11 bit studios stock crashes. On Monday, stocks fell by nearly 40 percent.
On Friday, Frostpunk 2 had its proper premiere. On the first day, the production by 11 bit studios, according to the Steam portal, db.info, gathered 27 thousand people in peak, on Saturday 35.5 thousand, and on Sunday 34 thousand. The first part of the game gathered 29 thousand players in peak. In the context of the peak, analysts point out that it is also worth mentioning the partial cannibalization of attention from Frostpunk 1, which generated a peak of 23 thousand on Saturday, and around 21 thousand on Sunday, when the average from recent months was around 3 thousand people. This phenomenon was facilitated by the game’s 90% discount, which ended only on Saturday at 7:00 p.m. It is also worth noting that the production has been available in the Game Pass subscription since its premiere.
– The peak was significantly worse than our expectations and market consensus. If it weren’t for the deterioration in ratings from Friday to Saturday, the growth trajectory suggested a Sunday peak of 47 thousand, which is close to our Thursday estimate based on Warhammer’s performance – commented Mateusz Chrzanowski, an analyst at Noble Securities.
– While the game did not meet expectations in absolute terms, in relative terms it was not such a bad premiere. On Saturday, FP2’s peak was the highest of all games debuting last week, including such well-known IPs as God of War: Ragnarok or Final Fantasy: XVI. It was only on Sunday that GoW caught up with Frostpunk’s peak result – adds Chrzanowski
Source: steamdb.info
Players criticize Frostpunk 2 for the scale of changes
The production on the Steam platform has collected nearly 5 thousand reviews so far. The percentage of positives dropped from 83 percent on Friday to 71 percent on Monday morning. Players praise the game’s atmosphere, maneuvering between factions, the system of gathering and disposing of resources. Among the flaws are the high level of difficulty, the unreadable interface, the sterile city and the unsatisfactory technical condition of the production.
– The negative comments are dominated by disappointment with the changes that have been made in the sequel. It is not uncommon to come across the opinion that FP2 is a good game in itself, but that this is not what was expected from the sequel to FP1 – comments Chrzanowski.
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The game is still high on the Steam sales chart. On Saturday, it managed to temporarily occupy the first position, although since its release, it has been most often second to EA Sports FC 25, which made Advanced Access available on Friday. However, the title has not fallen out of the TOP 5 Steam bestsellers throughout the entire weekend since its release. On Monday morning, Frostpunk 2 is in 6th place on the Steam sales chart.
– The leader for most of the weekend was EA Sports FC 25 (AA on Friday), which is characterized by a gigantic community (500 thousand viewers in peak on Twitch), high price (70 percent) and microtransactions in online competition, the importance of which is growing year by year. The difficult environment should undoubtedly be complemented by the still high interest in successful premieres from the last month, such as Black Myth: Wukung (593 thousand peak on Saturday) or Warhammer (101 thousand on Saturday). Additionally, a title that could particularly distract from Frostpunk was Satisfactory, which recently came out of a several-year beta period and still maintains high interest, and during the weekend even took 177 thousand people in peak – argues the Noble Securities analyst.
11 bit studios: Frostpunk 2 has paid off its production costs
On Monday morning, the studio’s stock price dropped by almost 40%, and trading was interrupted several times by balancing. The proverbial lifeline was the report that the game had sold over 350,000 copies and covered its production costs. After this information, the scale of the markdown decreased to -35%.
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As reported by the creators By Monday, 8:00 AM, the game’s sales had exceeded 350,000 units, and its total revenues had exceeded the costs of producing and marketing the game.
Chrzanowski points out that there are 2 million players on the wishlist who will be active at the latest during the first price promotion, and the first part alone has sold over 5 million units, so the user base for long-term sales remains unchanged.
– The game has 3 DLCs announced, so there will be many more impulses to improve the ratings. However, this does not change the fact that this year’s financial results will not meet our expectations and will soon lead to their reduction along with the update of recommendations – emphasizes Mateusz Chrzanowski.
Analyst: 1 million copies of Frostpunk 2 still in the game this year
Despite this, the analyst does not rule out good sales this year (although much lower than expected). The game, two days after its release, has twice as many reviews as the first part, which sold 250,000 copies after 69 hours.
– That’s why we believe that 1 million copies this year is still in the cards, especially if the game stays in the Steam TOP10 for the next 10 days and remains in the TOP5 at least twice more during this period. Let’s recall that Victoria 3, which sold 500 thousand in a month since its premiere, was in the TOP10 only 8 times, including 4 times in the TOP5, and Tekken 8, which sold 2 million copies in 3 weeks, needed 14 days in the TOP10 and 5 days in the TOP5. So far, Frostpunk 2 has recorded 7 days in the TOP10, including 3 days in the TOP5 – argues the Noble Securities analyst.
11 bit studios has been operating on the gaming market since 2010. It is a producer of multiplatform computer games. The company has produced titles such as: “Anomaly”, “This War of Mine” and “Frostpunk”. It also runs the 11 bit publishing program, under which it has published, among others, “Moonlighter” and “Children of Morta”. The company moved from NewConnect to the main market of the WSE in 2015.
