On August 2^nd I got an email informing me that my Fig investment into Pillars of Eternity 2 is completed, and the end return is 52% (IE, for every $1000 invested, people only got back $520, so every share lost $480). Not great.

The investment is over because Microsoft bought out Obsidian (the devs) and the publishing rights to PoE2. For the rights to PoE2, Microsoft paid $315,000. This all suggests that PoE2 didn’t sell very well, and that Microsoft doesn’t foresee future sales being awesome either. Considering I made this post about PoE2 and Fig, yea, I’m a bit surprised at how poorly it all went (the money doesn’t matter because I’m still Darkfall rich, but it is a bit of an ego hit).

If I had to guess why, the #1 thing was the setting. A classic fantasy setting of castles, villages, etc, like what PoE1 had, is going to perform better most times than a high-seas/pirate setting. Personally I liked PoE2 a lot, but I can fully see why casual RPG fans might glance at it and decide to pass. Also while I thought PoE2 was good overall, it did have some controversial/questionable features, mainly the ship-to-ship combat. That’s a bad area to have people question in a pirate/sea themed RPG….

All of that said, the 52% return suggests PoE2 sold less than half of what PoE1 sold, which is pretty bad. As the linked post states, all PoE2 had to do was come close to PoE1 to be a good investment, and while the Microsoft buyout likely cuts some future return out, I doubt even without Microsoft that PoE2 would have ever broke even, regardless of how many years passed. It didn’t help that the DLC for PoE2 was, at best, very meh. Maybe the poor sales hurt the plans for the DLC, but it’s not that hard to release passable extra content for an RPG like this; just give it an additional ‘chapter’ after the ending, ala Baldur’s Gate 2.

So end my Fig investment. This failure doesn’t sour me on the whole platform, but it will now take a title that REALLY grabs my attention to get me to invest.