Isometric RPGs were never mainstream. That isn’t to say that a lot of them are flops. Quite the contrary. While games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 crossed the 1 million mark mere months after release, niche titles like Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity were successful in their own rights and sold enough copies to warrant sequels.
Unfortunately, if reports are to be believed, Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire wasn’t lucky enough to be among the isometric success stories. According to FIG figures (the crowdfunding platform used to fund Deadfire), the game has only sold 110K copies worldwide as of September 2018. While it is true that games like these benefit from long-term sales, the sales figures are still atrociously low for the company to break even.
This information comes from a backer of the game who looked into FIG figures and went on to post his findings on Twitter. According to him, the “breakeven” for investors was about 580,000 sales at $50 and there is no way that the investors are recouping the investment at this point. This will considerably set back Obsidian who had managed to land on their feet after the Kickstarter boom.
However, the lack of sales figures isn’t representative of the quality of the game by any means. Deadfire was an improvement over its predecessor in almost every way and went on to garner a score of 9 in our own review.