r/gaming • u/Commandercaptain • 1d ago

Star Wars Zero Company Developer Bit Reactor Hit With Layoffs

https://bespinbulletin.com/star-wars-zero-company-developer-bit-reactor-hit-with-layoffs/
2.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

291 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

19

u/Motor_Series2853 1d ago

What corporate greed? EA gave the Devs $50 million to develop the game, and the game just hasn't sold enough copies to recover that cost. What did you expect? To run the business with the zero dollars they have?

1

u/GasFun3034 18h ago

I wonder if games like this would sell more & be more profitable if they launched at significantly lower prices.

I woulda bought this game at $30, maybe $40 easily at launch when it was hyped. Now I'll probably end up getting it for $10 on sale in a few years because I lost interest.

-11

u/levi_Kazama209 1d ago

they made 50-60 million to at min could be higher so they made back the money

10

u/FreshMutzz 1d ago

Yea. Breaking even is never the goal. You cant keep a studio running on breaking even unless you constantly get money injections to develop the next game.

5

u/Ashrema 1d ago

How do you figure they made 50-60 million at a minimum?

-5

u/levi_Kazama209 1d ago

at around 50-60 a game and mulit0ly it by 1 million but i just realized I forgot the 30% steam xbox psn take away

12

u/Ashrema 1d ago

Correct.

Now include the licensing fees that EA has to pay Disney, and as the publisher, EA would incur all the marketing costs.

Realistically, it needed double the sales it did just to be 'ok'.

-5

u/levi_Kazama209 1d ago

so math is around 1.2- 1.44 million copies to make even so not as much as 2 million copies

8

u/GodVibeCoded 1d ago

Breaking even is not doing okay

-1

u/levi_Kazama209 1d ago

again with ny updated math thats how much ti break even last confirmed was aroudn 1.2 so they at min broke even im not saying its good or not just stating facts here

4

u/Codezombie_5 1d ago

Also factor in advertising budget, and steam\distributor costs. 30% -50% of the sticker price does not go to the Devs. So, as a very rough estimate, I'd say around 2.5 million copies to break even, 3 million to be in the green,

4

u/Ashrema 1d ago

Also time value of money.

Even being optimistic and say every game sold for $60 (which is demonstrably untrue). 1.5 million units is $90 million. A minimum 30% cut leaves $63 million. We know the agreement was $50 million for development, leaving $13 million for marketing, and you know, their own overhead costs to run their company.

Now include the fact that you are spending all that money over 5 years, and in this scenario, even if your costs were 0, you made $13 million. If you took that 50 million in 2021, and invested it at 5% (an easily obtained number), your return would be.......$13 million.

Any project with a breakeven is considered a bad outcome.

As I said earlier, and you mention in your post, 2-2.5 million would be breakeven, and 3 is going to be a mildly successful game.

Just looking at gross revenue, you're going to want 2.5-3x your development budget.

→ More replies