Outriders Devs Yet To Earn Royalties, Despite Huge Xbox Game Pass Launch

Game Pass detractors have been waiting for a story like this to pop up. Can't wait to see how they spin Squeenix's shady business model into Game Pass harming the industry.

I'm not sure what the expectation was for this game but those numbers seem reasonable so I'm surprised it isn't profitable. At the end of the day it launched in a pretty poor state and with it's always online requirement even locking out solo players was not a good look.

Here’s the thing Microsoft pays for something on Gamepass usually. And even without the Xbox sales one has assume the PC/PS versions were more the enough to “recoup” if they think at least 2 million units were sold. I mean we know that 2 million is t just GP users.

The only potential thing not being talked about is Did Square Enix pay to put the game into GP?

This means we're going to have to avoid Push Square today, doesn't it?

I'm sure it will be endlessly spun as anti-Game Pass when it's another Square Enix/EA/Activision doing what Square Enix/EA/Activision does story, in reality. The reality though is that a semi-generic co-op looter-shooter-RPGlite at full price was going to be a tough sell in a world of Destiny, Borderlands, Apex, and Fortnite. Square Enix probably did the deal with MS for peanuts to get it on Game Pass knowing they'd make little money in exchange for building an instant, and critical, active player base for a new game. Square can be shady but they're not stupid, and that's probably the best bargain they could have to build an active game that doesn't languish and die at launch in a small but crowded space. Consider it marketing expense. Those 3.5 million users are probably largely from Game Pass (though the game was in the top 8 chart at launch on PS as well), and probably not contributing a lot of actual payment from MS, but it was probably worthwhile in exchange for getting an instant player pool to pay off long-term.

OTOH, sales data is only what S-E says it is, and it sounds like they're not even sharing sales data with the dev, which sounds somewhat shady right there.

@mousieone I doubt they paid to put the game on Game Pass, but it's very believable they basically put it on there for free or next to free, plus contributed a marketing effort.

Really, Square probably does shading things at times, but you'd have to be crazy to launch a GaaS always online multiplayer game in the current landscape unless you're launching one of the biggest names in media/gaming, and even then it's pretty risky (see Avengers.) Even EA is backing down, hard, from the format. That says it all. Even when the numbers are there, the money just isn't.

This seems to have nothing to do with Game Pass and everything to do with Square delaying paying out to People Can Fly.

@Trmn8r Reminds me of the late era Interplay after Brian Fargo had been (in)exiled, when they weren't paying royalties to Bioware for BG2:SoA or Volition for Freespace 2, and how Obsidian got formed from the exodus from Black Isle. That's what Fargo sued them for to try to get the IPs back, which is what lead to Fallout getting sold to Bethesda. Small world comes full circle.

Except Square isn't half-bankrupt (that we know of) and leveraged-buyout Interplay was.

@SplooshDmg A developer's relationship with Square going sour? That's crazy talk. Yuji Naka is doing just swell with them. And IOI has been the toast of town with Square! And I know Tetsuya Takahashi is deep into the next Xenogears with the full support of Square.....

But yeah, something about the whole game just comes across as generic and wanting to be too ambitious for what it actually is.

If they managed to sell 3 million copies (and I believe them, they have data on what copies are played on PlayStation and Steam, and they are also likely to know if the player is subscribed to GamePass at all) and they are still not getting royalties, then they were likely victims of a very bad publishing deal.

If anything, this should put a spotlight on how SquareEnix handles accounting for publishing for studios they dont own.

@NEStalgia By “paid to go on Gamepass”, I really mean a bargain was made and that’s might be why we have Octopath Traveller and not PlayStation (and DQ Builders 2 now..) Also, I do think MS picked up some of the marketing as well. Which is why Square Enix probably isn’t how much money the game made because they have to calculate that stuff.

Having experimented in other boards I can safety say I prefer for the trinity of boards and users here. All three are moderated well and there is a general sense of not letting anyone get too crazy.

In other words, Push really isn’t an issue, you just go in with the idea the other person isn’t going to agree with you

@SplooshDmg oh I’m sure that’s the reason. But surely there is an NDA somewhere. The only thing reeks of something under the surface. I worry what it is.

If it's anything like the movie business, you never never take a contract based on profit because they take the actual profits to write off losses for other movies, so good lawyers/agents know to go off box office for a lesser percentage because you'll actually make more. Don't get me wrong, they shouldn't have to do that, you should be able to trust people to not be shady, but unfortunately, that's how it goes. Hopefully, they can figure it out, they're a talented group.

@Tharsman They don't have sales figures or Game Pass figures, they're only estimating what they think the sales figures are, and they know the number of active users in general on the server (many may be drive-by trials on Game Pass.) Square not sharing actual sales data with their own client is pretty squirrely. It kind of smacks of "We'll tell you the sales data after we decide what we want it to be and record it that way."

@Darthroseman Yeah, I'm guessing Outriders through Game Pass is partly paying for Avengers ad Balan, mostly. And possibly the disappointing launch of TWEWY2.

More fun is I'm wondering if Square just has a blanket gamepass payment they can weasel out of identifying which funds go with which games. "Oh, this $500m here is from Octopath...."

@mousieone

@NEStalgia ? ???

Ready all your comments and trying to summarise.
What a disgraceful way of business and deals etc.
This developer has employees and bills to pay.
Employees have family to keep and bills to pay.
Sounds like a corrupt way to do and run a professional business overall.
In my business you buy something we pay 30 days on deliver when invoiced, no messing.
That includes hardware, software and even training courses etc.
Would hate to own a development studio based on this load rubbish deals.

@mousieone That's right, you heard me, I said it! Cluck the moderators!

Ooooorr, I hit reply and forgot to type the message!

Yeah PS isn't bad, or rather not everyone there is, but the die hard console warriors are hard to take. It's not IGN and Kotaku though... 😬

@Dezzy70 Yeah, such is how the media industry has always run with publishers. From the old days with book publishers to film, to music (pretty much a Sony/Comcast duopoly) to games. It's never been pretty. Artists are a mix of naive and desperate and the predatorial publishers always get a one way deal.

@NEStalgia Console Warriors are bad everywhere in every gaming community. I used to love my Switch but the fandom makes me not want to turn it on. And no it’s no one in these boards. Like I said the staff here is very active and very fair.

@Dezzy70 Square Enix is a typical AAA company. A lot of people remember them for the games from their childhood. Thing is no one remembers EA and Square shared a company and Square learned from the best. Even now on Twitter the commentary is that the game “flopped”. Not SE is withholding funds or sales numbers. Can’t be a shady AAA publisher because nope that publisher makes FF and DQ. rolls eyes

If the game flopped the dev would not have announced they didn’t get paid. Clearly, they are privy to a lot more that we know. Like I said usually NDAs cover this sort of thing. If the game did poorly Square Enix has no reason to withhold the sales numbers. After all the team gets paid based on those numbers.

@mousieone Thankfully I've been spared the switch fandom outside nl. How bad has it gotten?

Isn't knowing square publishes FF the #1 reminder how shady they are, though?

IDK about these guys knowing sales numbers, it sounds like they're in the dark and estimating based on active players announced by square... Which could be a lot of game pass players with an agreed upon zero revenue. What's it to square, just means they don't have to pay the devs. They'll break even eventually. And lauder some money.

Sounds like the 90s deals where the publisher kept the IP and characters and produced their own sequels without you.

@NEStalgia well some people believe every Japanese game should be a Switch exclusive even from PC. Yeah -_-;;; people… or the obsession with the Switch pro. Granted I want better battery life but that’s normal ask from Nintendo. Do these people not know Nintendo does it own thing?

sighs

Well the server information should give them some idea as to where the players are playing from. I’d assume they are at least involved in that. There has to be some sort of shared information due bug fixes etc

Not to mention it wasn’t on GP PC so anyone from PC would have had to have bought the game. A quick glance at the Steam active users would give some idea-

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/05/03/outriders-playercount-is-dropping-but-its-surprisingly-healthy-overall/?sh=4029b5123514

At launch it was 125,000 players those would all be sales.

And also
https://blog.playstation.com/2021/05/10/playstation-store-april-2021-top-downloads/

Still on the list for PS5 the next month
https://blog.playstation.com/2021/06/08/playstation-store-may-2021s-top-downloads/

So I don’t buy the game “flopped” not when we know games generally skew heavy in Playstation's favor and if at least 125k sales came from Steam? Unless somehow every PS player decided to boycott the game.

@mousieone I'm just holding for the inevitable Switch Pro version.

I wonder where all those Nintendo obsessives were during the wiiu? I was there... Didn't see the sycophants anywhere. Forget Japanese exclusives on switch, I want to see some somewhere other than switch. (and I don't mean Final Fantasy of Thrones.)

I'm not sure 125k on steam is into profit territory for a game with that budget. But, then this is square "3.4M million is a money losing failure we thought we'd sell 6 million" enix. They'd give a way to say the animal crossing is an unprofitable failure if it was their game and a tax write-off was involved.

@NEStalgia I don’t think the game had as big as budget as people think. I really can’t see them spending as much as they did on the Avengers. Plus People Can Fly is a Polish dev; the labor cost is less.

That said I think Square was hoping to turn it into a GaaS but it’s not. It has the always online component but stops short. It’s like a light switch that hasn’t been turned on yet. Either way Square has a history of this and even if the sales were only 25,000 it’d be weird not to at least tell the dev, the game bombed.

Oh I don’t think most of these rabid Switch fans even had a DS. That’s why some games don’t even work like Neo. The fanbase for that was small and a good chunk might not even game anymore. The Switch sells like mad, but it can’t work miracles. People forget Japanese games with weird controls don’t always sell well. It worked for DS Crowd, the entire system didn’t play like a console game. I mean games like Etrian Odyssey etc

My 3DS XL feels so much better than my Switch. And no one expected it get the latest Madden.

@GET_EM That was a bit of an ironic post 😂

@GET_EM And yet here you are 😂

@GET_EM Crying with laughter definitely 😂

@NEStalgia they run the game, they have more data than simply the player count in their servers. It IS sketchy as hell they are not getting sales reports, but they can estimate the copies sold by more than just server populations. As developers, they likely have additional analytics phoning home, and I dare bet it’s not impossible to query if the user in question has a GamePass subscription or not.

@mousieone T_T ............... Modpon do great thing!

I think I've said it before but 3DS somehow became my favorite platform of all time, even over SNES. It was such an amazing run. I like Switch, and at launch, I thought it was going to surpass even 3DS, but it kind of went idle and became a Wii-like platform, and I don't see it surpassing 3DS at this point for favorite. It could still change, but right now XSX is starting to look favorable for that slot. But the rabid fans (I haven't see much of the rabid console fans, but the Smash/AC/Poke fans alone are enough to make me keep a distance.

PS, has the same effect, it would seem.

@Tharsman Possibly, though it doesn't sound like they distrusted their publisher enough to have thought that all through. They could have patched it in later, I'm sure. Obviously few copies will have sold on Xbox while it's on Game Pass, but we (and they?) aren't aware of exactly what' Square's terms were for putting it there. Since they only had to pay royalties on profits. But since Square isn't disclosing anything the dev has no knowledge of how the royalties on GP are working, it's not a direct sale, and they likely will never know. They could be getting $20 on each unique player, pocketing the cash, and the dev would never even know.

@NEStalgia don’t think it’s so much about trust. Devs tend to track a ton of user stats these days just for the sake of knowing. Having an idea of demographics, genders, age ranges of their players and all that stuff. So I trust it when they say they believe they might have sold 2-3 million units. It’s still not a sales figure but I doubt they would throw that range out there without enough analytics to back it up.

And yes I would not be shocked if we are looking at a Black Widow situation where Disney also made tons of money but that didn’t count towards ticket sales, so they shafted the actors on their royalties.

Blaming Gamepass is like blaming people watching Black Widow on Disney+, instead of Disney, for not paying ScarJo appropriately.

This is wholly on squeenix.

@uptownsoul I assumed they would, as they've been writing about this sort of thing a lot while Sony is playing Nintendo's game and offering no news to actually write on. But this time, they haven't yet.