perelesoq: Torn Away adventure game has failed, the studio is in limbo
Torn Away is an adventure game that tells about the journey of a ten—year-old girl from Germany home during World War II. Although the game received 96% positive reviews on Steam and 85 out of 100 on Metacritic, its launch turned into a failure.
Artem Koblov, founder and creative director of perelesoq Studio, wrote in a blog on DTF about the fate of Torn Away and its team.
The main thing of the material:
- by the release on September 29, Torn Away had collected 18 thousand vishlist;
- On the first day, the game sold 504 copies on Steam and 50 copies on VK Play. The game currently sells 2,178 copies on Steam and 318 copies on VK Play;
- The majority of Steam sales came from Russia (49%), Turkey (9%) and Kazakhstan (7%);
- perelesoq expected to sell 1,800-3,600 copies from the vishlist alone in the first week and get a conversion rate of 10-20%. But in the end, the conversion rate was 2-3% in the first week. Today it is 3.6%;
- the gross revenue of the Steam version of Torn Away is $15,898. The gross revenue of the VK Play version is 170,115 rubles;
- The developers distributed about 1,250 keys to streamers and the media, but only 10% of those who received the keys made reviews of Torn Away.
- according to the developers, the game could have failed for four reasons:
- People are tired of the topic of war;
- the game cost more than people were willing to pay for it in the current economic situation (Torn Away sells for 550 rubles);
- the main audience of the game is residents of post—Soviet countries, and many of them cannot make purchases on Steam and are not yet used to VK Play;
- lack of marketing budget.
- On October 28, perelesoq was contacted by the main investor and informed that he was no longer ready to support the studio. As Koblov clarified, he refused to cooperate not because of the poor sales of Torn Away, but "in general because of the situation of recent years and the specifics of the industry";
- The studio is almost out of money. She may have been working for the last month. Nevertheless, perelesoq has no plans to drop support for Torn Away in the near future. Also, the remaining money will be enough for her to fulfill all agreements with partners.
