Despite Controversies, ‘Kingdom Come: Deliverance II’ Smashes First Day Sales Milestone And Posts All-Time Peak Of More Than 250,000 Players
The people yearn for the battleground and a good mug of beer – or at least, that’s what one can presume given the absolutely massive launch day popularity enjoyed by developer Warhorse Studios’ newly-released Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, which was purchased by over one million players in its first 24-hours on sale.
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Having launched for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC platforms on February 4th, it would only take less than a day for Warhose Studios to announce the sales milestone, writing via their official X account, “Over a million of you have stepped into our world. We’re beyond grateful for your support – thank you for making #KCD2 a triumph!”
This rapid success was even seen in the game’s concurrent player numbers, with over 110,000 concurrent players trekking out across medieval Bohemia just an hour after launch.
For comparison, the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance had an all-time concurrent Steam peak player count of just over 96,000 – and according to Jamie Hore of PCGamesN, the sequel smashed this record approximately 50 minutes, with its above player count being achieved roughly ten minutes later.
And it seems as if the uphill ride is far from over, as of this article’s writing on Monday evening, KCD2 currently holds 106,643 consecutive players and an all-time peak of 256,206.
And while these numbers are undoubtedly impressive to audiences, they’re even considered surprising by the game’s creative director, Daniel Vávra, who expressed as much during a recent interview with Šimon Felenda of the Czech news site Seznamzpravy.
“Before we started sales, the studio was betting on how many copies we would sell,” said the creative director (as machine translated by DeepL). And I won. I missed by 300 units. We’re happy with the numbers, and if the trend continues at the same pace, it will be great.”
To this end, Vávra additionally noted that the sales of KDC2 have already paid for its development costs, with Felenda reporting that, at the time of their interview, the game had already made 2.26 billion Kč in revenue (over $93.3 million USD) and 793 million Kč in net profit (over $32.768 million USD).
Of course, more than just the topic of KDC2‘s sales, Vávra’s interview was used as an opportunity for Felenda to press the Warhorse Studios dev on a variety of topics related to the game’s development.
To this end, when asked about the recent delay of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, whose initial push-back release date of February 14th was originally shared with KDC2 before Warhorse Studios decided to better their sales odds by changing their schedule, the creative director admitted that the entire situation had turned out to be a major boon.
“We pushed the launch of Kingdom Come forward a week to February 4 because of Assassin’s Creed, and I think they may have pushed the launch of the new installment in the series further because of us,” he said. “Although Ubisoft is much bigger than Warhorse and what we consider a success are small numbers for them. Anyway, the postponement is great news for us.”
Unsurprisingly, at one point during the interview, Vávra was asked about KDC2 being banned in Saudi Arabia due to the game’s featuring of an optional gay romance scene between the player character Henry and his brother-in-arms, Hans Capon.
Asked whether his decision to add this option meant he had truly “succumbed to woke pressure” like his critics have claimed, the creative director balked, “Whereas the progressive left used to accuse us of being far-right, today the far-right accuses us of being left-wing.”
“According to these views, I was allegedly paid by BlackRock to put homosexuals in the game,” he recapped. “These people are absolutely deranged, and even if I were to march around in a Nazi uniform right now, they would think I was a progressive leftist. The truth is that I had absolute freedom in my work.”
Due to the inclusion of this optional gay scene as well as the described ‘flippant’ attitude some claim Vávra took with his responses to critics, KDC2 has found itself at the center of a firestorm of controversy.
For a further breakdown of this situation, we recommend checking out our very own BIC News Desk’s coverage of KDC2, as well as the relevant discussion on the most recent episode of our Zero One podcast episode hlivestream.
Ultimately, while players may spend the foreseeable future battling about their read of KDC2‘s content, it can at least be recognized that Vávra and Warhorse Studios’ efforts at the very least rubbed dirt in the eyes of their more greedy industry peers.
During the company’s recent earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson claimed that their own medieval-European set Dragon Age: The Veilguard had gone down in flames not because of its quality, but rather the fact that it “did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market” due to its lack of “shared world features” (in other words, live service systems).
Yet despite this absurd assertion, the very same day, the single-player focused, live-service devoid KDC2 made its debut and proved itself one of the most successful launches in recent years – in doing so proving that what players really want right now is a satisfying, non-multiplayer experience.
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