The gaming world is often filled with bad news, so let’s take a moment to appreciate some good news: Frostpunk 2 recouped its entire marketing and production budget in just three days, according to 11Bit Studios.
11Bit Studios shared the news on X, announcing that their survival city-building game has sold 350,000 copies on PC.
“More importantly, the estimated total sales revenue already covers our costs of producing and marketing the game,” 11Bit Studios said.
We are very pleased to announce that we have exceeded 350,000 copies #icepunk 2 sold!
More importantly, total projected sales revenue already covers our costs of producing and marketing our games.
Thank you very much for your support! It’s (almost)… pic.twitter.com/7sa9qVe4fv
——”Frostpunk 2″ (@frostpunkgame) September 23, 2024
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A PS5 port of Steampunk 2 is planned for release in the near future, which should at least increase sales some. Additionally, the studio also benefited from the game’s launch on PC Game Pass, meaning they also received a chunk of money from Microsoft at some point.
Sales numbers are impressive, as Frostpunk 2’s popularity has always been difficult to measure. The first game was amazing and became a hidden gem, but it never became a huge success. Frostpunk 2’s beta was poorly received, but 11Bit Studios delayed the game’s release to address player feedback.
The final product was divisive among fans because it was so different from the first game. In fact, I struggled, although I still think it’s worth playing, as I explained in my review. It has received mostly positive reviews on Steam and currently has an impressive overall score of 86 on Opencritic. So, surely this is good news? Well, no. Not exactly.
While the numbers look good, 11Bit Studios’ stock price actually fell yesterday following the announcement of Frostpunk 2’s release. The company took a 38% hit and is actually down a bit today.
So what is the reason for the decline? According to Reuters, the company actually expects the peak number of concurrent players to be higher, around 80,000-100,000. In contrast, the peak number of concurrent players tracked by SteamDB was 35,553.
Erste Group analyst Piotr Bogusz also said that “relatively poor” player ratings may affect people’s purchasing decisions. He noted that a player review rating below 80% on Steam “will affect the game’s popularity on Steam, which may translate into sales. Currently, the game’s review rating is just under 71%.
“We were probably counting on a slightly higher score, but this negativity or disappointment from players because it’s not just a sequel to Frostpunk 1, it’s Frostpunk 2… maybe we didn’t have enough To make it clear that it’s not a clone, it’s not a simple sequel, it’s a different game,” Dariusz Wolak, investor relations manager at 11 Bit Studios, told Reuters.
In fact, browsing through the Steam reviews, a consistent point of contention is how the sequel differs from its predecessor.
Personally, and I’m no business expert, the prediction of 80,000-100,000 concurrent players seems like a fantasy. The original game had 29,361 concurrent players, which is a pretty impressive number for a relatively niche game genre. From my perspective, predicting a sequel to be worth almost three times that amount (when in reality sequels usually attract fewer players) seems silly.
With this in mind, if the number of players reaches 80,000, Frostpunk 2 will be in the top 200 games on Steam in order of peak concurrent players. 100,000 players is very close to the top 150, joining games such as “DOOM Eternal”, “The Witcher 3” and “Hades 2”. Comparable to the PC port of God. I’d say it’s a huge win to go head-to-head with one of the biggest games of this generation, even if it’s just a PC port of an older game.
Still, I’m shocked that the company would face such a huge share price drop since its games have already broken even and will now generate profits. The first game was supported by multiple DLC packs, and Frostpunk 2 will likely benefit from the same treatment. But ultimately, if you tell investors one thing and then fail to deliver, they’re going to take their money elsewhere, and if the promise is…overhyped, as I believe it was.
