GDANSK (Reuters) – Shares in Polish video game maker 11 bit studios slumped 38% on Monday to the bottom of Poland’s mid-cap index after the number of players of the company’s flagship game “Frostpunk 2” failed to meet market expectations shortly after its release.
Frostpunk 2, the sequel to BAFTA-nominated society survival city-builder Frostpunk, was released on Friday evening.
The highest number of concurrent players of the game on the Steam platform reached 35,533 on Saturday.
“We expected a significantly higher players peak in the 80,000-100,000 range, so we consider 35.5k as a negative surprise,” said Erste Group analyst Piotr Bogusz, citing “relatively poor” player reviews and the possibility that some potential gamers could be accessing Frostpunk 2 via Microsoft’s “Game Pass” subscription service as reasons affecting the peak number on Steam.
“Nevertheless, given Frostpunk 2’s almost 8x larger wishlist than Frostpunk at launch, we expected a higher players peak,” Bogusz added, referring to those who had expressed an interest in the game’s release.
(Reporting by Adrianna Ebert; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
Comments