The circulation of Vampyr exceeded 2 million copies sold, and Twin Mirror recaptured only 75% of the costs — the main thing from the Dontnod report

Dontnod Entertainment has published a business review for 2021. The company almost didn’t talk about finances, but it shared the indicators of some games.

Twin Mirror
The French company expects its royalties for fiscal 2021 to amount to €5.7 million, which is 52% more than a year ago.

In total, Dontnod should have €57 million at its disposal by the end of 2021 (the figures from the report are preliminary, until the company conducted a final audit).

The key driver of royalty growth was the games released before the reporting period. About them — below.

• Vampyr is one of the most financially successful Dontnod games. To date, it has sold over 2 million copies. Also, the title was taken away for free 8 million times during the distribution in the Epic Games Store. Recall that the release of Vampyr took place in June 2018.
• Another commercially successful game is the first Life is Strange. But Dontnod does not disclose its indicators.
• At the same time, Twin Mirror is not doing so well. The game was released in 2020, but since then it has recaptured only 75% of the invested funds. According to the company’s estimates, this is due to the global saturation of the market by the end of 2021 and the sudden closure of access to China. Nevertheless, Twin Mirror “made a significant contribution” to the company’s royalty income.

Dontnod is currently working on eight new projects. Six of them are worked on by the company’s internal teams, two more are handled by third-party studios, and Dontnod acts as their publisher. Note that two third—party games are Gerda: A Flame in Winter from the Danish PortaPlay and an as yet unannounced project created by the Belgian Studio Tolima.

The company also assured that it plans to accelerate the development of Project 8, a game that it is working on together with Focus Interactive.

All eight games are expected to be released between 2022 and 2025.

“In four years, our royalties have increased fivefold and reached a record level in 2021,” said Oskar Gilbert, Chairman and CEO of Dontnod. “This dynamic is largely due to the success of Life is Strange and Vampyr, from which we are going to continue to benefit. Therefore, we will increase the volume of investments in the development of new games and will continue to support both our offices in Montreal and Paris. At the same time, we will continue to explore opportunities to transfer our experience in the field of co-production of games and their publication.”