Outriders should have been a cash cow, but it isn't.
More than a year after Outriders came to consoles and PCs, People Can Fly revealed in a recent financial report that it still hasn't seen a dime from Outriders. According to People Can Fly, Square Enix still hasn't released royalties because the "net proceeds from the sale of Outriders were insufficient to recover the costs and expenses incurred by the publisher to develop, distribute, and promote the title."
Of course, things could have changed between then and now as the report only counts the royalties as of December 31. Even so, that's eight full months of turning over zero profit for a game that we previously used as an example of why video game demos work.
The shift from generic sci-fi co-op shooter to a pseudo-live-service game set to get its first major expansion, Worldslayer, later in June, might have caught People Can Fly off guard, but, you have to give the studio credit. It's just a shame that its popularity did not translate into profit for Square Enix and People Can Fly.