The gaming world is often flooded with bad news, so let’s take a moment to appreciate something good: Frostpunk 2 has made back its entire marketing and production budget in just three days, according to 11Bit Studios.

Sharing the news on X, 11Bit Studios announced that their survival city-builder has managed to sell 350,000 copies on PC already.

“What’s more, the total estimated sales revenue has already covered the costs we spent on producing and marketing the game.” said 11Bit Studios.

We are super happy to announce that we’ve already exceeded 350 000 copies of #Frostpunk 2 sold!

What’s more, the total estimated sales revenue has already covered the costs we spent on producing and marketing the game.

Big, big thank you to you all for your support! It (almost)… pic.twitter.com/7sa9qVe4fv

— Frostpunk 2 (@frostpunkgame) September 23, 2024

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A PS5 port of Frostpunk 2 is scheduled for further down the road which should add at least a few more copies sold to the pile. Plus, the studio has the benefit of the game being on PC Game Pass, meaning at some point they got a bag of money from Microsoft as well.

The sales are impressive because Frostpunk 2 was always very difficulty to gauge in terms of how popular it would be. The first game was amazing and became something of a hidden gem, but never saw huge success. The beta for Frostpunk 2 wasn’t very well received, but 11Bit Studios delayed the game in order to tackle player feedback.

The end product has been divisive among fans because of how radically different it is compared to the first game. Indeed, I struggled with, although I still think it’s worth playing, as I explained in my review. It’s holding a mostly positive rating on Steam and currently boasts an impressive aggregated review score of 86 on Opencritic. Surely, then, it’s good news all round? Well, no. Not quite.

Despite the numbers seemingly being good, 11Bit Studios share price actually dropped yesterday following the announcement of Frostpunk 2’s sales. The company was hit with a 38% slump, and it has actually dropped a little more today.

So what was the reason for the decline? According to Reuters, the company was actually expecting a much higher concurrent peak player count of around 80,000-100,000. Instead, SteamDB has the game tracked at a peak concurrent player count of 35,553.

Erste Group analyst Piotr Bogusz also said that “relatively poor” player ratings might be effecting people’s buying decisions. He notes that player ratings below 80% positive on Steam “affects the game’s visibility on Steam, which could translate into sales. Currently, the game sits at just a smidgen under 71% positive.

“We were maybe counting on slightly higher scores, but this negative sentiment or disappointment among players is due to the fact that it is not simply a sequel to Frostpunk 1, but Frostpunk 2…maybe we didn’t articulate enough that it’s not a clone, that it’s not a simple sequel but a different game,” 11 bit studios’ investor relations manager Dariusz Wolak told Reuters.

Indeed, browsing the Steam reviews, a consistent point of contention is just how different the sequel is to its predecessor.

Personally, and I’m not a business expert, predictions of 80,000-100,000 concurrent players seems like a fantasy. The original game achieved 29,361 concurrent players, a fairly impressive amount for a relatively niche genre. Predicting nearly three times that amount for a sequel (which often actually attract less players) seems like folly, from my perspective.

To put this into some context, a player count of 80,000 would put Frostpunk 2 into the top 200 games on Steam when sorted by peak concurrent player count. 100,000 would put it very close to the top 150 and into the company of games like DOOM Eternal, The Witcher 3 and Hades 2. Hell, if you want something more recent, Frostpunk 2’s player count of 35,553 is comparable to the PC port of God of War: Ragnarok, which managed a peak player count of 35,615. I’d say going toe-to-toe with one of the biggest games of the generation is a huge win, even if it is just a PC port of an older title.

Still, it’s staggering to me that the company would face such a huge drop in share value because its game has already broken even and will now generate profit. The first game was supported with several DLC packs, and Frostpunk 2 will probably benefit from the same treatment. But ultimately if you tell investors one thing and then fail to deliver, they are going to take their money elsewhere, if the promise was…over inflated, like I believe it to be here.