History of the publisher Devolver Digital

Indie-game market invader, the most reckless and risky legal entity. Five Heroes of the Industry – Mike Wilson, Nilari Loury, Graham Strazers, Harry Miller and Rick Stats, since 1998, tried to raise and support Indie market and, after several relatively failed attempts, they founded Devolver Digital and vowed to each other to give money to every talented rogue and not to be a faceless corporation of evil. Their publication agreement under their name of the game is not standard for the gaming industry of 20-30 pages, but literally one and a half pages. Let’s start from the very beginning, namely Gathering of Developers.

The staff of the publisher
January 1998, Texas. Five of the aforementioned founded Gathering of Developers in order to configure contact between the publisher and the developer so that the developer has freedom of will, intellectual property and freedom in publishing and marketing decisions. The reason for the creation of the publishing house was the game Daikatana, during the development of which the publisher dictated to developers how to advertise advertising. Aggressive advertising campaign said that the game should be bought only because John Romero takes part in its development and only. Also, in the development, everyone adhered to the Rules of “Design is the Law” and in the end it turned out that the game was not only transferred to another engine, barely optimizing, but also a game design, plot and so on, by the okre of the art, it was bad from the hands. Settling the sad experience of this game, several developers united and founded the publishing house. Other studios joined them over time, and two years later, in the 2000th, the studio bought Take-Two Interactive.

Who knew that the failure of one game will serve as a catalyst for the success of many indie games in the future
For your life, God Games has published games such as Max Payne, Mafia, Tropico, Serious Sam and others. Very, oh, very roughly speaking, the publishing house existed under the conditional slogan “from developers for developers”. The publishing house lasted until 2004 and in the same year was dissolved.

2007, Austin, Texas. Gamecock Media Group https://gentlemanjimcasino.co.uk was founded. In fact, it was a spiritual heir to the previous publishing house and he retained his old ideology. The head of the company stood all the same five people. The company did not last long, from February 2007 to October 2008. And so, we are approaching the first trick of future devolver’s. In 2007, on Spike Video Games Awards, in Las Vegas. The publisher’s employees went on stage in caps and hats of roosters (GameCock – Game Rooster) during the presentation of the game of the year Bioshock and began to promote themselves without letting Ken Levin say a word, which reduced the time of his final speech. You can see below, time – 1 hour, 22 minutes, 38 seconds.

On October 14, 2008, Southpeak Games purchased GameCock Media Group and soon dismissed them. During your short life, the publishing house, sorry for the tautology, published very few games. Soon, the emergence of Devolver Games began.

Here you can ask the question – “Why do they constantly sell their companies?”. I think because the backbone of the company always made up the same people and they, having received a profit from sale, left the purchased company and created a new one in order to continue to promote the idea of ​​freedom for developers and make money. It is amazing that none of the major publishers even thought of approaching communication with developers in such a manner. Although, the reason for this behavior of large publishers is clear – investors. Giving life to beautiful things and at the same time parasites of the industry. Rather, comparison with mushrooms will be appropriate, yes. Investors – industry mushrooms. So what am I talking about ..

Austin, Texas, 2009th year. All the same five people are founding another publishing house with the same ideology. Thanks to the connections (God Games published the first part of the serious Sam), the first thing that Devolver published was a series of HDs of serious Sam, Indie in a serious Sam and a third part guess what is a serious Sam. They have been engaged in a series of games of serious Sam for three years. In 2012, Dennaton Games appeared on the horizon

The name Devolver Digital in the starting design of Hotline Miami
The stunning success of the hot line attracted the attention of independent developers to the publisher. The ideology of the company, the remarkable merits of the past and the growing popularity allowed them to publish 7-10 games a year. Among them there is a remake of Shadow Warrior, sequel remake, Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior, Gods Will Be Watching, Broforce, The Talos Principle, Holtine Miami sequel, Mother Russia Bleeds, EnterThe Gungeon, Absolver, Ruiner and The Red Strings Club.

It is obvious that the risk of the publisher to give freedom to developers was justified tenfold. Devolver is famous on the Web as the most reckless publishing company. And the recipe for their success was unusually simple – just to give developers freedom, because, a surprise – it is better for them to advertise their game. Now everyone knows the name of this publisher, despite how you feel about the published games. It is enough to recall the crazy idea on E3 2017, where they did not even show a single game. History with their fictional financial director, staring on Twitter Game Industry (https: // Twitter.COM/FORKPARker). Even their Twitter is full of sharp comments and free behavior. For this we love them. To understand how they work with developers, it’s enough to watch a half -hour documentary about creating a game. I will briefly tell you how the game was developed – in a fiber. As in the good old days in the 90s. If the publisher liked it, we release and spit on how the public and the media will react. And as Mike Wilson said – “Development and publishing house of games is not a communication of a legal entity with a legal entity, but simple human relations, that’s all”.

It turned out a little material, but the company is quite young, and I don’t want to pour water. This is the whole Devolver – they are as simple as possible, without corporate crap and again – for this we love them, appreciate, respect. All the best, peace for your home.