Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios shared some fascinating news about the game's future today. In a blog post celebrating the game's debut on Xbox Game Pass and Electronic Arts' EA Play subscription service, the company announced that going forward, all revenue from sales of the fantasy-themed first-person shooter will go straight into its own pockets.
It seems EA Games won't be collecting any revenue from those purchases. Ascendant Studios will obviously still owe platform fees to services like Steam and the PlayStation Store.
"For the foreseeable future, 100 percent of the net revenue from Immortals of Aveum purchases goes directly to our studio," the company said. "If you grab the game at full price or on sale, refer a friend to check it out, post content on social or leave a review, it all goes towards supporting our studio and helps make it possible for us to create more games in the future. Your support truly matters."
It's extremely rare to see a major publisher like EA shift the terms of a publishing deal like this. The point of publishing a game is to collect a share of the revenue at point of sale. Ascendant Studios may have been able to negotiate such compensation in exchange for bringing the game to more subscription platforms.
In the same announcement, Ascendant Studios said that over 1.3 million people have played Immortals of Aveum to date. That number would include both existing sales of the game and players who acquired it when it hit PlayStation Plus in April. It also may count the number of people playing the free demo on Steam.
The business operations of Ascendant Studio have remained in the news months after the game released. The developer laid off half of its employees in 2023 after the game's slow launch, and then furloughed "a majority" of workers in April 2024.
It doesn't paint a pretty financial picture for the independent studio. As the company struggled, CEO Bret Robbins said the game may have suffered in sales due to its launch price point of $70.
Getting to mark down more revenue every time someone purchases Immortals of Aveum is good news for Ascendant Studios. Hopefully it can help the developer rebuild from an extremely rough year.
Update 5/24: It's come to our attention that Ascendant Studios' blog post has been updated to remove all mention of the net revenue sharing plan with EA.
Game Developer has reached out to EA and Ascendant Studios and will update this story when a response is given.
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