Big Walk made more money than Counter-Strike and Warcraft in August

Fortnite and Roblox still ruled the roost in terms of revenue earned throughout August, but new video games like Big Walk and Star Wars Zero Company came out swinging.

It’s more difficult than it should be to figure out how well a new video game has sold or whether it should be considered a success or not, since there are often no exact numbers to work with.

Data firm Newzoo’s latest charts covering revenue earned through the month of August, for instance, don’t share any figures and they also keep PC and console performance separate, rather than combine the two.

However, what can be gleaned from them is that a few of August’s best new games, like Big Walk and Star Wars Zero Company, made enough money at launch to stand alongside the usual live service suspects like Fortnite.

According to Newzoo’s data, which covers the top 20 PC games by revenue earned in the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy in August (as shared by GamesIndustry.biz), Big Walk came third, behind only Fortnite and Valorant.

Big Walk had the advantage of releasing very early into August – August 4 – but for it to make more money that month than most established live service games is no small feat.

There’s no way of telling how much more Big Walk earned than those games (the gap could be incredibly wide or miniscule), but publisher Panic did confirm that the game sold over a million copies in six days.

The majority of that audience clearly comes from PC, though, as Big Walk is nowhere to be seen in Newzoo’s top 20 console games by revenue chart.

It’s a similar story for Star Wars Zero Company. On console, it’s only at the number 20 spot whereas on PC it’s at number six. This is perhaps even more impressive as Zero Company launched at the tail end of the month – August 27 – meaning it made more money on PC than long running games like World Of Warcraft in less than a week.

Hopefully, this bodes well for Zero Company’s future. As a reminder, developer Bit Reactor had run out of money weeks before the game’s launch, resulting in many employees being put on unpaid leave and only offered the promise they’d be brought back if the game sold well.

So far, that does appear to be the case. Aside from it ranking highly in Newzoo’s PC revenue chart, it was the top selling game on Steam for a period and, according to Alinea Analytics, has reportedly sold one million copies and made about $50 million (roughly £37 million) across all platforms as of September 22. Whether EA considers that to be enough is another issue entirely.

We’re also pleased to see signs of Mortal Shell 2 performing well, reaching 14th place on the PC chart and 17th place on the console chart. This excellent Soulslike also launched quite late into the month, on August 20, and although there are no official figures, it’s estimated to have sold over 814,000 copies.

That data was from a month ago, so it’s probably easily crossed the one million mark by this point, which is good for a mid-budget title.

The only other prominent August release to make it on either chart is Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, which came in 14th place on the console chart but is absent from the PC chart.

That’s hardly surprising as the PC version of the game infamously launched in a rough state and even on PlayStation 5 it was quickly deemed a sales disappointment.

Its presence in the console chart suggests Marvel Tōkon’s launch wasn’t as disastrous as you might think, though, and by mid-September, it was estimated to have sold 740,000 copies and made at least $49 million (about £37 million).

Those numbers still aren’t great for a Sony backed Marvel game and could have the publisher rethinking its plans to support Marvel Tōkon for another 10 years.

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