I just can’t wrap my head around how a brand-new, visually stunning game with 93% positive Steam reviews completely sank into oblivion. Eriksholm’s flop is downright painful. Despite favorable press, player numbers are abysmal just a week after release.
The last few years have been downright brutal for many game developers, but it’s long been said that this is a tough industry where very few get the success they deserve. Sadly, today is not about a triumph, but the opposite: the impressive Eriksholm has crashed headlong into reality, recording shockingly low player numbers on Steam—numbers that don’t match its high production values.
Ask anyone in your gamer circle, and odds are they have no clue what Eriksholm even is. That’s the real problem: no one knows it exists… and even fewer are playing. This, despite a 93% positive Steam rating and a fair amount of support from the gaming press (around 80% on Metacritic, though a bit less enthusiastically). The numbers, however, are alarming.
According to data from Gamestar via SteamDB, Eriksholm didn’t even break 500 concurrent players at its launch peak. That’s dire. Even among niche stealth titles, Shadow Gambit peaked at 3,930 players—and the studio shut down anyway due to bleak prospects. Commandos Origins didn’t exactly set the world on fire either but still reached 2,296 simultaneous players. In that context, Eriksholm’s launch is worrying, to say the least.
High Production Values, Niche Audience
It’s almost surreal just how good Eriksholm looks for a game aimed squarely at a niche audience. As my colleague Alejandro Pascual—both a genre fan and the author of Eriksholm’s review—puts it: “The issue is really with the production values […] This game, with visuals and cutscenes like these, clearly required a hefty investment for a genre that’s unfortunately a risky niche.”
“Its launch was silent; there was no advertising push or streamer collaborations at all.”
Normally, “any small developer would kill to have 300 launch reviews on Steam” as Eriksholm did, but this is a different beast. “Whenever a game like this arrives with such graphics, it’s a gift for players,” Alejandro adds, “but it’s also a problem for developers, because it’s hard to break even.” Ultimately, “the fans would have bought it anyway, even if it was just simple 2D.”
Of course, gorgeous visuals should attract folks who don’t usually care about this kind of title. So what went wrong? As a Gamestar writer notes, Eriksholm’s marketing was practically nonexistent—nobody outside the stealth gaming bubble even knew it launched. “Its launch was quiet; there was no ad campaign or major streamer partnerships,” says Peter Bathge. “It’s almost impossible for a small release to get noticed without a big marketing push.”
One solution might’ve been a Game Pass launch, letting more players try it risk-free. Even though it launched at a reduced price, for many it’s still too expensive for a relatively short (12-hour), low-replayability game.
How it’s doing on consoles and whether word of mouth will grow Eriksholm’s audience enough for its creators to break even remains to be seen.
Leave a Reply