Keeping Devolver’s spirit through challenging times
After the highs experienced across the industry since 2020, the landing has felt brutal this year.
Games companies across the board are shrinking, laying off staff, closing down. While the market itself remains healthy, with game sales rising, it certainly feels like a tough year.
Even established indie companies couldn't escape the challenges of the hour, with Devolver Digital's stock price plummeting throughout the year, and a number of its releases for 2023 moved to next year.
The indie label went public in November 2021, and it's faced a challenging couple of years since.
"We came into the IPO, and at no point do I recall anyone describing the year that we went down that path as some kind of peak," Devolver's COO and co-founder Graeme Struthers tells GamesIndustry.biz. "It's just the world that you're in. Like a lot of companies in the UK, we benefited hugely from Team17 and how they’ve been doing. So, we didn't realise we were coming into [a] world that was at peak. And then, from November into the following year of March, April, and May, we had three of our biggest projects [launch] and they didn't get anywhere near where we thought they would.
"And at the time, it was like, how did we not really understand how seismic Elden Ring was going to be, how much oxygen it was going to take? And that had an impact on us, had an impact on lots of people. So, yes, that was our first experience of disappointment."
2022 actually ended up being a "banner year" for Devolver, Struthers continues, with the commercial and critical successes of Inscryption and Cult of the Lamb, and Loop Hero and Death's Door still performing really well.
"[But] that's not what people would remember of us," Struthers observes. "They'd just
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