Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader tops 1 million copies sold, selling faster than previous Owlcat games
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader has reached a new impressive milestone in just over a year after launch. Owlcat’s latest CRPG has now sold over 1 million copies globally.
Rogue Trader is available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, but it is unclear how sales are split between platforms (we’d bet Steam accounts for the bulk of the total).
It crossed the 500k mark in its first month, meaning it took the game around a year to sell another 500k units.
“Reaching such a milestone in one year with our third game is a sign for us that we, as developers, are working in the right direction,” Owlcat studio head Oleg Shpilchevskiy said in a statement, adding that the team will do its best to “bring more stories to the endless universe of Warhammer 40,000.”
Abelard, announce that over 1 million Lord Captains have claimed their Warrant of Trade and ventured boldly into the Koronus Expanse! The Emperor protects! pic.twitter.com/VSRYpHO6p7
— Owlcat Games (@OwlcatGames) January 21, 2025
Rogue Trader currently has a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, with 83% of the 18.8k reviews being positive.
The Void Shadows expansion, launched last September, received 90% positive reviews. The studio is now working on the second DLC, Lex Imperialis, which is expected to come out later this year.
Overall, Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader is selling faster than previous games from Owlcat. Pathfinder: Kingmaker has sold 1 million copies globally in almost three years since its September 2018 launch. Its sequel, Wrath of the Righteous, crossed the 1 million mark in less than two years since its release in September 2021.
Owlcat doesn’t disclose budgets of its games or its licensing agreements with IP owners like Paizo or Games Workshop, but the studio’s founder and CEO Oleg Shpilchevskiy discussed production costs of CRPGs last year. The Pathfinder series and Rogue Trader are considered AA, which Owlcat defines as projects with budgets in the range of $5-15 million and expected revenue of $50 million (note that other companies, especially those based in the US, may have much higher costs even for games of similar scope).
Owlcat is now working on four games based on existing IPs, and one of them is described as a higher-budget and more ambitious RPG built with Unreal Engine 5. However, Shpilchevskiy noted that the studio still “can’t invest, say, $200 million to make BG3 — we don’t have that kind of money yet. And I don’t know of any company in the world that would invest so much money in a CRPG.”
Last year, the Rogue Trader developer also expanded its business to publishing by signing deals with two studios: Emotion Spark Studio, which is developing narrative-driven RPG Rue Valley, and Another Angle Games, which is making turn-based tactical RPG Shadow of the Road.