The survival sandbox ROKH suspended development back in July, and fans have questions about why. It’s easy to look at the early access title and see it as a blatant cash grab, and so the development team has taken a rather unusual step in disclosing the game’s entire financial life. It turns out that the game cost a total of $2 million to develop for early access release, and to date the game has sold only 7171 copies, which – when fees and refunds and such are counted – didn’t even make a tenth of the development costs back.
It’s an interesting dissection of the finances behind game development as well as what the game looked like to the people working on it; the title was definitely not successful, and there’s no ambiguity in the fact that its lack of financial success both makes it unattractive to new investors and non-viable as a continued investment for the team. This is even after the team’s failed Kickstarter attempt to keep the game moving forward. Yes, it’s a little dismal, but if you’ve ever been curious about what the finances for these projects look like behind the scene, this is the perfect chance to find it out.
And hey, if you think that this transparency was the sort of thing you’d like to support, the team is working on a new game now.
