Divinity: Original Sin is Larian’s Fastest-selling Game

Talking with Eurogamer, Larian’s honcho Swen Vincke revealed that Divinity: Original Sin is the studio’s fastest-selling game ever, and well on its way to profitability with 160,000 copies sold so far (it’s not clear if this figure includes the Early Access and Kickstarter copies or not). According to him, the feedback and word of mouth Larian received from backers and early access purchasers was key to the game’s success:

To work out how much money Larian has made from Divnity so far, it’s not as simple as taking the revenue from the game then taking out Valve’s standard 30 per cent cut.

For Larian, which as a Belgian studio works in euros, its rule of thumb is to take the dollars generated then half that figure it to arrive at a euro amount. So, if a game makes $100,000, the studio makes €50,000.

Divinity: Original Sin costs $39.99. If it’s sold 160,000 copies, that’s $6.39m in revenue. Half that and we get €3.19m (£2.5m), which means the project is well on its way to breaking even.

Vincke put Divinity: Original Sin’s success down to its Steam Early Access and Kickstarter communities.

“The feedback we received from them was worth its weight in gold,” he said. “It’s almost a co-development between us and them, because they pointed out things we were doing wrong, and encouraged us to expand on the areas we were doing right. As a result you get a group intelligence applied to a game. It’s always much better than a single person.”

This, coupled with strong word of mouth, is keeping Divinity at the top of Steam’s sales charts, ahead of the likes of DayZ and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

“It’s word of mouth that is driving Original Sin right now,” Vincke said. “We were late with our game, working on it until the last day, so we don’t even have reviews out there. We have exactly two ads we did with the last of our money. It was definitely not marketing doing it.”