After it was announced that a significant portion of Square Enix’s western operations (Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal) would be sold to Embracer Group, we learned that IPs such as Tomb Raider and Deus Ex would also be Embracer for $300 million.
This story was interpreted as Square Enix leaving its western IP;ing on the grounds that it did not bring profits, but statements from the studio suggest that they did not leave all IPs. The names Just Cause, Life is Strange and Outriders still belong to Square Enix. In fact, the Square Enix Collective, which focuses on independent construction, will continue its operations.
What’s interesting here, at least, is that Outriders isn’t a profitable game at all. The game’s developer, People Can Fly, announced last year that “we don’t even know how many times the game has sold,” and now new financial reports show that People Can Fly still hasn’t received a penny of royalties from the game because it hasn’t made a profit.
The game is said to have failed to reach even the “profit distribution” part of the deal between People Can Fly and Square Enix in 2021, the year of its release, because it could not cover development, marketing and distribution costs.
It’s also a question of why Square Enix would want to keep the IP of such a win-win game.
