If you had asked people what would be the biggest game in this jam-packed September before it began, I can’t imagine many would have answered Wardogs. The Bulkhead blockbuster has been an unmitigated hit no matter what metric you use, but particularly if you go by the estimates of just how much Wardogs has made during its first week.
That people have been eagerly anticipating Wardogs’ arrival was made very clear almost as soon as it launched, as hundreds of thousands of you flocked to Steam to play it almost immediately. The game peaked at more than 400,000 concurrent players on Sunday, a number most live service games can only dream of, and estimates suggest those numbers have indeed translated into revenue and profit.
That’s according to Alinea Analytics, which has broken down the numbers from Wardogs’ first week. The site estimates that the game has already sold a staggering 2.2 million copies, and that even though its concurrent player count peaked on Sunday, its busiest day was actually this past Tuesday when 1.6 million people played it at some point during the 24-hour period.
All of that amounts to the game having already made $70 million. That number is impressive all by itself, but even more so when you compare it to Alinea’s estimates for other live service games. The go-to is, unfortunately, Marathon due to the fact that it hasn’t hit nearly as hard as PlayStation and Bungie would have needed it to.
Marathon persists, and we are now more than six months removed from its launch. Even though Wardogs has only been around for a week, according to Alinea, the $70 million of revenue the Bulkhead game has generated in seven days is more than Marathon has made across six months. Just to rub even more salt into the Marathon wound, Alinea also points out that revenue generated from multiple platforms for Marathon, whereas Wardogs is exclusively available on PC.
It’s not just Marathon that Wardogs is showing up with its massive week one numbers. While its player count is comparable to the numbers Arc Raiders was pulling at launch, the hit extraction shooter had sold around 1.7 million copies after its first week compared to Wardogs’ 2.2 million. Helldivers 2, the closest thing to a live service hit PlayStation has had during this misguided live service push, sold one million copies at launch. That, like Marathon, was also a game that was available on multiple platforms.
As successful a launch as this has been for Wardogs, it has not been free from controversy. Bulkhead’s CEO Joe Brammer was hit with backlash for his comments on crunch this week. In response to that backlash, Brammer has clarified that the crunch period referenced was openly referred to as crunch, but that employees could opt out without consequence. The CEO also acknowledged that the social pressure on those who didn’t want to put in those extra hours likely made them feel “less than great”.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/wardogs-already-more-revenue-than-marathon/
