It appears that the sequel to Pillars of Eternity, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, has sold poorly. According to reports, the game has only sold 110K copies worldwide until September 2018. And while the WRPG market is a niche one, this number feels really low and may explain the rumours that surfaced about Microsoft purchasing Obsidian.

Dylan Holmes has invested $1000 in getting Pillars of Eternity 2 made and according to the first FIG figures, the game has sold 110K copies until September 2018.

?

We now have a sense of just how badly #deadfire sold. I invested $1000 in getting it made, and the first dividents from that are in. For all sales from launch through September – the period when any game makes the vast majority of its money – I got $192.67… — Dylan Holmes (@Aerothorn) November 7, 2018

…the "breakeven" for investors was about 580,000 sales at $50. This tells us they sold about 110,000. RPGs of this sort do have long tails, but at this juncture there is no way investors are recouping the investment. — Dylan Holmes (@Aerothorn) November 7, 2018

As said, Obsidian aimed to sell 580K copies at $50 in order to break even; a huge number especially when talking about a WRPG that targets a small group of gamers. This basically means that Pillars of Eternity 2 flopped really hard.

Yeah, I thought as much when I backed! The question is not why Obsidian failed that so much as why they thought that was a likely target. It's possible they *didn't* think it was likely, and structured things such that they'd never have to pay back Fig investors (or Fig itself!) — Dylan Holmes (@Aerothorn) November 8, 2018