GDANSK :Shares in Polish video game maker 11 bit studios slumped 38 per cent on Monday to the bottom of Poland’s mid-cap index after the number of players of the company’s flagship “Frostpunk 2” game failed to meet market expectations shortly after its release.
Frostpunk 2, the sequel to BAFTA-nominated society survival city-builder “Frostpunk”, was released on Friday evening.
The highest number of concurrent players of the game on the Steam platform reached 35,533 on Saturday.
“We expected a significantly higher players peak in the 80,000-100,000 range, so we consider 35.5k as a negative surprise,” said Erste Group analyst Piotr Bogusz, pointing to an eight times stronger “wishlist” – players who had expressed an interest in the game’s release – for Frostpunk 2 than the original at launch.
“Relatively poor ratings may also affect the purchasing decisions of players who have Frostpunk 2 on their wishlist,” he added.
Bogusz said the share of positive ratings of the game fell to 67 per cent on Sunday from 83 per cent on Friday.
“A drop in the average rating below the 80 per cent threshold affects the game’s visibility on Steam, which could translate into sales,” he said.
On Monday, the game had a ‘mostly positive’ rating on Steam with 71 per cent of the 4,986 user reviews positive and praising, among other aspects, the graphics and strategic depth of the sequel.
Negative comments mentioned poor optimisation and less immersion in the game compared to the previous release.