Expedition 33 sold 3.3 million copies in 33 days. Despite that, the devs don't want to make „bigger games”
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has another reason to celebrate. However, great sales of the French jRPG will not result in increased employment in the studio.
This is how dreams come true - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has crossed the threshold of 3.3 million copies sold and did so 33 days after the release. Sandfall Interactive Studio boasted about the results in a post shared on the official game account on X.
Turn-based RPG from France had an excellent launch. It took just one day for the game to sell 500 thousand copies. After 3 days, it was already a million, and less than 2 weeks later, another one joined.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 devs remain faithful to their ideals
Success could prompt developers to expand the team and start working on a sequel. However, François Meurisse, the game's developer and co-founder of Sandfall Interactive, assured in an interview with the GamesIndustry.biz editorial team that the creators don't intend to change their approach.
For now, our vision would be to stick to a close team working in the same city with less than 50 people on board, focusing on one project after another, and keeping this agility, and this creative strength, and smartness of a small group of passionate people wanting to do something big - said Meurisse.
The developer is also unsure about the need to make bigger games. In his opinion, the strength of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lies in respecting the player's time. As Meurisse emphasized, the title doesn't require spending 500 hours in front of the screen, yet it offers plenty of activities and satisfaction from the game. Thanks to this, the game isn't overly "inflated." However, it is still unknown what path the studio, which wanted to create a DLC, will take, but after a huge success, it must verify its previous plans.
The head of Pocketpair studio, responsible for the popular survival sandbox Palworld, also spoke in a similar tone. In March, Takuro Mizobe confessed that he doesn't want to create projects from the AAA segment. According to John "Bucky" Buckley - the game's community manager - this is also the reason why the studio doesn't plan to massively hire a larger number of employees. As this could "affect the work culture in the company."
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was released on April 24th this year on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X. Since the release, the game has been available to Game Pass users, which has definitely contributed to its impressive reach.
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