Devolver celebrates its biggest launch ever as SCUM sells 250K in one day

The battle royale genre is the genre that keeps going and going. Zagreb-based studio Gamepires’ SCUM, published by Devolver Digital, is the latest success story for the category. 

In a tweet, the publisher announced the prison-based battle royale title – which doesn’t feature the usual aspects of a battle royale game, focusing on a smaller player count and a non-shrinking map among other things – had become the biggest launch in the publisher’s history. The game’s official Twitter announced in a tweet that the game had sold over 250,000 copies in less than 24 hours after its release. 

It’s an impressive figure considering the game is in Early Access, and will remain there for at least the next year or so.

We’ll see if it can keep up the momentum, but out of the gate, it has done well for itself. It’s currently second on the top sellers list on Steam and is one of the top ten most viewed games right now on Twitch as of this writing, ahead of Hearthstone, DOTA 2, and Grand Theft Auto V.

And although it isn’t competing with the likes of Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds at this stage in its early life, SCUM‘s nice start does put it in a postion to potentially start taking a share of either game’s playerbase – or maybe even both games – by the end of the year, should some of those players desire a fresh battle royale experience.

To put SCUM’s achievement in perspective, PUBG had managed to generate $11 million in the first three days of its early access release last year, according to Bluehole. SCUM‘s 250,000 copies at $20 apiece would amount to $5 million in revenues (before Valve takes its cut).

We’ve reached out to Devolver Digital for comment regarding SCUM’s hot start and will update as we get it.