Popular Souls-Like Game Still Hasn’t Recouped Budget 2 Years After Release

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Summary

  • Lords of the Fallen sold a million copies in 10 days, but hasn’t recouped development costs after 2 years.
  • Despite not breaking even, the game hit 10K concurrent players on Steam 18 months post-launch.
  • A sequel is planned for Lords of the Fallen in 2026, even without recouping costs.

In the wake of Elden Ring’s significant critical and financial success in 2022, it was no surprise that numerous studios began working on their own Souls-like titles. However, while some games such as Lies of P achieved success, others did not fare quite as well.

A well-known Souls-like game hit the market a year following Elden Ring, but despite the developer’s extensive efforts in providing updates, it appears that its publishing company hasn’t managed to recover the costs of producing it just yet.

This Is One Lord Not Yet The King Of His Castle

The game I mentioned is Lords of the Fallen by HexWorks, a title launched in 2023 and serving as a sort of reboot for the action game genre. Although CI Games has yet to disclose the game’s recent sales figures, they did share that it managed to sell over a million copies within its first ten days on sale, an impressive accomplishment.

It appears that, with the game now entering its second year, the RPG has not managed to recover its development costs yet, according to CI Games CEO Marek Tyminski who made this statement on X. He did acknowledge, however, an increase in sales recently due to a significant update launched this month.

It’s clear that Tyminski hasn’t made a profit from the game yet, as it hasn’t recouped its costs. However, it’s important to note that the game is seeing an upward trend! Amazingly, even 18 months after its release, the game managed to reach a peak of 10,000 concurrent players on Steam alone.

It should be noted that the stated player count of 10K only applies to Steam; considering players from PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, it’s quite likely that the total could be twice as high.

It’s quite unexpected that Lords of the Fallen hasn’t managed to recoup its costs, given the large number of copies it has sold. Let’s hope that CI Games didn’t overestimate their sales projections. Regardless of whether they’ve made a profit or not, CI Games is moving forward with a sequel scheduled for release in 2026.

Initially, Lords of the Fallen wasn’t a massive hit with critics, as indicated by its “Fair” rating on Open Critic. However, the developers at HexWorks continued to release update after update, addressing bugs, incorporating requested features from the community, and much more.

Is it likely that this will generate enough revenue for CI Games to turn the game into a profit? Here’s hoping, as the developers’ commitment to post-release support is an example worth following by other studios.

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2025-04-24 23:39