Warhorse Studios' long-awaited historical open-world RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 only just came to Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PS5 earlier this week, but in just a single day after launch, it broke even with development costs and is now turning a profit for the studio and publisher Deep Silver.
That news comes from KCD2 creative director Daniel Vávra, who confirmed the achievement in a new interview with the Czech news site SZ Byznys. Reportedly, the medieval adventure title "cost around a billion [Czech] crowns" (roughly $41.5 million USD by current exchange rates) to make; the original 2018 game, by comparison, cost 750 million crowns (about $31 million) and has made 793 million crowns in profit since its release.
"Before the launch, we at the studio made a bet on how many copies we would sell. And I won. I missed by 300 copies. We are satisfied with the numbers, and if the trend continues at the same pace, it will be great," Vávra commented. Earlier this week, he said something similar on X (Twitter): "Fun fact: A week ago I made a prediction about how many copies we will sell on first day. I was off by 104 units. My boss was off by 100 thousand units :) I should be an analyst or something :)"
Vávra also explained that the sequel's release date was moved forward so that it wouldn't be so close to the original February 14 launch time for Ubisoft's new action RPG Assassin's Creed Shadows. However, when Assassin's Creed was recently delayed to March 20, it gave Warhorse's new game a huge window to thrive in.
"We moved the launch of Kingdom Come forward a week to February 4 because of Assassin's Creed, and I think they may have pushed the premiere of the new installment in the series back because of us," he said. "Although Ubisoft is much bigger than Warhorse and what we consider a success is small numbers for them. In any case, the postponement is great news for us."
It's impressive that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 managed to pay for itself 24 hours after release, though it's not terribly surprising given yesterday's news of the RPG selling over one million copies on launch day. KCD2 also held the highest position on Steam's Top Sellers list for a few days both before and after it came out, and has only been knocked into second place by the upcoming strategy game Civilization 7 just this morning.
All of those sales — as well as tons of positive reviews and scores for the game from critics — led to KCD2 blowing up the Steam charts when it released. Its momentum hasn't slowed down, either; in fact, the game actually hit a new concurrent player count peak of 185,582 on Valve's PC gaming platform just a few hours ago (according to SteamDB data), and it's expected to soar past the 200,000 milestone this weekend.
I've been following Warhorse and Kingdom Come since I was a 16-year-old in high school and the franchise was a 2014 Kickstarter project, so it's wonderful to see the studio and the series succeed as much as it has so far with KCD2. As I wrote in my review, it's "the perfect RPG sequel," and with its gargantuan reactive open world, excellent story, gorgeous visuals, and well over 100+ hours of content to enjoy, it's the frontrunner for Game of the Year 2025.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is out now on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (via Steam, the Epic Games Store, and GOG), and PS5. It's undoubtedly one of the best Xbox games and best PC games of the year, so if you enjoy RPGs, definitely consider picking it up (it's just $46.19 on CDKeys, which is an amazing deal).
