Outriders' People Can Fly Hasn't Received Royalties from Square Enix Due to Lack of Profits | MMORPG

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Outriders' People Can Fly Hasn't Received Royalties from Square Enix Due to Lack of Profits | MMORPG.com

The folks at People Can Fly, the developers behind Outriders, claimed through an investor note they haven't been paid royalties from publisher Square Enix, pointing to lack of profitability.

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G3Nexis

Soooo they agreed to only collect royalties if the game was profitable. They believe it "should" be profitable, but the assumption is in Square Enix's mind it has not been profitable? So they signed a shitty contract and as a result are sad now they aren't getting paid?

I did not even know this game was released. I saw it being played during its limited beta and the overall consensus was the game was kind of not great. I was super excited for Anthem and then that was a complete let down. This game gave me, and I assume alot of others Anthem vibes. That combined with the general bad opinions about the game during its beta, I would not be surprised if the game was not being considered profitable currently.

Aeander

Yeah, those launch numbers sounded impressive, until you realize that a majority of that was probably Gamepass.

Tiller

Aeander said:

Yeah, those launch numbers sounded impressive, until you realize that a majority of that was probably Gamepass.

Also they gave the game away free as an Nvidia promotion (buying gpu or pc with nvidia). That is how I obtained it.

Vrika

How did the manage to make an agreement where publisher (Square Enix) does not give them sales figures?

Scot

Vrika said:

How did the manage to make an agreement where publisher (Square Enix) does not give them sales figures?

Indeed, PCF talk about their estimates of the sales figures, they don't seem to have anything from the company telling how many units were sold or how much money was made. At the least the contract lawyers who concocted this need talking to, sounds like it is time for some journalistic investigation rather than the never ending reportage we get across the media.

Nanfoodle

Aeander said:

Yeah, those launch numbers sounded impressive, until you realize that a majority of that was probably Gamepass.

Gamepass pays the developer for time played, downloads etc. What ever agreement they made with Xbox, they got payed. So Square E should pay up. EDIT: After reading the article. This is about millions of copies of an expansion. Gamepass does not cover playing expansions for the sub fee. Anyone playing the expansion on Gamepass, would have paid for it. Again SE needs to pay up if they did sell 2-3 million DLCs.

maskedweasel

It would have actually been a great game if it didn't have so many issues. Like that whole inventory wipe bug. And then the whole thing where armor wasn't mitigating damage at all. Lol. I played all characters to max for the fun of it, but the game had issues. 

They do deserve to get paid though. Unless SE is just that bad at making deals on gamepass. A lot of devs choose to go that way for a reason. Many times the devs are even profitable out of the gate due to gamepass deals.  

Aeander

You think maybe Square is trying to take out their Marvel's Avengers woes on their other studios?

Sandmanjw

The whole thing sounds crazy. 

Guarantee that somewhere behind Square, that their is a tax agency that demands good record keeping to get their take for taxes. So they for sure have the records of all types of deals, sales or whatever.

Looks like the original dev's do not even know who to call at the publishers to get info. Something that sounds impossible to me. 

More like a deal that they are now regretting, and looking to make a stink in public to get a mob interested and put pressure on the publishers.

Whatever the issue, I find it hard to believe that in these times that there are not many lawyers involved, and that the info presented is not really what is going on. 

Can not be a game company or publishers that could produce anything that sells "millions" of anything and be that lacking in business competency.  

Kratier

everyone here trying to defend these fraud developers, game was a huge scam and failed basic functions at launch, deleted your saves and erased your inventory. Even marvel's avengers wasn't that bad and it was pretty awful.
"royalties" aren't guaranteed if the product bombs.

GatsuZerk

The bug that deleted peoples gear doomed this game.

Damn shame because it was fun.

niceguy3978

That is an interesting situation to be in. How could they not be in the loop on how many sales there have been?

Iselin

Most royalty agreements have audit clauses, do they not?

So what's keeping them from triggering it if they think they haven't been paid the full amount owed them?

Samhael

G3Nexis said:

Soooo they agreed to only collect royalties if the game was profitable. They believe it "should" be profitable, but the assumption is in Square Enix's mind it has not been profitable? So they signed a shitty contract and as a result are sad now they aren't getting paid?

Yeah, it really sounds like it was a shitty contract. Sure, they got enough funding to stay in business to make it but if this is the type of deal they sign, then it's doubtful we'll see much more out of them. I figured they would have had solid amounts mentioned in the contracts and a clause giving them access to the overall sales details of the game.

Samhael

Iselin said:

Most royalty agreements have audit clauses, do they not?

So what's keeping them from triggering it if they think they haven't been paid the full amount owed them?

My guess is that if PCF requests an audit, they've burned their bridges with Square. (not necessarily a bad thing but maybe not the first choice of action)

adam_nox

The reason they are so cagey on figures is because they are intentionally trying to downplay how bad the game did to investors. They could or maybe even have solid figures from square. Their language leaves them wiggle room if called out on it. All very intentional and par for the course on these investor calls.

Illindur

Samhael said:

Iselin said:

Most royalty agreements have audit clauses, do they not?

So what's keeping them from triggering it if they think they haven't been paid the full amount owed them?

My guess is that if PCF requests an audit, they've burned their bridges with Square. (not necessarily a bad thing but maybe not the first choice of action)

That is correct. They are not whining or signed a shitty contract. Journalists are asking them numbers and they are just being honest. They don't have the numbers yet. And this is Polish company, so they are just trying to be respectful - something they have been learning from the very first days on this planet. Yes, not all ppl are the same, but I actually met some of them and they indeed are good peapole. Just give them time, dont assume, dont speculate, dont blame anyone until you know the whole thruth.
Thank you.

Scot

Iselin said:

Most royalty agreements have audit clauses, do they not?

So what's keeping them from triggering it if they think they haven't been paid the full amount owed them?

Well what if it didn't? You may well be right, in fact that seems likely, but we are all doing what we normally do, extrapolating without sufficient data. But there does seem enough here for gaming journalists to actually be asking some questions rather than the never ending he said/she said reportage we get everywhere now.

Kyleran

Scot said:

Iselin said:

Most royalty agreements have audit clauses, do they not?

So what's keeping them from triggering it if they think they haven't been paid the full amount owed them?

 but we are all doing what we normally do, extrapolating without sufficient data. 

You speak as if this is a bad thing. Weird.

It's just what people do when missing information, fill in the blanks with possible explanations until more is known.

More of a survival mechanism I think, learned from our earliest days.

Scene from 10K years ago.

"Yo Ugh, what you suppose that bright glow on horizon is?"

"Me not know Grog, maybe it's is big fire like last year?

"Naw, don't speculate Ugh, is probably just sun coming up early, wait till we know more."

Grog looks at Ugh and shakes head, "good luck with that" and quietly slips out for the next county later that evening while everyone else becomes a barbaque

Thane

the real question is: how high was that investment? bc obviously they have been payed.

and the obvious hint to the devs here: real betas, not payed early access bullshit (and yes, that includes stress tests, durr). then you might be able to actually release a game in a playable state some day

Scot

Kyleran said:

Scot said:

Iselin said:

Most royalty agreements have audit clauses, do they not?

So what's keeping them from triggering it if they think they haven't been paid the full amount owed them?

 but we are all doing what we normally do, extrapolating without sufficient data. 

You speak as if this is a bad thing. Weird.

It's just what people do when missing information, fill in the blanks with possible explanations until more is known.

More of a survival mechanism I think, learned from our earliest days.

Scene from 10K years ago.

"Yo Ugh, what you suppose that bright glow on horizon is?"

"Me not know Grog, maybe it's is big fire like last year?

"Naw, don't speculate Ugh, is probably just sun coming up early, wait till we know more."

Grog looks at Ugh and shakes head, "good luck with that" and quietly slips out for the next county later that evening while everyone else becomes a barbaque

Fair point it is only natural, but it is the certainty with which we speak while knowing how little of the picture we see that gets me. The age old pub conversation has become the raison d'être of 24 hours news, who needs the truth when you have narrative?

"I am standing now next to the meteoroid impact which fell today and killed a Neanderthal community. I have no one to speak to, no documentation and virtually nothing standing to comment on. But I will now launch into an analysis of how the community leaders got it wrong and who was to blame."

koyutakota

maybe if square would give the devs the numbers we wouldn't be here discussing this in the first place.

Kyleran

koyutakota said:

maybe if square would give the devs the numbers we wouldn't be here discussing this in the first place.

niceguy3978

Kyleran said:

Scot said:

Iselin said:

Most royalty agreements have audit clauses, do they not?

So what's keeping them from triggering it if they think they haven't been paid the full amount owed them?

 but we are all doing what we normally do, extrapolating without sufficient data. 

You speak as if this is a bad thing. Weird.

It's just what people do when missing information, fill in the blanks with possible explanations until more is known.

More of a survival mechanism I think, learned from our earliest days.

Scene from 10K years ago.

"Yo Ugh, what you suppose that bright glow on horizon is?"

"Me not know Grog, maybe it's is big fire like last year?

"Naw, don't speculate Ugh, is probably just sun coming up early, wait till we know more."

Grog looks at Ugh and shakes head, "good luck with that" and quietly slips out for the next county later that evening while everyone else becomes a barbaque

I worked at a place for a few years where the upper management saw virtually all information as something that the regular workers just didn't need to know. Then management would get pissed off when people would make inaccurate assumptions about what was going on. I use to tell my bosses a similar version of what you said. "In the absence of information, people will make sh*t up."

Aeander

Nanfoodle said:

Aeander said:

Yeah, those launch numbers sounded impressive, until you realize that a majority of that was probably Gamepass.

Gamepass pays the developer for time played, downloads etc. What ever agreement they made with Xbox, they got payed. So Square E should pay up. EDIT: After reading the article. This is about millions of copies of an expansion. Gamepass does not cover playing expansions for the sub fee. Anyone playing the expansion on Gamepass, would have paid for it. Again SE needs to pay up if they did sell 2-3 million DLCs.

Yes, yes. I'm aware that there is profit from Gamepass contracts. But a Gamepass user is not equivalent to a full price purchaser.