Didn't they make 10-100s millions of dollars on this? Pays a lot of salaries while you make new paid content.
EDIT : They made at least 12 million sales on steam, and had 7 million players on Xbox, which may be Gamepass, but still makes them money.
So at $30, that's 66million from steam minus 30% for steams cut, so they banked 44 million at least.
They can pay 440 devs 100k for at least a year. I assume their team is a bit smaller than that, so they likely have years of runway. Linkedin lists size as between 50-200 in japan, so that likely means they are making $50-70k, and there are likely more than 100 devs. I would guess they have a 4 year runway from Steam sales, and maybe 1-2 year from Gamepass.
According to their careers page, they have about 60 employees. And, knowing japanese game dev salaries, a lot of those devs (excluding senior devs) probably make around 30-50k a year depending on seniority unless it's a unicorn company.
Anyone know if The Finals counts as a "live service" game? It's free to play and I think it's fantastic - both the game and the fact it's free.
I just don't play games enough to justify the huge asking prices anymore. The last games I paid for were COD MW2 and Cyberpunk and I doubt I'll ever drop $70+ for a game again, especially when there's games like splitgate and whatnot that are free (not that I ever tried the new one. lol)
I would definitely classify The Finals as a live service. The way I see it, any game that is designed to be "never-ending", and have a constant stream of new content (free or paid) would fall under this category of game.
I wouldn't say it's a requirement for all live service games, but I'd also say that anything that uses "seasonal" content models would also be considered a live service.
Yes, it's a live service game. Most major free to play games are. Instead of selling you the game or selling adspace to advertisers, they sell you bits and pieces of the game like skins and such.