Originally launched in April 2021, People Can Fly's Outriders was published by Square Enix and attempted to position itself as a kind of alternative to the various live-service looter shooters, such as Destiny 2. Unlike most of its competition, it offered no microtransactions or battle passes, but this doesn't seem to have been the silver bullet that Square Enix may have been hoping for.
Namely, People Can Fly's latest financial report suggests that Outriders hasn't been profitable for the studio at all through the entirety of 2021, even though it managed to pull in over 3.5 million players in the first month of its release. This information isn't outright spelled out in the report, but the document describes the nature of the royalty system Square Enix had in place for Outriders.
The new financial report coming from People Can Fly was foreshadowed just a few months following the game's release, when it became apparent that Outriders had yet to break even. As the report explains, the company was entitled to royalty payments should Outriders sell well enough, and these were nowhere to be seen following the game's biggest heyday. The new document underlines this further still, saying that it's all but certain that Square Enix won't be able to recoup the investment it made in People Can Fly to develop, market, and publish the game.
After the initial reports came out, Outriders CEO explained that the situation was expected so early on in the game's lifetime, and that it would take some time before the project could break even, and for the royalties from Square Enix to start pouring in. Of course, it's worth pointing out that these are royalties, specifically, and that People Can Fly was paid for its work on developing the game.
Even though Outriders doesn't seem to have done quite as well as Square Enix and People Can Fly had hoped it would, the game is getting a fully-fledged expansion pack later this year. The expansion breakdown of Outriders: Worldslayer suggests a substantial batch of content, with a new campaign, almost 100 Legendary items, new classes, and more bundled into the package.
More broadly, Outriders was featured on lists of the most disappointing games of 2021, alongside Aliens: Fireteam Elite and Back 4 Blood, as it seems to have failed to maintain the significant momentum it enjoyed in the first couple of weeks following its launch. Whether Worldslayer manages to succeed where the original release failed remains to be seen, but People Can Fly is already producing its next Square Enix release, Project Gemini.
Outriders is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: People Can Fly