Well, I get it’s a joke but making investing a capital offense would not save anything much less the world. It would limit any productivity to only those that already possess sufficient start-up funds. Thereby raising the bar for entry into any field and cutting down on any competition that could be mustered against already established industry titans.
It would also be a massive boon for any corporations that pay dividends. They get to keep all the money paid in and never have to pay out because the investors are dead.
It would be yet another economic intervention that sounds nice but has the unintended consequence of massively consolidating power.
You will have to show that source, because it contradicts everything that has ever been stated about Larian’s ownership.
The 30% investment from Tencent was absolutely crucial in keeping the studio alive back in the day, but Swen still owns 62% and his wife 8%. Suggesting that Tencent has a majority share needs some serious sources to back it up, because it contradicts all known sources. I’m also curious why this information would only exist on a paywalled Swedish site, when the company is not… Swedish. At all.
Tencent even owns preference shares, which means their shares don’t even give them voting rights. Not that it would matter when Swen and his wife controls the remaining 70% shares, but still.
First they have to manage to keep their license to the Warhammer IP. I would imagine that a number of people at GW are displeased about having their cash cow’s name attached to what is rapidly turning into very low-quality mix of gacha and dress-up.
Of course that might be part of the motivation for the staffs lack of motivation. ObeseTubaFish knows they screwed up but they don’t want to A) spend the money to fix it and B) admit that they screwed up. So they’ve pulled every person they can to other projects to save money on hiring while trying to squeeze as much short-term profit out as possible before the license runs out. Because everyone on the inside knows that when that happens GamesWorkshop is unlikely to renew it.
In their mind its better to just pretend nothing is wrong and quitely siphon off resources to the project while hoping people will eventually forget about everything you did wrong. Funny thing is the next project seems to also fail for exactly the same reasons as the first under these conditions. Almost as if the most important factor in not repeating a screwup is admitting that you screwed up in the first place.
History would seem to suggest that GW is happy to sell a license to anyone and everyone. As long as they get paid, the quality of the games don’t seem to matter in the slightest to GW.
They’re not in the business of exclusive licensing, after all. There’s tons of Warhammer games in the last decade, precisely because GW decided to just license to absolutely anyone, rather than carefully evaluate each project and/or do exclusive deals.
It is the 91st millennium, and the God-Emperor of Mankind has resuscitated again for the 16000th time, with chronic Cirrhosis no less. The Imperium is still in decline and Fatshark is a decaying husk of its former self but despite all of this, and amidst the horrors of the void…John Darktide finally feels like a Guardsmen whenever he catches himself in the mirror.
I am so tired of these tired out words and being used by people who don’t even understand anything. Then they go on rants like “It isn’t growing right now, we have sustainability as focus”.
These heretic words, as if these people (or anyone) was in control of the situation, rather than the truth, which is that people inside that market do what they want and the “industry” can do nothing but watch.
American Finances and Wallstreet were a mistake. Hans, GET ZE KOMMISSAR!
Your talk is also entirely baseless. The fact is that GW actually likes Fatshark.
Both, Creative Assembly and Fatshark, have probably produced the greatest income stream for Games Workshop in years. Not only do they treat their IP faithfully and with grace, they also turn all those written down cookie cutter ideas (that’s what Warhammer is, admit it) into raw dollar printing machines.
Warhammer fans love to go on how it’s their IP that brings all these games to the top, but the reality is actually quite different here.
The Warhammer IP is some long-lost 80’s nostalgia board game rule book. It’s a niche thing even in the United States, nevermind outside of it.
Fatshark produced high quality games before they took the Warhammer IP for Vermintide.
Creative Assembly was known for Total War before they attached that IP to their franchise.
And none of those two companies would lost out anywhere without the IP. Their products would have a different paint of coat, that’s it. They were still responsible for translating the Warhammer ideas into something actually playable.
I get it, I get it. You love your golden trinket (Warhammer), but don’t delude yourself into this ridiculous thinking of your holier-than-thou IP being the reason other companies are successful. I resent this denegrating talk you present and I reward you with more resentment.
is that why all historic total wars tanked since Total war warhammer 1, to the point Saga decided to lay off half of CA, and now makes a total war 40k?
if companies had the exact same success without an IP, then games with IPs wouldn’t exist, its an expense to acquire them so obviously, acquiring them is a beneficial income strategy.
its not like GW come crawling on their hands to CA to finally do a warhammer title, among dozens other IP holders who do the same, so no you’re entirely wrong.
No. The reason is that they were step backs to their previous historic titles.
CA released Three Kingdoms, a promising game with great options to expand it. Then for some Emperor-forsaken reason they decided to ditch that right after release and go to the next title. Then released the other historic game which was a lot more barebones compared to Three Kingdoms.
CA’s failure was disrespecting their fanbase twice in a row, and all that in between the DLC 250% price hike saga.
So the game was essentially Total War players outlet to show them they mean business. That’s entirely unrelated to the production of Warhammer / Non-Warhammer games, that was CA’s own hubris catching up with them.
No, I’m actually right. The reason many non-IP related games don’t get the traction they deserve is the way many companies treat their own product. Not believing enough in themselves, not doing enough marketing, perhaps not going into the necessary gameplay depth or worldbuilding depth they should.
An IP holder can set standards and those standards help push devs when ambition is lacking.
But that’s not always the case.
See Helldivers 2 or DRG, often quoted here as fine examples of deep games. Dragon’s Dogma 2 also just released to 2.5 m sales in the first week and that’s an entirely unique IP of it’s own.
Generally speaking creatives who know what they’re doing don’t need IPs. People who had their creative essence ripped out of them do.
Is it, though?
Effort and time are some of the most tangible ingredients to success. Next to the name recognition and the pre-packaged world building, the only other thing an established license and it’s licenseholder bring is an oversight of standards for the product release.
So if an equivalent amount of time, effort and world building can be brought forth without a third-party license holder, it stands to reason similiar success can be achieved without the license. And if we take a look, we do find stories of that in Gaming.
The most notable example would be the Warcraft and Starcraft franchises, which had the effort and time put in and were even originally slated to be Warhammer titles. But the dispute between Blizzard and Games Workshop led to Blizzard releasing their product without the brand recognition (but having put forth the necessary effort). We know how that went.
World of Warcraft defined a generation of gamers to the point of being the masses’ opium amongst MMO players.
and they aren’t mutually exclusive, its not hard work vs IP,
the actual formula is hard work + IP,
the question remains how much contribution the IP had isn’t answered by this in the slightest.
that was never the question, hence this is a strawman, i never said success can’t happen without IP…
wich gaming juggernaut IP did they compete with in 1994 and 1998? gaming was in its infancy anything good became their own IP, simply by maketshare
again what exactly is that supposed to prove? you don’t have a control group, how do you know that if starcraft had been 40k game i wouldn’t have had the same success?
well you don’t.