Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin is a real-time strategy game by Frontier Developments. It was supposed to be the most ambitious title by the Cambridge, UK-based game developers. But things didn’t go as planned, it instead tanked the shares of the developers.
This real-time strategy title had a poor launch on November 17, 2023, across various platforms. According to Steam DB, the game recorded an all-time peak of 1,572 players. Meanwhile, there are only 87 playing the game at the moment of writing this article. The game received a mixed review from users on Steam.
Shares in Frontier Developments fell by 20% on Monday after the company cut its annual revenue guidance following a weak launch for real-time strategy game Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin.https://t.co/6AVqO4k9k1 pic.twitter.com/WPwEoizmFw
— VGC (@VGC_News) November 27, 2023
But things weren’t only limited to a poor launch, as it also affected the British developers. Frontier’s shares plunged by almost 20 percent because of the release. Frontier appears to have reduced its revenue guidance for the current fiscal year from around £108 million to between £80-£95 million.
Despite these setbacks, Frontier won’t stop supporting its current titles. They will continue developing new content, including premium DLCs, for Realms of Ruin and the F1 Manager series. The UK developers are going into a rebuilding phase. So, they are also conducting an “organizational review” to manage their recruitment and expenditure cut. Frontier expects to at least break even in FY25.
How does a weak game launch affect developers?
Although Frontier Developments is taking the poor launch for Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin like champs, it still affects every game developer, whether big or small. After all, they invest a huge workforce, who spend numerous hours working to create a video game. There are many studios that spend hundreds of millions on creating one game. So how they perform in the market is important for their creators.
A game developer usually makes a profit from a game’s sales. If a game has a poor launch, it gets a lot of negative reviews from users. That leads to a fall in game sales, making it harder for the developers to recoup the original budget.
These losses mean all the time and resources spent on a game go to waste. It also results in a decline of the developer’s shares, as seen with Frontier after Realms of Ruin’s poor launch. Sometimes these failures lead to game studios shutting down. That’s why studios would prefer to avoid such circumstances.
