Avowed: A Massive Disappointment for Microsoft and Obsidian
Avowed has officially released to all players following its five-day early access period, and the numbers are painting a pretty grim picture. With only around 15,000 players on Steam at launch, Avowed is looking more and more like it is already an undeniable flop.
To put this all into perspective, that's about eight times LESS players than the disastrous Dragon Age: The Veilguard saw at peak, and while the weekend hasn't come yet, and the numbers will most likely rise from here, many folks are expecting Avowed to not surpass a peak of 30,000 concurrent all time player count.
What was once hyped by many shills leading up to release as the potential new RPG heavyweight has instead turned into what looks to be a colossal failure, exposing the cracks in both Microsoft's Game Pass strategy and Obsidian's overall ability to deliver a game that resonates in today’s market.
Game Pass: The Silent Killer of Game Sales
One of the biggest culprits behind Avowed's failure is the Game Pass model itself. While the service provides easy access to some new titles for subscribers, it at the same time, also kills any sense of urgency or value in actually purchasing games in the first place. Why spend $70 USD or more on a game after taxes when you can just play it for "free" with a lower priced subscription? A subscription that lets be honest, most gamers will pick up and drop on a month-to-month basis, or participate in every couple years...
The result? A game that launches with an extremely weak player engagement, little to no hype, and no long-term financial incentive to make up for its shortcomings.
Microsoft's insistence on Day 1 Game Pass releases continues to erode the traditional game sales model... and could eat away at the Video Game Industry in general. Players aren’t buying games anymore because the subscription model has conditioned them not to... But the problem is compounded when the games themselves aren't strong enough to keep players engaged for the long haul. By most accounts, Avowed doesn’t exactly offer a deeply compelling experience to make it worth a full-price purchase, and with so many other great games that have come before it, why would anyone rush to play this one?
Compare it to Skyrim on Steam right now, a game that is about a decade old, in the same style of gameplay, is seeing a concrurrent player count as of now at around 70,000 people.
This is exactly what my insider at Obsidian hinted at months ago—internally, the sentiment was that the game was merely "barely above average."
A Game Out of Time
Had Avowed been released back in 2010 or so, as the successor to Oblivion, gamers would have celebrated it as an instant classic. But in 2025, the game feels by many to be outdated and uninspired. While it borrows elements from Skyrim, it fails to deliver the same level of immersion and depth. Instead of being the fantasy RPG that fans expected, Avowed has turned out to be more of an action RPG in the vein of Kingdoms of Amalur and Elderborn, where action comes first... and RPG mechanics feel secondary.
This shift is a key factor in the mixed reception. The game doesn't offer any of the narrative depth of a Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 or the open-world exploration of a Skyrim. No... Instead, players get this mid-tier experience with small, segmented areas disguised as a larger open world. What initially appears to be a vast, explorable map is actually just four separate zones of roughly equal size—which I gotta be honest - is hardly the sprawling adventure anyone was asking for.
The Illusion of Critical Success
Despite holding a Metacritic score of 80, Avowed's rating feels artificially inflated right now.
A closer look at the scores reveals a pattern eerily similar to what happened with Dragon Age: The Veilguard: numerous perfect 100s and 95s from professional reviewers, while the general player base overall has been far less forgiving.
The sentiment surrounding the game is one where it's not the worst game ever, far from it... But as friend of the channel Hypnotic put it: The game is the definition of MID. The stark contrast between critic and player reception is becoming a trend in modern gaming, and it signals a growing distrust between consumers and the gaming media. The reality check comes when user reviews inevitably come out and will by all accounts, tell a different story.
What’s Next for Obsidian and Microsoft?
Microsoft and Obsidian can't be pleased with these numbers I'd imagine. Avowed was supposed to be a major release, but it now joins the growing list of Game Pass titles that launch to weak engagement and fail to make a meaningful impact. The writing has been on the wall for some time—Game Pass has been devaluing games for a while, and studios are struggling to create content compelling enough to thrive in this new ecosystem.
The future of gaming, once promised as an era of seamless access and endless content, isn't what it was all cracked up to be. Instead of delivering must-play experiences, companies like Microsoft and Obsidian are churning out mid-tier games that players feel no urgency to buy ...or even finish. Why would they? Trust in these studios is eroding, and unless something changes, we may see more and more of these so-called "big releases" turn into nothing more than forgettable footnotes in gaming history.
For now, Avowed remains what it always seemed destined to be—a passable, yet ultimately unremarkable title best experienced via a streamer’s playthrough rather than a purchase. I've watched quite a few of my friends streaming it and nothing about it really blew me away from what I saw, and nothing especially was making me jump out of my chair to run and resubscribe to gamepass either. The numbers speak for themselves, and they paint a VERY bleak future for Microsoft’s current gaming strategy...
But is anyone really all that surprised at this point?
~Smash
