I don't know folks, I think game dev might be kind of broken: slick Soulslike RPG Lords of the Fallen has passed 5.5 million players but still isn't profitable

Lords of the Fallen twin knights with swords and spears — (Image credit: CI Games)

It has, by and large, not been a stellar 18 months for the games industry, in part due to ongoing widespread layoffs. For example: Microsoft laying people off, Microsoft laying people off, Microsoft laying people off, and – this will sound far-fetched – Microsoft laying people off.

There is still a lot of uncertainty and contraction going around games, and a lot of deserved skepticism around the viability of the old way of making, particularly, AAA games, which can not-unreasonably be described as hundreds or thousands of people shoveling money into a big furnace until it reaches a zillion degrees or, quite possibly, explodes. Sadly I don't think the mood is going to be improved by news that even garnering 5.5 million players isn't enough for some not-even-gigantic games to break even.

Well, here comes CI Games CEO Marek Tymiński with a reality check: "The breakeven is very close, too!" In other words, the game has not yet made its money back, 5.5 million players later.

How close, one fan asked? "Really close," Tymiński replied. Bear in mind, CI Games has been talking about one day breaking even on this game for a while. Also bear in mind, CI Games laid off 10% of its staff in April 2024, months before reporting its "best-ever" year, followed by (per GamesIndustry.biz) another 30 people laid off in May.

Lords of the Fallen — (Image credit: CI Games)

You know those news stories about, as a hypothetical example, kids selling lemonade to pay for a lifesaving medical operation, and somehow it's supposed to be a heartwarming thing that they managed to do it? I don't want to be dramatic – a bold-faced lie – but I'm at least getting the same kind of energy from this.

"Our game has had 5.5 million players!" Cool. "And we're almost profitable!" What?

Obviously I don't have all the numbers here. I don't know exactly what Lords of the Fallen's total development or marketing budget was (2023 reports put it at $66.2 million), what CI Games' internal projections were, how many people worked on it or for how long, the average price it's been purchased at across platforms and sales (it's $19.79 on Steam right now), how many of those 5.5 million players actually represent copies sold versus trials or friend passes (early launch estimates put it at 1.2 million copies), or exactly how "close" it is to recoup.

But consider this: would any of that actually change anything? Is there any reality where a game of this scope, at this rung of the industry, still chasing recoup after 5.5 million players is a good omen? And I'm not saying every game needs to bring in massive profits; obsession with growth is part of what got the industry here, and just making enough to pay for the next game is the dream of many devs.

Even Tymiński said, in a 2019 interview, that "the studio ambition is to make great games but stay with the scope we can control considering the size of the team. I think the AA segment is growing and has a lot of potential. Some of the elements of the games have to stand up in comparison to AAA, but the major difference is the scope."

It's the scope that gives me pause today. Lords of the Fallen isn't some GTA 6-sized AAA behemoth, I know that, and I also know that if you can't turn a profit after 5.5 million players – numbers almost any game would kill for, especially in the Soulslike space where fans can be legendarily selective – something might be wrong.

I don't want to single this game out as the icon of industry woes; if anything, the fact that it is at least close to recoup is... something? And the thing is, Lords of the Fallen is a good game. It was a good game when it came out, and it has been materially improved through a raft of updates which have surely racked up sizable post-launch costs for CI Games that presumably pushed that recoup point further and further away.

On top of that, Lords of the Fallen apparently did well enough to greenlight a sequel planned, as of 2024, for a 2026 release. I don't know what beans they're counting over at CI Games, and I don't know if this situation is more telling of base production budgets or the costs of supporting a game long-term, but it's hard to interpret these numbers as anything but another sign that the current way of making a lot of games does not mesh with reality, and something – ideally not the livelihood of yet more workaday employees – has to give.

At the far end of the spectrum, the Peak devs really did not expect to sell 2 million copies in 9 days, and say they're now "looking into possible updates" for their hit that started as a "stupid jam game."