The 2022 reboot of the Saints Row series was far from being a commercial success for Embracer, especially given its $100 million budget. According to new information, the game has sold less than 2 million copies.
The figures come from a LinkedIn profile of former Volition community manager Tyrin Stevenson (first spotted by Timur222 on X).
Stevenson described Saints Row (2022) as a “AAA game that attracted over 1 million players and sold 1.7 million units.”
Saints Row (2022) sold 1.7 million units. pic.twitter.com/yoLZU9ckxF
— Timur222 (@bogorad222) May 15, 2024
According to Volition, the game attracted over 1 million players between its launch in August 2022 to October 2022. Analysts previously estimated that Saints Row had to sell around 2 million copies to break even.
However, neither the studio nor its parent company have updated the figures since October 2022. In separate financial reports, Embracer Group only stated that Saints Row’s sales were in line with management expectations and that the game had a low ROI, meaning it struggled to recoup its investment.
Although there is no official information about the commercial performance of the Saints Row reboot remain undisclosed, here are the sales figures for other titles in the series:
- Saints Row IV — over 1 million copies sold in its first week (lifetime sales remain undisclosed);
- Saints Row: The Third — 3.8 million copies sold in two months (lifetime sales — over 5.5 million units);
- Saints Row 2 — 2.8 million copies sold from October 14, 2008 to March 31, 2009 (lifetime sales — over 3.4 million units);
- Saints Row — over 1 million copies sold from August to the end of 2006 (lifetime sales — over 2 million units).
This likely makes the Saints Row reboot the worst-performing game in the franchise.
Last September, Embracer Group shut down Volition as part of its cost-cutting restructuring program, which eventually resulted in nearly 1,500 layoffs across the holding company’s various subsidiaries. Earlier this year, a group of Volition veterans founded Shapeshifter Games, a new co-development studio focused on working with other developers and publishers.