a money-loser for Obsidian (although maybe it is for Fig investors because of the way they structured that), but the companies making this sort of game may need to adjust future expectations and set an appropriate development budget. A lot of stuff can certainly go - full voice acting, as one random example.

Also, the quote about needing to sell 580K to "break even" meant that's when Fig investors break even, not when Obsidian breaks even. Obviously Obsidian needs far, far less sales than that to break even although we'll probably never know how many.

Originally Posted by azarhal
I remember checking the FIG investor document back when the crowdfunding started and I'm pretty sure the value was 26$ or 28$ and not 50$ per copy. The game budget was also near 14m in it.

A budget of 29m (580k * 50) makes no sense.

I just checked it, and it assumes $45 price for all units (game is actually selling for $50), and also the break-even number on their chart is 543.65K, not 580K, so yeah the guy who posted on Twitter is a little off already.

Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/d…publishing.htm