Bigots lost: How Obsidian Entertainment has plans to make it to 100 years in the business.

[I'm Not Buying A Game Ever Again]

https://www.eurogamer.net/avowed-studio-plans-to-make-its-100th-birthday-by-staying-lean-and-invested

I mean, if Nintendo made it, who says others can't? You just have to believe in yourself and stay focused on your true vision.

Sure, Avowed might not be everyone's cup of tea and be under attack by a minority of angry "gamers" crying "w0ke," but in the grand scheme of things, Avowed might be just a small title in the extensive catalog they'll build in years to come.

I personally find this exciting because of the prospect of more games and appreciating in real time the evolution of the studio through each release, instead of focusing in politics (which is something people seem to enjoy more today rather than the game itself).

[Kain]

tontonba původně napsal:

SaD-82 původně napsal:

GP doesn't matter as it's a subscription model (which you either have or can test for 1$ the first few weeks).

any company with a subscription based service has a unique signature-based system to evaluate engagement and subsequently judge performance off of (netflix/amazon), so youre not completely correct in saying "oh GP doesn't matter bc you have it or don't have it", thats too simplistic.

not supporting avowed, just saying microsoft is judging its success on GP based off of unique signatures, which is data we dont have acess to, unlike steamcharts.

THANK YOU!

It doesn't mean it's doing well on Game Pass, but it for certain is an important metric for Microsoft and Obsidian in terms of determining the game's success.

[DesignGears]

Kain původně napsal:

DesignGears původně napsal:

Avowed Director Matt Hansen said not to buy the game. I'm waiting for him to tell me to buy the game. The game is a commercial failure because he told Obsidian fan base to kick rocks.

The is insane made up reality; https://fandomwire.com/despite-being-marred-by-controversy-avowed-outdoes-kingdom-come-deliverance-2-on-steam/

Incorrect, there is no way to know how many copies in total Matt Hansen prevented from selling by saying that.

KCD2 's Vavra said similar things and yet the game is an undeniable financial and critical success.

I see you ignored the article and how they came to that conclusion. The steam numbers speak volumes, I guess you think if you scream and yell loud enough that article will somehow become true.

[SaD-82]

Kain původně napsal:

Game pass absolutely matters,

Sigh...
Then let's do the math, okay?

Let's take the number of 200k sold copies of this game.
Let's...assume...everyone of those paid the full 90$ for the deluxe version (because I'm being pretty nice right now).
That's a total of 18 million dollars.
Steam does a 30% cut, but let's...assume...that Steam says: "Oh, you're such a nice company, we don't do a cut, but you can have everything."
Nice of Steam, right? (Well, nice of me, but who cares, right?)
18 million dollars it is.
With a production cost of somewhere between 80 and 100 million dollars.

Now the part, you try to sell to everyone: GP. Especially people who didn't participate in GP already (because in that instance there wouldn't be any money on top of what they're already paying - do you understand this? Serious question: Do you understand that someone who already has a subscription doesn't generate further income on top of that already existing subscription? Yes? Good.)

Due to me being nice, let's...assume...that 1 million people would have participated into the GP trial of spending 1$. (Yeah, I hope you realize that I'm very, very generous by setting this number at 1 million people...and I hope I don't need to explain, why it's very, very generous of me).
This would be further revenue of 1 million dollars.

Bringing the already existing 18 million dollars to a whopping.... 19 million dollars.
With a production cost of somewhere between 80 and 100 million dollars.
WOOHOO!

No, GP doesn't matter when it's about breaking even with the production cost, or not.

Seriously...it should be quite visible that there is some financial problem looming...

[Ziattic]

Kain původně napsal:

SaD-82 původně napsal:

You know that there is a certain site on the internet on which you can check for the number, of which you're saying it wouldn't exist, right?
Instead of doing what people tend to do if someone criticizes something they like (you know - finger, ear, Lalalala - you get the picture, I guess), maybe, just maybe, you could look for those numbers for yourself.

You don't have to do it - and with this you're in good company, judging by this forum - it just would, y'know, help getting a pretty good picture of what is financially challenging with this game.
Whatever you do - it's your own choice.
Just don't blame your inaction on others.
Thanks.

Well, I checked steamdb, Wikipedia and other sources. There isn't any that tells the official total budget of the game and total sales thus far, or how much money Obsidian got from the deals.

So this whole discussion ranges on limited available data and speculation. You even said that more people worked on this game than in OW, where the data available shows that despite the number of employees, around 80 only were assigned to the project.

You consider this game to be failure, bunt you failed to present a compelling argument, which you wouldn't even need to, if you had hard data to prove so.

Jez Cordan himself stated avowed had 100 people working on it, not including any contractors that were brought on.

I did the rough math in another discussion, but with the average salary at obsidian ranging from $72,000 to $122,000 with a median of $94,000 (from Glassdoor), that means the cost for just labor (no contractors, assets, marketing, etc) could be anywhere between $43,200,000 and $73,000,000. ((salary x 6 years dev time) x 100 employees)

I'm just going to use steam estimates here because the estimates are usually either high or fairly accurate overall. PlayTracker has the highest player estimate at 185,200 copies sold and that comes to a total of $12,964,000, then Steam takes 30% leaving Obsidian with $9,074,800 (I used the sale price of $70 because we don't know how many bought the $80 early access, so in reality the total earnings will be a little higher).

Using that estimate, we learn that Gamepass, Playstation, and Xbox need to make between $30,236,000 and $60,036,000 after platform fees or approximately between $39,306,800 (561,526 game copies) and $78,046,800 (1,114,955 game copies) before any fees (and yes, microsoft still charges Obsidian the platform fees, otherwise it would open them up to lawsuits from other studios; being a parent company is irrelevant). Also, Gamepass has its own unique deals, but I remember a dev explaining Microsoft technically "buys" copies in bulk at a discounted price which becomes a lump-sum payment, then they buy more copies if demand outweighs expectations.

And those numbers are EXCLUSIVELY for the labor costs for the 100 people who worked on the game full time, we still need to add marketing, consultations, contractors, purchased assets and remove costs for reused assets they saved from other games/projects if they used any.

TL;DR - They need to earn between $39,306,800 and $78,046,800 on game pass and consoles to recoup just their labor costs, which totals out to between 561,526 and 1,114,955 game copies respectively.

[tontonba]

SaD-82 původně napsal:

Kain původně napsal:

Game pass absolutely matters,

Sigh...
Then let's do the math, okay?

Due to me being nice, let's...assume...that 1 million people would have participated into the GP trial of spending 1$. (Yeah, I hope you realize that I'm very, very generous by setting this number at 1 million people...and I hope I don't need to explain, why it's very, very generous of me).
This would be further revenue of 1 million dollars.

hi you ignored my comment. this is incorrect. microsoft (and other companies that rely on subscriptions) use a signature tracking system to measure engagement and evaluate performance. 1 million unique signatures for avowed on GP wouldn't equate to 1 million dollars, not even remotely accurate.

[DesignGears]

SaD-82 původně napsal:

Kain původně napsal:

Game pass absolutely matters,

Sigh...
Then let's do the math, okay?

Let's take the number of 200k sold copies of this game.
Let's...assume...everyone of those paid the full 90$ for the deluxe version (because I'm being pretty nice right now).
That's a total of 18 million dollars.
Steam does a 30% cut, but let's...assume...that Steam says: "Oh, you're such a nice company, we don't do a cut, but you can have everything."
Nice of Steam, right? (Well, nice of me, but who cares, right?)
18 million dollars it is.
With a production cost of somewhere between 80 and 100 million dollars.

Now the part, you try to sell to everyone: GP. Especially people who didn't participate in GP already (because in that instance there wouldn't be any money on top of what they're already paying - do you understand this? Serious question: Do you understand that someone who already has a subscription doesn't generate further income on top of that already existing subscription? Yes? Good.)

Due to me being nice, let's...assume...that 1 million people would have participated into the GP trial of spending 1$. (Yeah, I hope you realize that I'm very, very generous by setting this number at 1 million people...and I hope I don't need to explain, why it's very, very generous of me).
This would be further revenue of 1 million dollars.

Bringing the already existing 18 million dollars to a whopping.... 19 million dollars.
With a production cost of somewhere between 80 and 100 million dollars.
WOOHOO!

No, GP doesn't matter when it's about breaking even with the production cost, or not.

Seriously...it should be quite visible that there is some financial problem looming...

Not to mention it's pretty uncommon to get usage based royalties from gp, most of the time it's a flat fee MS pays the developers to put their game on gp. With MS being the parent company, this was probably far less than normal.

[Encoder]

Ziattic původně napsal:

Kain původně napsal:

Well, I checked steamdb, Wikipedia and other sources. There isn't any that tells the official total budget of the game and total sales thus far, or how much money Obsidian got from the deals.

So this whole discussion ranges on limited available data and speculation. You even said that more people worked on this game than in OW, where the data available shows that despite the number of employees, around 80 only were assigned to the project.

You consider this game to be failure, bunt you failed to present a compelling argument, which you wouldn't even need to, if you had hard data to prove so.

Jez Cordan himself stated avowed had 100 people working on it, not including any contractors that were brought on.

I did the rough math in another discussion, but with the average salary at obsidian ranging from $72,000 to $122,000 with a median of $94,000 (from Glassdoor), that means the cost for just labor (no contractors, assets, marketing, etc) could be anywhere between $43,200,000 and $73,000,000. ((salary x 6 years dev time) x 100 employees)

I'm just going to use steam estimates here because the estimates are usually either high or fairly accurate overall. PlayTracker has the highest player estimate at 185,200 copies sold and that comes to a total of $12,964,000, then Steam takes 30% leaving Obsidian with $9,074,800 (I used the sale price of $70 because we don't know how many bought the $80 early access, so in reality the total earnings will be a little higher).

Using that estimate, we learn that Gamepass, Playstation, and Xbox need to make between $30,236,000 and $60,036,000 after platform fees or approximately between $39,306,800 (561,526 game copies) and $78,046,800 (1,114,955 game copies) before any fees (and yes, microsoft still charges Obsidian the platform fees, otherwise it would open them up to lawsuits from other studios; being a parent company is irrelevant). Also, Gamepass has its own unique deals, but I remember a dev explaining Microsoft technically "buys" copies in bulk at a discounted price which becomes a lump-sum payment, then they buy more copies if demand outweighs expectations.

And those numbers are EXCLUSIVELY for the labor costs for the 100 people who worked on the game full time, we still need to add marketing, consultations, contractors, purchased assets and remove costs for reused assets they saved from other games/projects if they used any.

TL;DR - They need to earn between $39,306,800 and $78,046,800 on game pass and consoles to recoup just their labor costs, which totals out to between 561,526 and 1,114,955 game copies respectively.

Glassdoor salary ranges - real payroll data. Team sizes fluctuate during development (smaller early, scaling later), so assuming 100 devs × 6 years straight is unrealistic. Benefits, contractors, and overhead costs (30–50% extra) are ignored. PlayTracker’s 185K sales guess ignores Game Pass players (Microsoft’s main platform). Steam’s 30% cut is accurate, but assuming a flat $70 price ignores regional pricing, discounts, and bundles, which slash actual revenue per copy.
Microsoft pays devs via secret deals (lump sums or usage-based metrics). Converting Game Pass value to “equivalent sales” (500K–1M copies) is pure guesswork. Internal corporate accounting (e.g., waived/platform fees) also isn’t public.
Microsoft also cares more about Game Pass growth than short-term profit – Avowed is a long-term ecosystem play, not just a boxed product.
Without Obsidian/Microsoft’s actual data, this math is just speculative fan-fiction.

[DesignGears]

Encoder původně napsal:

Ziattic původně napsal:

Jez Cordan himself stated avowed had 100 people working on it, not including any contractors that were brought on.

I did the rough math in another discussion, but with the average salary at obsidian ranging from $72,000 to $122,000 with a median of $94,000 (from Glassdoor), that means the cost for just labor (no contractors, assets, marketing, etc) could be anywhere between $43,200,000 and $73,000,000. ((salary x 6 years dev time) x 100 employees)

I'm just going to use steam estimates here because the estimates are usually either high or fairly accurate overall. PlayTracker has the highest player estimate at 185,200 copies sold and that comes to a total of $12,964,000, then Steam takes 30% leaving Obsidian with $9,074,800 (I used the sale price of $70 because we don't know how many bought the $80 early access, so in reality the total earnings will be a little higher).

Using that estimate, we learn that Gamepass, Playstation, and Xbox need to make between $30,236,000 and $60,036,000 after platform fees or approximately between $39,306,800 (561,526 game copies) and $78,046,800 (1,114,955 game copies) before any fees (and yes, microsoft still charges Obsidian the platform fees, otherwise it would open them up to lawsuits from other studios; being a parent company is irrelevant). Also, Gamepass has its own unique deals, but I remember a dev explaining Microsoft technically "buys" copies in bulk at a discounted price which becomes a lump-sum payment, then they buy more copies if demand outweighs expectations.

And those numbers are EXCLUSIVELY for the labor costs for the 100 people who worked on the game full time, we still need to add marketing, consultations, contractors, purchased assets and remove costs for reused assets they saved from other games/projects if they used any.

TL;DR - They need to earn between $39,306,800 and $78,046,800 on game pass and consoles to recoup just their labor costs, which totals out to between 561,526 and 1,114,955 game copies respectively.

Glassdoor salary ranges - real payroll data. Team sizes fluctuate during development (smaller early, scaling later), so assuming 100 devs × 6 years straight is unrealistic. Benefits, contractors, and overhead costs (30–50% extra) are ignored. PlayTracker’s 185K sales guess ignores Game Pass players (Microsoft’s main platform). Steam’s 30% cut is accurate, but assuming a flat $70 price ignores regional pricing, discounts, and bundles, which slash actual revenue per copy.
Microsoft pays devs via secret deals (lump sums or usage-based metrics). Converting Game Pass value to “equivalent sales” (500K–1M copies) is pure guesswork. Internal corporate accounting (e.g., waived/platform fees) also isn’t public.
Microsoft also cares more about Game Pass growth than short-term profit – Avowed is a long-term ecosystem play, not just a boxed product.
Without Obsidian/Microsoft’s actual data, this math is just speculative fan-fiction.

If anything he came in way under and they're worse off than speculated. Unless MS over estimated and paid them a huge sum of money, or maybe they were being very cautious and went the royalties route.

[AndreGon]

Kain původně napsal:

AndreGon původně napsal:

https://youtu.be/a8MZBUoQt68?si=8u46dlN1WdE7su8-

Unfunny meme aside, it's unrelated to the discussion as I provided arguments as to why I think the game is doing well.

Arguments made purely out of cope and with literally 0 evidence to support them.
Those same arguments were also made by people in Concord, Unknown 9, Veilguard, etc in their first days/weeks after those games releases (and the same amount of evidence backing those arguments up), and yet they still failed hard.

What's claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Have a nice day.

[Encoder]

DesignGears původně napsal:

Encoder původně napsal:

Glassdoor salary ranges - real payroll data. Team sizes fluctuate during development (smaller early, scaling later), so assuming 100 devs × 6 years straight is unrealistic. Benefits, contractors, and overhead costs (30–50% extra) are ignored. PlayTracker’s 185K sales guess ignores Game Pass players (Microsoft’s main platform). Steam’s 30% cut is accurate, but assuming a flat $70 price ignores regional pricing, discounts, and bundles, which slash actual revenue per copy.
Microsoft pays devs via secret deals (lump sums or usage-based metrics). Converting Game Pass value to “equivalent sales” (500K–1M copies) is pure guesswork. Internal corporate accounting (e.g., waived/platform fees) also isn’t public.
Microsoft also cares more about Game Pass growth than short-term profit – Avowed is a long-term ecosystem play, not just a boxed product.
Without Obsidian/Microsoft’s actual data, this math is just speculative fan-fiction.

If anything he came in way under and they're worse off than speculated.

Doesn't change the point that it's pure speculation and not fact. Not to mention that he only uses estimates.

[DMaster2]

SaD-82 původně napsal:

Kain původně napsal:

Game pass absolutely matters,

Sigh...
Then let's do the math, okay?

Let's take the number of 200k sold copies of this game.
Let's...assume...everyone of those paid the full 90$ for the deluxe version (because I'm being pretty nice right now).
That's a total of 18 million dollars.
Steam does a 30% cut, but let's...assume...that Steam says: "Oh, you're such a nice company, we don't do a cut, but you can have everything."
Nice of Steam, right? (Well, nice of me, but who cares, right?)
18 million dollars it is.
With a production cost of somewhere between 80 and 100 million dollars.

Now the part, you try to sell to everyone: GP. Especially people who didn't participate in GP already (because in that instance there wouldn't be any money on top of what they're already paying - do you understand this? Serious question: Do you understand that someone who already has a subscription doesn't generate further income on top of that already existing subscription? Yes? Good.)

Due to me being nice, let's...assume...that 1 million people would have participated into the GP trial of spending 1$. (Yeah, I hope you realize that I'm very, very generous by setting this number at 1 million people...and I hope I don't need to explain, why it's very, very generous of me).
This would be further revenue of 1 million dollars.

Bringing the already existing 18 million dollars to a whopping.... 19 million dollars.
With a production cost of somewhere between 80 and 100 million dollars.
WOOHOO!

No, GP doesn't matter when it's about breaking even with the production cost, or not.

Seriously...it should be quite visible that there is some financial problem looming...

And even if they retained these 1 million people with the 15 bucks subscription it's still 15 millions, they are still not even halfway through repaying the cost of the production AND the marketing.

Whoever thinks obsidian execs and microsoft are happy right now can please contact me? I might have some bridges for sales.

[SaD-82]

Encoder původně napsal:

1 million unique signatures for avowed on GP wouldn't equate to 1 million dollars, not even remotely accurate.

I was explicitly talking about the money spend by people for this game.
Not what Microsoft can earn through every single subscribed person (as long as they're still a subscriber) - I was talking about the cash spend.
In which way Microsoft is paying Obsidian and other developers - we don't know.
In which way Microsoft is getting money off of subscribers (like Twitch is earning money through advertisement and direct contracts with companies) - we don't know.
It's about the direct financial investment done by players - to show that Steam and other distribution platforms aren't able to gather enough money through the selling process.
Which further means: Avowed isn't doing good on Steam.

(And as a reminder - those 1 million new subscribers is a stretch.)

[Pyro3000]

Anyone being bought my Microsoft and expecting to last 100 years hasn't seen how Microsoft operates.

[Ziattic]

Encoder původně napsal:

Ziattic původně napsal:

Jez Cordan himself stated avowed had 100 people working on it, not including any contractors that were brought on.

I did the rough math in another discussion, but with the average salary at obsidian ranging from $72,000 to $122,000 with a median of $94,000 (from Glassdoor), that means the cost for just labor (no contractors, assets, marketing, etc) could be anywhere between $43,200,000 and $73,000,000. ((salary x 6 years dev time) x 100 employees)

I'm just going to use steam estimates here because the estimates are usually either high or fairly accurate overall. PlayTracker has the highest player estimate at 185,200 copies sold and that comes to a total of $12,964,000, then Steam takes 30% leaving Obsidian with $9,074,800 (I used the sale price of $70 because we don't know how many bought the $80 early access, so in reality the total earnings will be a little higher).

Using that estimate, we learn that Gamepass, Playstation, and Xbox need to make between $30,236,000 and $60,036,000 after platform fees or approximately between $39,306,800 (561,526 game copies) and $78,046,800 (1,114,955 game copies) before any fees (and yes, microsoft still charges Obsidian the platform fees, otherwise it would open them up to lawsuits from other studios; being a parent company is irrelevant). Also, Gamepass has its own unique deals, but I remember a dev explaining Microsoft technically "buys" copies in bulk at a discounted price which becomes a lump-sum payment, then they buy more copies if demand outweighs expectations.

And those numbers are EXCLUSIVELY for the labor costs for the 100 people who worked on the game full time, we still need to add marketing, consultations, contractors, purchased assets and remove costs for reused assets they saved from other games/projects if they used any.

TL;DR - They need to earn between $39,306,800 and $78,046,800 on game pass and consoles to recoup just their labor costs, which totals out to between 561,526 and 1,114,955 game copies respectively.

Glassdoor salary ranges - real payroll data. Team sizes fluctuate during development (smaller early, scaling later), so assuming 100 devs × 6 years straight is unrealistic. Benefits, contractors, and overhead costs (30–50% extra) are ignored. PlayTracker’s 185K sales guess ignores Game Pass players (Microsoft’s main platform). Steam’s 30% cut is accurate, but assuming a flat $70 price ignores regional pricing, discounts, and bundles, which slash actual revenue per copy.
Microsoft pays devs via secret deals (lump sums or usage-based metrics). Converting Game Pass value to “equivalent sales” (500K–1M copies) is pure guesswork. Internal corporate accounting (e.g., waived/platform fees) also isn’t public.
Microsoft also cares more about Game Pass growth than short-term profit – Avowed is a long-term ecosystem play, not just a boxed product.
Without Obsidian/Microsoft’s actual data, this math is just speculative fan-fiction.

The number of employees comes from someone who was involved with the team, the payrolls are described lower and upper bounds because unless we dig through the credits, takes each persons title and cross reference their salary we cant know total labor cost exactly, so I opted for a range of salaries and used the number of workers verified to have worked on the project.

I already mentioned that I only used the employees mentioned by Jez, contractors were never added to any costs because it is impossible to know their costs.

"assuming a flat $70 price ignores regional pricing, discounts, and bundles, which slash actual revenue per copy."
I assumed the flat rate of $70 because that is the industry standard and typically the highest standard cost, taking regional pricing, bundles, and discounts into account would mean Obsidian needed to sell even more copies to recoup costs, which hurts your argument.

I already mentioned gamepass already has its own system (which has been discussed by devs along with a rough explanation), which is why I grouped gamepass and the consoles together when calculating how much they all needed to make to recoup labor costs. The $39,306,800 and $78,046,800 they need to earn is the total needed for every platform while excluding steam sales.

[Anticitizen 1]

Well that's theit opinion, I think Obsidian is going to get shuttered if Outer Worlds 2 performs similarly to Avowed. Time will tell but I am feeling pretty confident about this prediction. MicroSlop doesn't have infinite money to waste on underperforming studios, see Hi Fi Rush for reference.