Meet the ex-footballer who built one of Brazil's largest games studios
Matheus Vivian has had a very unusual path into games.
A former footballer, he played professionally for 18 years – first in Brazil and then in Germany and France. The end of his career was "a stop" in his life, he tells us, as all of a sudden he needed to find a new direction.
He started consulting for football clubs and leagues, had his own radio show in France, but ultimately what he really wanted to do was start a game studio, with business partner Guilherme Gonçalves.
"Our goal was to connect sports and gaming, because that was our passion," Vivian says. "And we saw a big opportunity in that. People love sports, people love games, and this is so big, both platforms. How can we put the two together? It's so hard to compete with the big companies.
"With my background we started to build this business model, we licensed Paris Saint Germain and players of the club like Neymar and [Kylian] Mbappé, and we built a very casual game, a free-to-play game."
And, just like that, Hermit Crab was born, with Vivian as its CEO. From this initial mobile title many more were born, based on other football clubs including Arsenal, Manchester City, and FC Barcelona, among many others.
"Our biggest success I think was the Paris Saint Germain game," Vivan says. "We got more than six million organic users for this game – organic, not user acquisition. On different platforms. That showed us the power of the [licence], and casual games. Because the game was about freestyle [football], doing some tricks, and it's so fun. It's not simulation, it's so arcade.
"When we built that, we saw the opportunity not only to get licences and build a dedicated game for each brand, but we saw the opportunity and the problem that brands have entering the games [industry], and how you can solve that, puting the brands on all kinds of different platforms."
Hermit Crab now employs over 100 people and is dedicated to sports titles, trying to convey Brazilian culture through its games. The studio is developing for
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