Make a wish, because Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sold 3.3 million copies

Developer Sandfall Interactive announced today that its funky, turn-based RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has sold 3.3 million copies within 33 days of its launch. This extraordinary coincidence has brought attention to the indie title, which launched alongside several other major triple-A releases. According to Kepler, that number is separate from player count and doesn’t include Game Pass numbers.
The announcement reads, “Seriously. As of today. We couldn’t make that up. Another entry on the long list of surreal moments that your support has made real. Thank you ALL.” Kepler portfolio director Matthew Handrahan said in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz that the game’s relatively short length — “One of the things that’s great about Expedition 33 is it really respects the player’s time,” he said — makes it a more appealing value proposition than other games of a similar or higher price point.
Expedition 33 has achieved this success despite not coming from an established franchise and being developed by an indie studio. It also launched within the same window as Virtuos’s remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which was the best-selling game of April (according to Circana). Despite this, the two game don’t appear to have stolen too much sales attention from each other, and Bethesda even celebrated the launch of the other studio’s game with an image of Oblivion’s Adoring Fan playing the game.