Atomic Heart Achieves Landmark Success
May 2, 2023Singaporean Game Publisher 4Divinity, a subsidiary of GCL Asia, one of Singapore’s most prominent games publishing and distribution companies, has achieved landmark success in Asia with its co-published single-player first-person shooter game, Atomic Heart.
According to a sales report from digital game platform STEAM, the game raked in US$2 Million in sales within just two hours of its release on 21 February 2023. The game had significantly outperformed initial expectations, largely through the incredible amount of anticipation driven in the gaming community by its publisher, 4Divinity.
Atomic Heart, developed by Mundfish and co-published by Focus Entertainment in the EU and US markets, sold hundreds of thousands of physical and digital copies across all platforms and various Asian markets through 4Divinity, making up an impressive 49.6% of the total global sales as of April 2023. This covered 11 strong gaming markets in the region, including Singapore, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, and Macau. Most recently, the title debuted on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles in Japan, and includes a brand-new Japanese voice dub featuring a number of popular voice actors, including Akio Otsuka, who voiced Solid Snake in the Metal Gear franchise, and Tomokazu Sugita, best known for his role as Gintoki Sakata in the popular anime Gintama.
About Atomic Heart
Released worldwide on 21 February 2023, Atomic Heart is a single-player first-person shooter video game with role-playing elements. Mundfish’s inaugural title takes place in an alternate history Soviet Union, where robots have taken up most of the manual labour in the USSR. When the project gets mysteriously sabotaged, leading to a violent robot uprising, Agent P-3 gets sent in to rectify the situation, uncovering the project’s various secrets in the process.
The game has since received praise for its ambition and imaginative setting, achieving an 8 out of 10 from leading games publication IGN, as well as a 75 from review aggregator Metacritic. The game also scored well in the Asian market, receiving an 8.7 from Hong Kong publication UCG, and a 7.6 from aggregator Gamersky amongst many others.
“Atomic Heart’s roaring success is a matter of great pride for us, and alludes to a much stronger year for the GCL Group. The game’s outstanding performance is definitely a remarkable milestone for us, let alone any games publisher or distributor in the region.” Said Jacky Choo, Group Chairman and Founder, GCL Asia. “Historically, it has always been the EU and US markets that have had the larger share of sales for games, but Atomic Heart tipped the scales by amassing almost the same volume of total sales and revenue within a month.”
Prior to its launch, Atomic Heart was able to achieve a staggering amount of anticipation, with over 1 million gamers on STEAM adding it to their wishlists prior to its launch in February. Within 3 weeks of its release, the game surpassed 5 million players across all platforms, hitting an all-time peak of 38,469 concurrent players on STEAM. Looking to the future, Atomic Heart is also expected to continue on a strong sales trajectory in the years to come.
“We are extremely grateful to our fans in Asia, and our deep relationship with 4Divinity. With their publishing support, regional network, pricing strategy and marketing know-how, we were able to overachieve on sales of Atomic Heart in Asia, which is a testament to the value of this successful partnership,” said Robert Bagratuni, CEO of Mundfish
4Divinity is one of GCL’s fully-owned subsidiaries. Apart from Atomic Heart, the company has published popular game titles like Figment 2: Creed Valley, Windstorm Collection and Life in Willowdale under its banner. For their inaugural game, Mundfish secured significant investments from the Chinese multinational conglomerate, Tencent, who led their series B funding round. Additional series B investors include Independent European video game developer and publisher Gaijin Entertainment & international investment company GEM Capital.
Talking about GCL’s expansion plans, Choo added: “We have been in a constant state of movement for the last 2 years, with more titles and partnerships being added every year. GCL has had a steady growth trajectory since its inception, but now we are making significant additions to the group to give it the exponential boost to become Singapore’s, and subsequently Asia’s largest games distributor in the coming decade.”
Anticipating a continued gaming boom in the region, GCL plans to expand even further through a series of upcoming partnerships and acquisitions, bringing in an expanded line-up of games in all tiers to distribute across their markets.
