this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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In my opinion game studios should not sell out to investors and/or have any stocks as it will lead to profit making the calls eventually. It is tempting to get a bunch of investment, I know it would make my game studio easier to run right now, but then you are constantly reminded how it all ends up. Don’t like the system, stop playing in it and build your company slowly and organically instead and retain full control.
Same goes for many businesses outside of gaming. Imagine if there was no such thing as the stock market / investors and all companies had to grow on their own merits.
In my virtual studio everyone is their own sole proprietorship contributing to the project off and on and getting compensated fairly for their contributions. They also have their own projects too and may even pay me to help them sometimes. This way everyone assumes their own risk and reaps their own benefits. If any one person on the virtual team has a hit with their project, they retain full control and owe no money back to some shareholders who did nothing but lend money to make money. It does mean I am way slower than if I could just hire everyone full time as employees, but knowing where having investors will ultimately take me, I accept. Plus going slower means more time to sit on things and polish and not feel time pressure to appease shareholders.
Shareholders are a little like getting a loan and depending on how successful you are, you have to pay back more than you borrowed and giving them control on your art. No thanks.
The CEOs of these investor funded companies have forgotten that investors are not their customers, gamers are. This will hurt them in the long run because they are pissing off their customer base, people who really given them money to appease their shareholders. It never ends well for the companies.
Exactly. The last year of news full of mistreating game developers caused my to retune my news feeds and Steam wishlist to completely exclude all triple A titles.
There's years and years worth of great gameplay I haven't experienced yet in the Indie game market.
I suspect I'm not alone in that.
The investors are the ones forgetting that. CEOs work for the investors not for the customers.
Now, a good CEO will be able to manage upwards and throw around things like reputational damage and consumer trust to convince to keep the investors focused on the long term in order to protect the company (and the investors uhh... investment). The problem in the gaming industry is that time and time again gamers show that there's no such thing as reputational damage with games since there are enough people building their personality around a gaming franchise that even studios with a reputation for consistently putting out mediocre unoriginal crap can count on a mountain of pre-orders.