DOS2 made 85 million dollars and that was without the huge brand recognition that D&D 5e, Baldur's Gate, and the Forgotten Realms has. It was a turn based.
Also Larian used Kickstarter to allow themselves to self publish so they could make the game they wanted, which was a turn based game, unlike many if the preDOS1&2 games where they could only get funding for none turn based games. So it's not just money it's a personal preference thing.
"If only that were true," he said. "I don’t know where they got that data but we’re currently at 1.3M units, so even if you disregard VAT, the cut Steam and GOG take, and the price differences per country (i.e. you assume we sell the game at $45 everywhere), you still don’t get to $85 million. My faith in Superdata numbers received a big blow today. But that doesn’t take away that we’re still super happy about so many people picking up D:OS 2."
Superdata explained the discrepancy in a follow-up statement saying that its estimates are "based on partnerships with publishers, developers and payment providers," which enable the creation of "bottom-up algorithms for individual games based on the point of sale tracking data of over 160 million paying customers."
"Occasionally we see differences in definitions and recognition for revenue—for example, when people are reporting gross vs net revenue (SuperData is always gross), deferred revenue, non-GAAP accounting practices, and other allocations which may show different figures depending on the source. For compliance reasons, we also don't typically comment on feedback from private companies—who may be motivated by investor concerns—outside of a formal data relationship," a rep said. "However, Divinity: Original Sin 2 was a breakout success in 2017—commercially and critically—and we congratulate Larian."