Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has officially become a huge success for Warhorse Studios, with the developer announcing during a recent community stream that its medieval RPG has now surpassed 6 million copies sold worldwide. For any single-player RPG, it's undoubtedly a huge milestone, but it looks even more impressive when you put those numbers next to the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance. With that in mind Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 now just under 17 months old, it has already doubled its predecessor's sales in less time.
For Warhorse, this is obviously fantastic news that is more than worth celebrating. Kingdom Come: Deliverance has gone from a bold historical RPG experiment to a franchise with serious commercial power behind it. Still, there's a big catch with any franchise like this, because Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2The success also means that Warhorse is entering a completely different future than the one it had after the original game.
Warhorse's open-world Lord of the Rings gameplay already feels like GTA 6 with RPGs
Warhorse Studios' Lord of the Rings game has already created hype, and it could have a similar impact on the industry as GTA 6.
Kingdom Come has gotten too big to stay small
The original Kingdom Come: Deliverance was a success, but it always felt like an underdog compared to every other big open-world RPG series out there. It was a grounded medieval RPG with no dragons, no magic, no fantasy races, and no desire to make its world more accessible or simpler than, according to Warhorse, it needed to be. Even when it became popular, it still felt like the kind of game that succeeded in large part because of how starkly different it was from everything else around it.
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Of course, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has changed that for the franchise, and it did so pretty quickly. The first one Kingdom Come: Deliverance sold 2 million copies after just one year, reached 3 million after more than two years, and needed about 6 years to reach 6 million. KCD2on the other hand, has reached the same sales milestone in less than a third of that time, showing that Warhorse is no longer a niche curiosity.
The original Kingdom Come: Deliverance was a success, but it always felt like an underdog compared to every other big open-world RPG series out there.
But that's where the good news starts to get a little more complicated. Essentially, Kingdom Come is now large enough to create even greater expectations. With that undoubtedly comes bigger budgets and more pressure on the studio as well, which is a somewhat bittersweet reality for any game developer. If Kingdom Come: Deliverance was more akin to a laughable outsider, it can't stay that way any longer, as its sequel has now decided what it will be – and Warhorse really has no choice but to ride that wave.
However, this does not mean that the developer should entertain every idea that it is tempted to implement. A more successful one Kingdom Come could mean a bigger map, a more cinematic story, a wider audience and perhaps more than anything else a much more accessible experience than even Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 tried to be. Some of that growth would be natural, sure, and KCD2 already proved that Warhorse could build on the original game's formula without losing its soul. But the danger would be to go too far in that direction.
One of the reasons Kingdom Come is such a brilliant franchise is because it is stubborn. It forces players to play by its rules and live with the consequences of their decisions. The more popular the series becomes, the harder it can be to maintain those rough edges that give the IP its distinct identity.
KCD26 million sales doesn't mean Warhorse needs to make the next game a blockbuster fantasy RPG, as it could be argued that the studio is now allowed to keep believing in the formula it's already established in two games. The catch is that greater success often means increased pressure to be more welcoming, and Kingdom Comes greatest strength has always been how unwelcome it actually is. As such, Warhorse will need to find a way to preserve that quality as it heads headlong into a more glorious future.
Warhorse's future is bigger than Kingdom Come Now
It's also worth mentioning that the timing of this sales milestone makes the situation even more interesting. With Warhorse now working on another Kingdom Come adventure and an open-world RPG set in Middle-earth, the developer now has more on its plate than ever, but that's only half the battle. Now that it's working on one of the most recognizable IPs in history – and one that will naturally defy their iconic design philosophy in many ways – it has to ask itself if it wants to be big because it can be now or if it'd rather stay committed to the single-lane road it's been on. Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
The catch is that greater success often means increased pressure to be more welcoming, and Kingdom Comes greatest strength has always been how unwelcome it actually is.
Some would impulsively call it a “selling out moment” for Warhorse, as it might immediately seem like the developer has essentially given itself over to a franchise that already has its own rules and boundaries. Within Middle-earth, it may be difficult for the studio to stay true to itself, and that may be where the concerns really begin. Warhorse is now successful enough to be trusted with something as massive as an open world The Lord of the Rings game, but that also means it's successful enough to be pulled away from what made it so interesting in the first place. Kingdom Come may be much bigger now than it was in 2018, but it's still a stranger, more difficult, less widely marketed franchise than Middle-earth will ever be.
That's the awkward part of it KCD2success. Warhorse has proven Kingdom Come might sell, but it also proved that the studio itself could be valuable enough to attach to something more recognizable. From a business point of view, it makes perfect sense. The Lord of the Rings is easily one of the safest fantasy brands in the world to develop a game around, while Kingdom Come is still a story-based RPG that refuses to give players the kind of power fantasy that many of them expect from other open-world RPGs.
So, yes, KCD26 million sales is great news for Warhorse, but it could be argued that it also marks the moment when the studio becomes too big to just belong Kingdom Come. Warhorse has earned the right to chase something bigger, but the biggest challenge now is making sure success doesn't turn its most distinctive franchise into what it's working on between safer, more universally loved possibilities.
- Released
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February 4, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+/Use of alcohol, blood and grime, sexual content, strong language, intense violence, partial nudity
- Developer
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Warhorse Studios
