Prague The developer Warhorse Studios, best known for the creation of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, made a $ 210 million profit in the 15 months ending March this year. Last year, it had a profit of approximately 522 million crowns, according to the company’s annual report placed in the Collection of Documents. Revenues from the sale of products and services amounted to CZK 462.5 million, compared to more than a billion in 2018. According to the company’s director Martin Frývaldský, the economic results correspond to the standard cycle of game development and sales.
“The development of the Kingdom Come: Deliverance game takes several years, while interest in the game culminates in the few weeks and months after its release. Still, Kingdom Come: Deliverance did extremely well in 2019, thanks to which we were able to announce more than three million units sold recently. Although we are not planning any news for 2020, due to the loss of opportunities to spend time with other types of entertainment, we see a continuing interest in Kingdom Come, which is very pleasing, “said Frývaldský. The company had an average of 28 employees in the last period, last year there were 18 of them.
Last year, the Prague company was bought by Koch Media, a company belonging to the Swedish publishing company THQ Nordic. The majority owner of the studio was formerly the financier and businessman Zdeněk Bakala, the other owners were the founders Daniel Vávra and Martin Klíma. The companies did not disclose the details of the transaction; according to the iHNED.cz server, Koch Media was to pay EUR 42.8 million for the studio at the time, ie about CZK 1.1 billion.
Bakala sells the creator of the successful Czech game Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The new owner will be the Swedes |
Kingdom Come: Deliverance was released on February 13, 2018 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. About a million units have been sold a week since its release. According to the creators, the total cost of developing the game was in the order of hundreds of millions of crowns, which makes the title one of the most expensive Czech games. Roughly 1.1 million pounds (about 31.5 million crowns) the creators received from fans through crowdfunding. Part of the money was provided by Bakala.
The turnover of Czech computer game companies reached 4.5 billion crowns last year, an increase of a fifth year-on-year. This year, it will increase to five billion crowns, according to a study on the state of the gaming industry, published by the Association of Czech Game Developers. This year’s data was collected from February to April, and may eventually be even greater, because the sale of computer games, according to the chairman of the association Pavel Barák, was successful due to the coronavirus epidemic. There are 110 companies in the Czech Republic that develop games, and according to the association, production is many times higher than the turnover of Czech film and television production.
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