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Over on Bluesky, industry analyst mauronl shared some info from Devolver Digital’s 2024 wrap-up for investors, including lifetime revenue figures for 10 of its games. Sitting at number one, with over $US90 million earned, is the folk-horror Happy Tree Friends dungeon-crawler Cult of the Lamb. Number two, with over $US80 million in lifetime revenue, is Astroneer.
These may be surprising figures coming from the house that Hotline Miami built (it’s number seven, with >$30M in revenue), and the label that published all those Serious Sam games (that series is at number four, >$45M), but the explanation comes in the analysis at the top of the page. “Trend: Gamers are spending more time on known IPs as opposed to new IPs”.
But, I hear you ask, surely Cult of the Lamb is a new IP? In 2022 it was. Since then it’s had multiple DLCs, both free and paid, and if you sort Steam’s list of Devolver DLC by top sellers, four of Cult of the Lamb’s DLCs are the top four. (Road to Elysium for The Talos Principle 2 rounds out the top five.) Successful DLC isn’t just successful because of how many copies it sells, as it can bring in a new wave of players who hear about it and pick up the original—something Astroneer also benefited from with its Glitchwalkers expansion, reviving interest in the exploration-crafting game five years after its original launch.
The trend Devolver identifies isn’t just that people really like post-launch support. The other entries in that top 10 include plenty of multi-game series, like Stronghold, Serious Sam, and Shadow Warrior, suggesting that players are videogame players are in another phase of returning for sequels. Expect to see plenty of those from Devolver in the year ahead, along with all the other things an enfranchised fanbase loves—like ports, spin-offs, and definitive edition rereleases.
Another slide from the presentation highlights that Enter the Gungeon and the surprisingly successful VR game Gorn are both getting sequels, and Astroneer a spin-off called Starseeker. It’s probably too early to declare originality dead, however, given that Devolver just released an oddball survival-horror RPG and has announced a May release date for the game where you look like a thumb and have gone to Hell to arrest Satan.
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Kurt Indovina
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