Outriders Hasn't Been Profitable for Square Enix
Outriders developer People Can Fly has revealed that the 2021 third-person shooter hasn't been profitable for publisher Square Enix. Even though Outriders did pretty well for itself last year in terms of both fan and critical reception, it seems that People Can Fly struggled to bring in a large enough audience for the title to make enough money to turn a profit. Now, a little over a month before the game's Worldslayer expansion launches, it sounds like Outriders might never recoup its development funds.
In a statement that was released by People Can Fly recently, the studio confirmed that "net proceeds from the sale of Outriders were insufficient to recover the costs and expenses incurred by the publisher to develop, distribute and promote the title." In short, this simply means that the title hasn't turned a profit, which isn't great to hear. The studio went on to also say that there is "no assurance" that sales from Outriders will ever end up making a profit. Basically, this isn't a good thing for any of the parties involved, let alone those who have been hoping to see more from Outriders in the future.
The reason why this news is extremely interesting is because within the past week, Square Enix decided to sell off a number of its major western studios. In a sale to the tune of $300 million to Embracer, Square Enix sold off Eidos Montreal, Crystal Dynamics, and Square Enix Montreal to go along with a number of different IP. And while People Can Fly is an independent studio, Square Enix does happen to own the Outriders property. As such, with Square already showing that it's losing interest in many western titles and the fact that the game hasn't made any money, it seems very unlikely that the publisher will look to do anything new with this series soon.
Still, as mentioned before, Outriders will be receiving a new batch of DLC on June 30th known as Worldslayer. This expansion is set to come to Xbox, PlayStation, and PC platforms. Whether it ends up charting a new course for Outriders in the pursuit of becoming profitable remains to be seen, but based on what we now know, it sounds like this could be one of the last pieces of major content that the game will receive.
[H/T Tweak Town]