Wargaming, the rapidly-growing company behind free-to-play success story World of Tanks, has acquired the ailing Gas Powered Games.
The move comes out of almost nowhere. Gas Powered CEO Chris Taylor -- a fierce advocate of keeping his studio independent -- had hinged the future of his Seattle company on a $1.1 million Kickstarter that came up short. When the crowdfunding campaign failed, the future of Gas Powered looked bleak.
But Wargaming has now swooped in to save the company by making a full acquisition of the studio. The purchase fits Wargaming's plans to get its foot in the door of multiplatform game development. The company also recently purchasedFEAR 3 developer Day 1 Studios out of Chicago, as well as MMO middleware provider Big World.
Gas Powered is best known for its PC-centric games including Dungeon Siege, Supreme Commander and Demigod. CEO Taylor is also famous among PC strategy game fans as the designer of Total Annihilation.
Wargaming was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Minsk, Belarus. The company said it employs over 1400 people worldwide and has shipped more than 15 titles. In recent years, World of Tanks catapulted the company into the spotlight. World of Warplanes and World of Warships are slated to release later this year.
Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi in a statement called Taylor and Gas Powered a "valuable addition" to the company.
A rep for Wargaming said the company is not commenting on the price of the acquisition, how the staff at Gas Powered will be affected by the purchase or what the two companies will be working on together.
Really dude?! Why dont you run a company for 15 relatively successful years through some of the toughest economy weve seen since the great depression and tell me how that works out for ya.
Would you rather he just shut the company down than try something to keep it alive? It looks like he was able to get out and talk to a lot of publishers because of the Kickstarter. He saved his company because of his experience. What would you have done?
There are a lot of things that happen behind the scenes that aren't public information but I can tell you that he wasn't betting the company on Kickstarter, he was trying to save it.
My understanding (as a programmer in the Seattle area game industry where GPG is; never having worked at GPG) is there were multiple projects in the works for a publisher or publishers that got cancelled in a short time frame. Without funding the company couldn't continue so he picked the best project and kickstarted it in a last ditch effort to save the studio. If he hadn't tried the kickstarter, they were going under. He tried it, it didn't work out and good talented people lost their jobs.
Chris Taylor did everything he could in the short time he had to prevent that from happening. You are free to have your opinion and I thank you for it; but know that comments such as yours are going to be met with a lot of anger from people who know what happened there. I give Chris a lot of credit for being able to sell the company assets off to Wargaming and wish them luck in rebuilding their talent pool and continuing to make great games in the future.
@Maciej - Any project the company could have chosen to devote their time too was always going to be a risk because it costs money to make games, regardless of size.
Putting the staff time into a Kickstarter may have been the only real option anyway if the company was that short on cash, as making a Kickstarter bid requires a similar time cost for design as making a pitch to a publisher.
Come on, Maciej, get serious. He built the company in the first place. If he was responsible for its earlier success - and clearly, he was - it's a safe assumption that he tried everything he could to avoid this situation.
The fact is, these are very, very difficult time for mid-sized companies. Publishing money is shorter than ever, and publishers are more risk-averse than ever. In some genres you have no chance of getting any kind of financing deal. Not because these genres don't turn a profit, but because publishers have trouble adapting to the changing marketplace.
In times like this, a small company with a dozen staff can survive for many months on savings and small jobs, porting titles to iPhone and the like. But for mid-sized companies, which spend tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on wages alone... well, how much can they have in the bank? Two, three months of reserves? Half a year at the most. In such a situation, it's dead easy to reach the point where you literally have no choice but to bet your whole company on one Kickstarter project.
And by the way, there are times when having fifteen years of experience can be a drawback. You get used to working in a certain way. I'm pretty sure that for just about every project in the past, Chris Taylor got the funding from a publisher. What is it about his past experience that would have prepared him to face the situation where no publisher is available?
In a way he was right. Look at the 2 most acclaimed video games last year. Journey and The Walking Dead. I'd say those are pretty darn close to interactive movies.
Back on topic though. I'm glad they got picked up by someone. Being a fan of Total Annihilation and Dungeon Siege, I would of hated to see GPG go under. Hell, even if they hadn't made those games, it's never good to see a company go under.
hmm interesting possibilities, a free to play rts game tied into the "World of" series perhaps. Presumably wargaming bought them specifically for an rts option, I can't see much reason to buy them for another style of game.
MOBA is another likely reason. That League of Legends success is like blood in the water for a lot of these larger scale core-focused F2P publishers (wow, that was a run-on business description)
My understanding (as a programmer in the Seattle area game industry where GPG is; never having worked at GPG) is there were multiple projects in the works for a publisher or publishers that got cancelled in a short time frame. Without funding the company couldn't continue so he picked the best project and kickstarted it in a last ditch effort to save the studio. If he hadn't tried the kickstarter, they were going under. He tried it, it didn't work out and good talented people lost their jobs.
Chris Taylor did everything he could in the short time he had to prevent that from happening. You are free to have your opinion and I thank you for it; but know that comments such as yours are going to be met with a lot of anger from people who know what happened there. I give Chris a lot of credit for being able to sell the company assets off to Wargaming and wish them luck in rebuilding their talent pool and continuing to make great games in the future.
Putting the staff time into a Kickstarter may have been the only real option anyway if the company was that short on cash, as making a Kickstarter bid requires a similar time cost for design as making a pitch to a publisher.
The fact is, these are very, very difficult time for mid-sized companies. Publishing money is shorter than ever, and publishers are more risk-averse than ever. In some genres you have no chance of getting any kind of financing deal. Not because these genres don't turn a profit, but because publishers have trouble adapting to the changing marketplace.
In times like this, a small company with a dozen staff can survive for many months on savings and small jobs, porting titles to iPhone and the like. But for mid-sized companies, which spend tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on wages alone... well, how much can they have in the bank? Two, three months of reserves? Half a year at the most. In such a situation, it's dead easy to reach the point where you literally have no choice but to bet your whole company on one Kickstarter project.
And by the way, there are times when having fifteen years of experience can be a drawback. You get used to working in a certain way. I'm pretty sure that for just about every project in the past, Chris Taylor got the funding from a publisher. What is it about his past experience that would have prepared him to face the situation where no publisher is available?
Back on topic though. I'm glad they got picked up by someone. Being a fan of Total Annihilation and Dungeon Siege, I would of hated to see GPG go under. Hell, even if they hadn't made those games, it's never good to see a company go under.