Capcom's sales went 93% digital, and its profit jumped 81%

Gaming 3 min 80 sources

A record quarter powered by old games nobody had to reprint shows how gaming's economics work when the copy costs nothing.

Key takeaways

Capcom's quarter was 93% digital and profit jumped 81%, powered mostly by years-old Resident Evil games it never had to reprint.
When a digital copy costs almost nothing to make, price stops tracking cost - which is why the same game can be full price, free, or subscription-included.
The expensive part is making the game, and that cost is paid in people: layoffs are set to hit over 14,000 games workers this year even as top studios post record profits.

The quarter that ran on old games

Capcom’s Q1 report for its 2026 fiscal year landed this week. One number did most of the talking: 93.3% of its game sales were digital, leaving just 6.7% on physical discs [56]. Ordinary profit rose 81% to about $252.5m, and the company says it is on track for its full-year forecast [11].

What powered it was not one hot new release. It was the back catalogue. The Resident Evil 2 remake, out since 2019, has now sold 19.75 million copies [16]. That finally passes Resident Evil 5, which took 15 years to reach 19.01 million [16]. The Resident Evil 4 remake is at 16 million, and this year’s Resident Evil Requiem has sold 8 million and climbing [16].

Here is the mechanism worth carrying. A game costs a fortune to build once. After that, a digital copy costs Capcom almost nothing to make and send - no disc, no box, no shipping. So every extra sale of a years-old game is nearly pure profit. A recent Steam discount on the Resident Evil back catalogue likely fed the digital surge, and none of those sales required reprinting anything [56].

The same pattern, across the industry

Capcom is not the outlier. This was reporting season, and the numbers rhyme.

Krafton, the studio behind PUBG and Subnautica, posted Q2 revenue up 94.9% to $889.1m [39]. Roblox, which sells nothing but access to a platform of user-made games, lifted Q2 revenue 36% to $1.5bn [54]. Sony’s overall Q1 profit rose 40%, beating estimates, as its games arm leaned harder on digital [34].

The common thread is that the expensive part is the making, not the copying. Once the fixed cost of building a game (or a platform) is paid, revenue scales far faster than cost. That is why a good quarter in this business can look like a profit explosion rather than a steady climb.

Why the same game can be $70, or free

If the copy costs nothing, price stops tracking cost - and you see that everywhere this month.

Epic gave away one of 2026’s best roguelikes free for a week on its store [1]. A group of developers bundled over 100 games on itch.io as pay-what-you-want, with proceeds going to laid-off colleagues [6]. PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass fold games into a flat monthly fee. GOG is quietly re-selling old games stripped of copy protection [10]. The same title can be full price, deeply discounted, subscription-included, given away, or pirated - and none of those prices reflect what the copy cost, because the copy cost nothing.

When cost stops setting the price, the seller charges whatever a buyer will pay. The real fight moves elsewhere: to attention, to storefront placement, and to who bears the enormous fixed cost of making the thing.

The cost that did not vanish

That fixed cost is people, and people are where this economy still bites. New data suggests layoffs will hit 14,259 games workers by the end of 2026, up 78% from the year’s first forecast [62]. In the same stretch, EA paid its CEO $38.6m for the fiscal year - after laying off Battlefield 6 developers [25]. PlayStation, meanwhile, says it is “cautiously moving forward” with halting physical disc production entirely [13].

The copy is free. The making is not. The gap between those two facts is the whole story of who wins and who is cut when a good quarter arrives.

02 · Lesson · why it matters

Why a copy that costs nothing has no natural price

Once a game is built, each new copy costs the seller almost nothing - so the price stops tracking cost and starts tracking you.

The number that did all the work

Capcom’s best-selling Resident Evil game right now is a remake from 2019. It has sold nearly 20 million copies, and it is still selling. Capcom did not build it again for the twenty-millionth buyer. The game already existed. Sending one more copy cost the company almost nothing - no disc, no factory, no shipping.

That is the whole engine behind an 81% jump in profit. The expensive part happened years ago. Everything since is a machine that turns a finished file into money at nearly no added cost per sale.

The strange nature of a digital thing

Most things you buy are used up. If someone eats an apple, no one else can. Making a second apple costs about what the first one did. Economists call that a rival good - your having it stops mine.

A digital game is different. My copy does not use up yours. The company can make a millionth copy for the same near-zero cost as the second. This is a non-rival good, and it breaks the rule we all carry around: that price should roughly reflect what a thing costs to make.

For a game, the making is a mountain paid once. The copying is flat ground, free to walk forever. So there is no natural price. There is only the mountain, split across however many people end up buying.

Why the same game is $70, or free

Look at gaming this month through that single fact and the chaos snaps into order.

Epic gave a well-reviewed game away completely free for a week. A giveaway is not generosity - it costs the store almost nothing per copy, and it buys attention no advert could. Developers bundled over a hundred games for whatever you cared to pay, because adding a game to the pile costs nothing. Subscriptions fold hundreds of titles into one monthly fee. The same title sits at full price on Tuesday and half off on Friday.

None of these prices track a cost, because there is no per-copy cost worth tracking. The seller is not asking what it cost. The seller is asking what you will pay.

The fight moves off the copy

If the copy is free, competing on the copy is pointless. So the contest moves to the things that are still scarce.

Attention is scarce - you can play one game at a time, and there are thousands. Shelf space is scarce, even a digital shelf: the front page of a store, the top of a subscription menu. And the fixed cost is scarce - somebody had to pay the mountain, and they have to be paid back before a single free copy makes sense. That is why storefronts, platforms, and the studios that can afford the mountain hold the power. The copy is free; the ladder up to making it is not.

Where you are standing in this

You feel this economy as a good deal, and most of the time it is one. Free weekends, deep sales, a hundred games for the price of one dinner - these are real, and they exist because the copy costs the seller nothing to hand you.

But the mountain is still paid, and it is paid in people. The same season that produced record profits is on track to cut over fourteen thousand games jobs. When the copy costs nothing, all the cost and all the risk pile onto the making. They land on the workers who build the thing once so it can be sold forever. The bargain in your library and the layoff in the studio are not two stories. They are the near-zero cost of a copy, seen from the two ends of the same machine.

03 · Lab · your turn

Price the copy

Rehearse setting a game's price when the copy costs almost nothing, and feel price detach from cost.

04 · Hope · carry this

There is a quiet gift in an economy where the copy costs nothing: a game built once by a few hundred people can reach millions, at almost any price, for as long as anyone wants it. The same reach that makes it nearly free to share is what could, in time, pay its makers what their work is worth.