Outrider developer People Can Fly haven’t been paid royalties

Is the game any good? I heard loads of great stuff prior to release (demo) and heard it had a great launch. Here, there are alot of negative comments.
 
Let's be real. This is just make believe. If they wanted to know they could ask, demand, and threaten if need be to get the info.

This is just attention whoring shit. Spare us. You've worked long enough in the industry to avoid a made up scenario like this.

Game sucked, just like your past Games, and it is what it is.
 
My theory/guess is the game did better than expected, even with GP ... there just has to be some wrench in the gears in the deal/relations between Squeenix and the Studio.
People Can Fly is developing a new game for Square Enix so no, they don't have a bad relationship. But Outriders is basically dead (only 1322 average players in the last 30 days).

If you need to sell 3M units to be profitable and you sell 2.5M in the first week, you're happy (and you tell it). But if you only sell 100k more units in the next three months, you're still not profitable.

Outriders had a really great launch, better than I expected, but it also had technical issues and shows really weak legs. So even if it launchs was great, I totally believe that it's still not profitable.
 
Sounds like SE gave them the koolaid in the form of their usual overprotected sales estimates.

They got the PlayStation and PC sales, and on top of it, that fat Gamepass cheque which should have covered most of their dev and marketing costs.

So, yo Square Enix:

liar dancing GIF
 
Interesting. This piece of information contradicts earlier statements that Square-Enix was happy with the sales of the game and the amount MS paid them for placement on GamePass.


Someone's telling fibs. And I'll bet a Coke Zero it's the accountants.
Not necessarily. Nothing in this story explicitly contradicts what is in the other. It could be true that Outriders got off to a good start and had a 3.5 million player base but also has yet to turn a profit.
 
Might be relevant if SE actually developed the game instead of just. . .publishing it.
Look. I enjoyed Outriders for what it was. But for sure it wasn't game with 200 million budget.

According to SteamDB estimates, Outriders sold 1-2,65 million copies only on PC. Have Xbox a PS on top of it and only possible explanation for this game being in red is mismanagement of Square. It would not be for first time...
 
I wonder if the royalty agreement between Square and People Can Fly factored in Gamepass or if it only relied on sales. That would be a pretty dick move on Square's part to intentionally have the game underperform from a sales perspective by including it on Gamepass.

Square's contract people:

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That's what it's looking like; I'm guessing Microsoft pays the publisher for GamePass deals but if the developer is not also the publisher then what cut of that GP money deal the dev gets depends on the terms their publisher set.

I'm basically gonna be repeating what I've seen several other people in the thread already mention one way or another, but maybe there's a nugget or two I can throw in that adds to the conversation.

It looks like Square-Enix have screwed over People Can Fly with this deal by basing royalties only on sales copies (probably for a fixed early time period, as that's when games retain full MSRP) and not on any GamePass metrics or even just a part of the money for getting it in GamePass Microsoft paid Square-Enix.

Microsoft can't force publishers to pay their developers any portion of paid monies for GamePass deals; OTOH GamePass supposedly creates more sales for most games rather than less. If it didn't have an effect in this game's case (I'm not saying it didn't, I'm not gonna automatically assume it did have effect either, tho, considering there's no evidence to support that), then the only other answer is SE set the sales target too high even factoring PS and PC into it.

So basically SE's contract deals with devs seems almost as slimy as R* constantly re-releasing the same games over and over for a decade, and it's no coincidence both publishers had two of the worst E3 conferences this year 🧠 (y)
 
People Can Fly is developing a new game for Square Enix so no, they don't have a bad relationship. But Outriders is basically dead (only 1322 average players in the last 30 days).

If you need to sell 3M units to be profitable and you sell 2.5M in the first week, you're happy (and you tell it). But if you only sell 100k more units in the next three months, you're still not profitable.

Outriders had a really great launch, better than I expected, but it also had technical issues and shows really weak legs. So even if it launchs was great, I totally believe that it's still not profitable.
If anything in the article is true there are some problems between the publisher and the studio.
 
Think you can support an industry on Gamepass?

You're all fooling yourselves....

I didn't buy this game because it was on gamepass and it was an insult to have to pay full price on PlayStation.

Fuck em.
 
Gamespass hurt sales on Xbox and PlayStation fans saw that Xbox dudes were getting it for free so they didn't buy it at all. That and it was sort of buggy from what I have heard.

Remember when Xbox influencers were touting outriders as a model of success for gamespass?
 
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Let's ask the experts.

But hey, they fucked up royally at launch with the issues. By the time things got fixed people moved on. Good game though
 
I think it's a well designed game with respect to the fact that you can tell a lot of time and care was put into it, and apparently it was a team of over 200 people. Personally I can't really play t though.
couldn't get over the half ass graphics, janky animations, clunky aiming enough even to get into the "whoa look how cool their loot system is" part. and the bland open space with barriers to hide behind level design. but hey, good on them. better than i could do i guess.
 
Gamespass hurt sales on Xbox and PlayStation fans saw that Xbox dudes were getting it for free so they didn't buy it at all. That and it was sort of buggy from what I have heard.

Remember when Xbox influencers were touting outriders as a model of success for gamespass?

Why the two orders Col. ? EVERY GP thread I am told Gamepass WAS the reason games were selling. Now, you* are saying its not? Which is it?

tom cruise i want the truth GIF


*not you specifically
 
Enough didnt buy it on PC and PS for it to be profitable putting it on Gamepass for Xbox only didnt doom this game.

Look at review scores it gets around a 5/10 on PS it was a buggy bad game thats what did it in even if it did have promise
Oh yeah I don't blame it being on GP for it's sales problems, that was the only guaranteed money they got really I just don't see that 2-3 million sales number they are estimating being realistic based on the fact that the majority of it's sales were going to come from PlayStation and PC. If it weren't on GP and they sold copies on xbox as well MAYBE 2 million would be realistic but it wasn't a high profile game, it had issues at launch and the demo didn't exactly light the world on fire. I do think Square should have to share their sales data with them though I can't imagine that's not in their agreement somewhere.
 
To be honest I don't really know what's happening with People Can Fly. Are they mazochists or what the actual fuck? A fn good developer. Painkiller was great, Bulletstorm even better. Engine kicked ass, idea was new, fresh, had strength and visuals were above the competition. EA somehow (ACCIDENTALLY) fckd up the ad campaign/swept it under the rug. There was some fuckery with Epic Games too. Now this with Square Enix. So what the actual fuck? Why don't they do a kickstarter with a Painkiller/Bulletstorm combo, hire a voice actor with earth shattering vocals and fuck everyone in the ass?
 
To be honest I don't really know what's happening with People Can Fly. Are they mazochists or what the actual fuck? A fn good developer. Painkiller was great, Bulletstorm even better. Engine kicked ass, idea was new, fresh, had strength and visuals were above the competition. EA somehow (ACCIDENTALLY) fckd up the ad campaign/swept it under the rug. There was some fuckery with Epic Games too. Now this with Square Enix. So what the actual fuck? Why don't they do a kickstarter with a Painkiller/Bulletstorm combo, hire a voice actor with earth shattering vocals and fuck everyone in the ass?

Outriders is so generic and boring but their loot system and customization was top notch. It's too bad nothing else in the game managed to be above average.
 
As someone who played from launch and paid the full price and due to their broken game my account and all characters were locked out for over a month. The Devs response? Just wait longer.

My message to the devs on their royalty checks. "Just Wait Longer"

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Think you can support an industry on Gamepass?

You're all fooling yourselves....

I didn't buy this game because it was on gamepass and it was an insult to have to pay full price on PlayStation.

Fuck em.
I'm sorry, are you telling us PlayStation owners didn't buy a game because Xbox owners got the same game for "free". (They didn't)

do you not see how pathetic that sounds? And you are celebrating it? Seriously, what is wrong with you?
 
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Page 2 and people are already blaming GamePass without a shred of evidence and saying SE lied about sales numbers (for what reason exactly is never explained).

The sales numbers are consistent with the reviews on Steam and SteamSpy data, the issue most likely has nothing to do with GamePass.

I really need to update this old image for the new wave of concerns...

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Played 180 hours of this game. Pretty great if you ask me. Heaps of issues that they never resolved though, particularly the network performance via matchmaking.

They don't deserve to get fucked over.
 
OK, to clarify the issue I have with PCF.

The game only lets you have 4 characters, because of their badly coded game all 4 of my slots were locked out with characters that could neither be logging in or deleted. I had a copy of a game that I could only look at the character select for over a month.

After a month People Can Fly's response was Just wait longer.

PCF go bankrupt for all I care and I'll enjoy that show the entire time.
 
Let me get this straight. People Can Fly agreed to get paid on the game's profit margin, yet the CEO himself doesn't know how much the game has sold or how much money has been made or when the profitable benchmark will be met?

It sounds like a horrible CEO. How can you not know this information? If SquareEnix won't disclose it to you, lawyers should have been involved long before now.
 
#3 on xbox isnt the Same as number 3 on switch or playstation. You can be number 3 on playstation and sell 150,000 copies. #3 on xbox could be 30k.
You claimed, without evidence, that the game bombed on Xbox. Considering it was free on Gamepass, it did quite well.
 
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