This is unheard of for an independent studio in Quebec. In one week, the Montreal studio Red Barrels sold more than 500,000 copies of The Outlast Trials, the new installment in its flagship franchise.
The exploit is all the more notable because it is not a final version, but an “early access” version destined to be improved, offered only in a PC version for $38.99. Launching on May 18 on Steam, The Outlast Trials received a ballot of 10,850 ratings that were rated “very positive”. As of this writing, some 26,000 players are simultaneously struggling online to escape the berserk that populates the game. buyers.
“It’s fun that after having worked so hard, after all the efforts that the team has put into this project for six years, there is a reward that comes,” rejoices Philippe Morin, co-founder and designer of game at Red Barrels.
Red Barrels and its 45 employees know a little about success, with the first two installments of its Outlast franchise having sold some 20 million copies since 2013, grossing $95 million, according to the data provided. by M. Morin. “In one week, The Outlast Trials sold more units than Outlast 2 in one year, and [generated] more revenue than Outlast 1,” he says.
The only independent Quebec studio to navigate these waters is Behavior Interactive, which has a thousand employees and whose game Dead by Daylight attracts 50 million online players. One of the great independent successes of recent years, Ancestors, from the Panache studio founded by Patrice Désilets, took two years after its launch in August 2019 to reach one million units sold.
The Outlast Trials is a hybrid concept, between the game with a completed scenario and the Fortnite platform regularly enriched with new content. If the player who dives there has access to “trials” (trials in English) and a progression until the final confrontation, the course of the game is constantly modified, varies according to the choices of the player and will be fed with novelties in the next years. And if it is possible to play it solo, it is much easier and more rewarding to join an online group so that your character has a chance of success.
“We’re trying to be a hybrid between a structure that promotes replayability and character progression, to evolve it until you reach a point where you deserve to take the final test,” Morin explains.
A technical detail that may seem trivial, offering a cooperative game to all players without a subscription involves an expensive IT infrastructure. A hit like The Outlast Trials is heartening for the studio, but means that after paying their $38.99, the player continues to receive a service they are no longer paying for. “We have servers on Amazon, we’re going to get a nice bill,” laughs Philippe Morin. This is why after the launch of version 1.0, scheduled for the end of the year, revenues must continue to come in. With cosmetics, DLC [additional downloadable content]? We’re going one step at a time. »
In addition to the half-million copies sold, The Outlast Trials has been added to 1.2 million “wishlists” by players who have a good chance of buying the final version, he notes. “The game is going to have a good lifespan. It is estimated that a third of buyers are in the United States, a fifth in China, with a few percentage points of players in Germany, Turkey, Argentina, the United Kingdom and Canada.
