Devolver Digital Loses 45% On The Stock Market

Our gaming industry has a really wide scope of developers and publishers. Most of the players are only aware of big hitters like EA, Activision or Ubisoft. But, smaller indie developers are the ones which actually make the industry what it is.

Studios which release AA titles and indie games make a much higher percentage of annual releases. We only get a couple dozen major AAA games per year so these developers are the soul of video games. A very prominent publisher in the indie gaming world is Devolver Digital.

It is responsible for many popular games like Fall Guys, Shadow Warrior and Gato Roboto. Devolver Digital has had many successful releases and is a pioneer in indie gaming. However, it has been going through some tough times recently and financial results tells us exactly that. 

Now, Devolver Digital has lost 45% of its value on the stock market following a poor start to the year. Value of the share has gone down to 80p on the Alternative Investment Market in London. Seeing how the starting price of the share was 157p, the value has dipped by almost half in a high underperformance. 

Investors of Devolver Digital are obviously very disappointed after this poor start to the year. The publisher has had a very rough first 5 months since the start of this year. Sales of new releases have been lower than what the initial expectation was from the new titles. 

Weird West and Shadow Warrior 3 are the most recent releases from Devolver Digital. But, these game haven’t been up to the usual standards and their low Metacritic ratings are proof of that. Shadow Warrior 3 got an average score of 71 from critics and 6.2 from players and that obviously impacted sales.

As a result of this average critical reception of its new games the performance has been much worse than 2021. Corporate costs this year have also been higher than expected so it’s been a very troubling year so far. Hence, Devolver Digital has lowered its annual revenue prediction to somewhere between $130 Million to $140 Million. 

Even with this really bad start, all isn’t doom and gloom for the US publisher. Devolver Digital has almost 10 to 15 new titles coming out very soon and that includes popular titles like Return to Monkey Island. We will all be hoping for a strong comeback in the 2nd part of 2022 for the publisher and with the games it has in store its very possible.