The authors of Max Payne told how 2019 passed for them financially. The company’s revenues have reached record levels over the past nine years.
In twelve months, Remedy earned €31.6 million. This is 57% more than last year. Previously, the company did not earn such money.
Operating profit, which amounted to €6.5 million, increased by an impressive 953%.
The main drivers of growth:
- Sales Control;
- deductions for Control (here, probably, we are talking about payments for exclusivity and pre-sales from the Epic Games Store)
- deductions for Crossfire (Remedy is preparing a single-player campaign for the game);
- royalties for the company’s previous games amounted to €2.5 million.
It is not reported how much the Finnish company earned directly from Control sales (excluding publishing royalties). But a hypothetical figure can be calculated because we know:
- in the second half of the year (July — December), Remedy generated a total of €17.8 million;
- The Finnish company receives 45% from the sales of Control.
In turn, €17.8 million is 45% of €39.5 million.
Again, most likely, the figure is smaller, but we don’t know how much. However, this threshold value allows us to state that the circulation of the game for six months is unlikely to exceed 650 thousand.
Where did 650 thousand come from?
Control was distributed on three platforms as a full-price game (we will not take into account the difference in regional prices now). We divide €39.5 million by €60 and get an approximate figure of 650 thousand copies sold.
If you go back to Remedy’s revenue from sales, then they say that the game has not yet paid off. Its production budget was €30 million. This is without taking into account the marketing budget, which has not been published.
However, as Tero Virtala, the CEO of Remedy, noted in the presentation of the results, the game did not have a marketing budget comparable to other major releases of 2019. This, among other things, explains the unimportant initial sales. Now the game continues to be promoted, and two paid add-ons are planned for 2020.
By the way, publishing royalties from the Epic Games Store could not recapture the cost of development. Their volume was insufficient for this. Recall that Epic Games Store paid the publishers of the game € 9.5 million for its exclusivity on the platform. Of this amount, Remedy took only 45%.
Remedy looks to the future with optimism. The company plans to release a product or supplement for it per year. Now she has in development, in addition to addons to Control, a single campaign for CrossFireX, whose release is also scheduled for this year, as well as two projects in the pre-production stages.
It is not known what kind of revenue is expected in Remedy in 2020. They write that the year should be “financially good”.