Landfall looks beyond PEAK after 23 million sales
Landfall says PEAK has passed 23 million sales, but the studio is looking beyond its breakout co-op hit and embracing a fail-fast approach.
Landfall Games says PEAK has sold more than 23 million units, but chief business officer Rebecca Lautner says the studio is trying to move beyond its breakout co-op hit rather than spend indefinitely expanding it. 1
Landfall’s next move
Lautner discussed the game’s sales and the company’s wider plans in a GamesIndustry.biz podcast recorded at Game Republic New Horizons. She described the scale of PEAK as a huge opportunity, but said Landfall has a very different path in mind and is keen to work on something else. 1
That approach is tied to Landfall’s identity as a studio. The company’s publishing arm, Evil Landfall, backed How to Fish, another multi-million-selling release, while the wider business is looking to invest in games beyond the co-op “friendslop” label attached to PEAK. 1
Lautner also explained Landfall’s “fail fast” policy. The studio may spend roughly a month on a project before deciding whether the idea is coming together, allowing it to abandon weak concepts early instead of committing years to development. 1
A hit that is not the whole plan
The 23 million figure gives Landfall room to experiment, but it also underlines the pressure facing a studio that has found a genuine phenomenon. PEAK’s success could have encouraged a long tail of expansions, spin-offs or near-identical follow-ups. Lautner’s comments suggest the company would rather use that success to fund different experiments.
The podcast also touches on Landfall’s Stockholm development house, which includes its own chef and bar, and the decision not to release an April Fools game this year. The full conversation is available through GamesIndustry.biz and its podcast channels. 1
Our opinion
Landfall’s willingness to leave a 23-million-selling game behind is more interesting than the sales milestone itself. The safer business move would be to turn PEAK into a permanent content machine, but the studio’s “fail fast” policy points in the opposite direction: protect the freedom to try ideas that may never become the next phenomenon. That is a risky strategy, yet it is also how a small developer can avoid becoming trapped by the audience it worked so hard to build. The real test will be whether Evil Landfall and the wider studio can turn that freedom into another distinctive hit rather than simply another version of PEAK.