3Mo·

$11B (+0 %) a promising bet for courageous investors


Polish video game developer 11 Bit Studios on Friday announced its latest game Frostpoint 2 on Friday and subsequently fell by more than 50% to the lowest level in the company's history - i.e. lower than at IPO 4 years ago.


Now you might think that this was because the game had a bad start. But why is that? Well, not really. Although the press praised the game to the skies, the release weekend was more of a disappointment for analysts. Only slightly less than half of the sales analysts had hoped for were achieved and player ratings were only 71% positive instead of over 80%.


Why is that? If you take a closer look at the ratings, there are actually no fundamental problems with the game. Technically, the game works flawlessly and the design is also well done. However, players criticize that the game takes a different artistic approach to the first part and that they would have liked "the same as always". Nevertheless, the critics also emphasize the fundamentally high production quality.


Developer 11 Bit has also already announced that the game has already sold 350,000 copies and has therefore recouped all production and marketing costs. This means that the game is already making a profit. How high this profit will be is now the crucial question.


I am of the opinion that the expected profits of 11 Bit Studios are currently underestimated. On the one hand, the analyses do not take into account the fact that Frostpunk will not only make a profit through copies sold, but that the game is also included as a day one release in the Gamepass from $MSFT (+3,69 %) is included. Many players (including me) will of course take the opportunity to "borrow" Frostpunk and play it through instead of buying it at full price. These license revenues - which could be considerable for a Day One release - are probably not yet properly priced in at the moment.


In my opinion, there are also other major sales drivers to come. The Christmas and winter period will provide another decisive tailwind. We can also expect the release for consoles in 2025. A mobile spin-off of the original Frostpunk will also be released next month. However, no risks are being taken here and the development is being outsourced to a South Korean company, which means that if it fails, virtually nothing will happen and if the classic game is a surprise hit with over 5 million units sold, further license fees will rain down on the Polish capital Warsaw.


I find the entry at 11 Bit very interesting at the moment, but I will wait until next week when the bottom forms. After that I see a price potential of 40-70%.


(No investment advice. Investments in everything except stones carry the risk of a total loss)

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10 Commentaires

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Thanks for the good analysis, currently there is little information on 11bit. Despite a massive crash
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@MvT Well, you've never found much about it except in Polish or at Kolja von Aktienmitkopf
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Thanks for the insightful info, at what price are you getting in?
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@M5557 I am not depending on the price, but as soon as it stops falling I will use it next week.
tbh, all gaming industry should be a no touch for the next months, i dont want to overexagerate AI, but pirate gaming is really a growing issue
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@walth98 Could you elaborate on your thoughts here? If anything AI will make it near impossible to pirate games in the future. Who has better access to advanced technology? Multi billion dollar companies or non-profit hacker groups that upload pirated games for fun?
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@Soprano we can agree that any sector with high exposure to pirate product is a risk to price in, affecting directly the top line. what i want to stress about the gaming industry is that the clients are people with over average it skills, that are good enough to spend 1h looking online for reliable piratated version. and unfortunately the incentive for hackers to pirate good games increase more then proportionally to the game success. AI programming is not Terminator is just a basic task support to programmers, and the entire cybersecurity world is just chasing innovation from hackers. New attack, well Learned. Please, discount my tought for the fact that I love cybersecurity stocks.

Your stock had a clear over reaction to the new, and the little analyst coverage makes it less efficient in getting to the real price. so its true, there most likely some disallignment between price and real value. but i wonder what it takes to reallign those, what kind of news are you looking for? next earnings? most likely. Well why not, it makes sense, for a buy now and sell after good earnings. For the Long I still dont like the sector, for the short as a trade sell after good earnings makes sense.
We should study how good the new game is. How would you proceed?

BTW in terms of exposure at gaming industry, I like $SE. Good compromise of exposure to heavily admortised games, this takes away of the equation of the capex risk required by realising new games. But that's a mix of businesses, I agree it is not a great comparison with yours.
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@walth98 You overestimate the "hacker industry" by far. Ever heard of anti-tamper? Since months there have been only a few individuals world wide that are able to bypass newest DRM (digital rights management software). Of course smaller games like Frostpunk 2 are pirated on the day of release. But bigger companies like Ubisoft can afford this technology and so their games aren't pirated even MONTHS after they release.

It's a matter of risk evaluation for companies. Do you believe the amount of loyal customers is greater than the cost of anti piracy software? Polish game developers believe in the quality of their product and the cost of thieves is smaller than the cost for protection. EA and Ubisoft don't have this kind of customer affection anymore. They fully protect all their games because they know people would not buy them otherwise.

AI will only improve the anti-tamper software (on the expense of the customer obviously because if you honestly bought software that is anti-piracy protected you suffer a lot of performance loss + higher energy consumption + less compatibility + no mod support)

PS. I have evaluated the quality of the game as explained by playing it myself + reading the reviews from press and other customers.
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Will you continue to buy?
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@Max095 That's what I have in mind
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