Larian Studios does technically have a single shareholder in Tencent—which owns around 30% of the company. However, an important piece of context is that Tencent appears to own what’s called a “preference” share, meaning that Tencent doesn’t have voting rights when it comes to Larian’s decision making. The rest of the company belongs to CEO and Founder Swen Vincke and his wife.
Interesting, did not know that.
This is great but my fear is that one day he will go public and not share the profits with the employees. I worked at a company like that. Said they would never sell until they did for a record amount that they didn’t really share with the employees.
Few people do because Larian keeps lying about it. Part of me understands you don‘t go around telling people a Chinese government asset has big money in your company, given the ongoing genocide and all (speaking of toxic work environment eh) but it‘s publicly accessible information anyway. They‘ve been so consistently dishonest about it that I can‘t take them all that serious about anything anymore. Because alternatively to lying they could just… shut up and keep making great games. They don‘t need that sugar coating.
Did you not read the article?
Tencent own preference stock. They could sell their stock, which could potentially harm the company, but they hold no voting rights and carry no decision making power.
I am not a fan of China, nor Tencent, but spewing bile without understanding the context does NOT help this discourse.
Can’t see how it would harm the company. Stocks and shares are just a way to raise money in a company. I’ll sell you x% for $yk and own that amount now.
Even with normal shares 30% is a minority stake especially if a single entity owns the other 70% (ie. You can express your opinion but I outvote you every time). Unless Larian are planning to raise additional funds by selling equity and need the stock price to remain high for that reason, Tencent are free to sell their portion without any impact to Larian. (Heck a drop might even let Larian buy itself back)
If Tencent sell its shares, it would make the share price plummet, which will make it harder for the studio to get money by selling new shares.
They’re not publicly traded, and the only shares are the ones that Tencent owns. The shares are worth whatever someone buys them for. The price doesn’t fluctuate because there’s no market with which they are traded on
You are half right, half wrong.
It is true that a non publicly traded firm won’t see an immediate effect if one of the shareholder leave the ship, but businesses work on trust. If Tencent sell its share, it is a sign that it doesn’t trust the studio anymore. Thus, potential private investors, like banks, will be more hesitant to work with them, and will ask for higher rates to compensate for that perceived lose of trust. Thus, hurting the Studio.
Shareholders have a right to sell their shares. If there is no other buyer, then the company will have to pay them for it. They may not have enough liquid capital to pay off 30%. Other assets might have to be sold off, which may make it difficult to operate.
Huh?
I did a little more research, and it tends to be only specific circumstances and shareholder agreements, but there are times when a shareholder can force a company to buyback the shareholder’s stock.
https://achkarlaw.com/what-to-do-if-company-refuses-to-buyback-shares/
Could they even sell if nobody is buying?
if the company isn’t publicly traded they can’t always sell even if they want to
It would be bought. That’s how stocks work. If there is a promising company, there will be interested buyers.
Well, penny stocks exist. It’s possible that Tencent suddenly liquidating their 30% share could bottom out the share value temporarily. If the market decided that Tencent liquidating their holdings was a sign that the company was going under, that should drive the price down, correct?
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Excuse me?
Clearly yours is because that’s not a normal response to someone asking a reasonable question.
How can you sell something if no-one is buying?
Please stay civil
It’s so irritating to see how eager people come to defend Larian on their lies every time someone calls it out. You’re acting like I said Tencent has Larian on the leash. I mean you’re not even disagreeing with anything I said. Tencent holds shares. They are shareholders, as the article states. Maybe read it again? Do you also claim Larian didn’t receive funding from Tencent? Because Larian was very vocal about not receiving any funding, playing dumb when people wondered how Larian even made such a huge game.
Rumors have it Hasbro’s gonna sell D&D and Tencent is the most likely buyer. We’ll see how much of Larian’s soul will be left when they get approached to make a huge D&D mobile gacha or whatever Tencent comes up with.
I’m getting whiplash from your logic. You just accused another user of acting like you said tencent had larian on a leash, which we can all agree is not true. Then you go on to say Larian is going to lose its soul when tencent approaches them with a gacha game, as if larian would take them up on this like Tencent has any say in what Larian does.
Also, Hasbro isn’t selling DnD. Tencent is attempting to buy adaptation rights to the DnD IP, which may not even be true. By all accounts, WotC is the most profitable division of Hasbro. Sounds like you read another headline and didn’t read the article…
No, I am saying Larian will do it on their own accord rather than losing out on money in the end. It‘s a tale as old as the gaming industry. We‘ve seen so many downfalls that parallel this pattern and if they‘re already this dishonest at their peak, then I‘m really worried how bad it will be when they‘re at the bottom. Even CDPR didn‘t show nearly as many red flags prior to the Cyberpunk debacle.
Oh yeah if Habro says so it must be true… boy oh boy.
You know, they got a point. You gotta believe in the project, and when you do it properly, you will make the money back, and much more.
Okay, but where’s that money coming from? Someone has to upfront pay for things. Larian are lucky, they have a majory investor that was not looking for any control, they released in early access and had runway money from previous projects to go with. They are the exception, not the rule, unfortunately.
Publishers no longer publish third parties for the most part, so everyone who isn’t a subsidiary of a large company has to find funding somewhere.
From me for example. I follow this studio and team since many years and i’ve participated to the funding of Divinity: Original Sin (DOS) more than a decade ago…
They got money from several sources but mainly because (or i should say thanks to) they delivered good products, they have being able to survive and work on BG3. Luck is not the reason, they’ve worked hard to achieve that…
They have, I’ve been playing their games from their first divine divinity game. But they are still in a lucky situation, privileged from the reality that everyone else has to go through.
They worked hard for decades. They’ve been betrayed and hampered by editors in the past until kick-started. It’s not a lucky situation, they built this luck.
they worked hard, they are in a lucky and privileged situation unlike almost every other company.
Consider an amazing actor or director that you respect. They worked hard, they made amazing things, and they got super lucky. Talent and hard work guarantees nothing.
Indy studios exist and some self fund. They’re not going to be releasing AAA games, but they’re not expected to.
But yes, if you want to create the game equivalent of an MCU film, you need significant starting capital.
It’s worth noting the vast gulf we are talking about here between the “self funded” indie studios and even A games, not even AA, just A.
The self funded indie game made by one person in their spare time that 200 people play (and occasionally a standout hit that 8 million people play) really isn’t under contention here. We’re talking about the responsibilities when starting a business.
We are not talking about making an AAA game, an equivalent of an MCU film (as those are limited to the deep pockets of large companies).
Most companies that aren’t making AAA games, are also taking funding because people have to make rent, and workers deserve to get paid a wage.
You want tell me that to run a good business, one has to be able to negotiate preferable terms with investors?
If the implication is that they should be negotiating better terms. Well, good luck with that. I’ve been a part of many teams involved with investor negotiations. You need their money a hell of a lot more than they need your teams risk.
I don’t say it’s easy. But if you want to make a good creative product you have to be able to keep the creative control, that is part of your job and what makes realization of creative ideas, especially on big scale, more difficult. It’s the same with other creative media like movies.
I’m saying it’s not just “not easy”, it’s impossible unless you are an already established entity that has some cards to hold in negotiations.
Put yourself in the position of a new company, you’ve a great idea, a great team. How are you going to fund development in 2024?
How did Larian Studios arrived at their position?
Spending well over a decade pushing out moderately successful shovelware on consoles before crowdfunding D:OS and its sequel, which provided enough of a portfolio to attract the CCP’s money and allow for the development of BG3.
Building games that are actually fun is going to make you the most money, that’s it.
Say it louder for the publishers in the back.
It’s infuriating how game design is devolving into engagement treadmills instead of simply being fun, concise experiences. The industry needs more Hi-Fi Rushes and less Suicide Squads.
Also, does the point of creating a game have to be making the “most” money? Isn’t it enough to make something awesome and a profit?
I don’t really enjoy their games, but I love them as a studio
The problem is publishers and the huge risk you’re selling to create a hit. You still have shareholders. Those who take the risk in financing a game development and those who own the IP.
Unless you got extremely lucky and can gamble with your own cash you always have shareholders in game development.
Based Larian
every company has shareholders, including larian studios
you can’t set up a company without specifying shareholders
No they don’t, and you can totally set up a company without shareholders. LLCs have no shareholders for instance.
I am pretty sure I read article somewhere which said tencent has shares in larian.
Non-voting shares
An LLC or any other corporate structure can have shareholders. It all depends on the structure laid out in the organizing documents. You may have meant private companies don’t have shareholders, but even that isn’t the case.
Can you please share some reference material around this? I would like to read up more about it.
shareholders…owners… who cares about the vernacular. There’s always the ownership. An organization of any size is only as good as it’s current ownership.
People grow old and eventually die. When ownership passes on from someone who isn’t in it for the money to someone who just wants money… even the greatest of organizations can and will fall. I just hope to christ Gabe Newell’s successor(s) are in line with his actions.
shareholders…owners… who cares about the vernacular.
Turns out, quite a few people when those words are describing very different things.
I just hope to christ Gabe Newell’s successor(s) are in line with his actions.
This is how I know that you don’t know much at all. GabeN has changed valve from being a game developer making amazing things like Half Life and Team Fortress 2, to microtransactions and no games. A continuation of what Gabe is doing is pretty much in line with the rest of the industry, except NBA 2k4 would be the last one and it would have microtransaction DLC for the next 15 years.
Valve are major players in Linux being a viable option for gaming and actively fighting the Microsoft monopoly for PC gaming. Not in line with other players in the industry.
They are actively developing proton as well as their own controller support for any games within their platform.
What is the rest of the industry doing in line with this?
I played Dota 2 from its first beta release, and many years after. Eventually stopped about 2 years ago. In that time I put 4 digit sum into that game, and received nothing that would give me any gameplay advantage. I did it to support the game, that also worked on Linux.
I understand that MTX are not ideal, but there are very different approaches to them. And at least in Dota 2, I can and did support it.
That is fair, Dota 2 is cosmetic only. TF2 on the other hand, is selling items with stats, mostly sidegrades rather than upgrades, but they do play into a certain kind of play, which does make it a de facto upgrade if your style of play matches the items use case.
Okay, I know nothing at all!
Hope you enjoy your Steam game library being ripped out of your hands or a forced subscription or recurring purchase or mandatory timed video ads showing up whenever someone who can make decisions for the future of the Valve LLC believes that is the right decision.
The fact is, whoever has possession (e.g. OWNERSHIP) of the decisions for a company can choose to do this, to not do this, or to do something else, or nothing at all. Inevitably decisions by whoever owns that control will change from the predecessors and eventually someone or some combination of someones constituting the deciding majority will sell out. No one lives forever.
Epic Games Store, Gog, UPlay (or whatever ubisoft’s is called), Origin/EA Downloader have all not done this and yet they’re not controlled by Gabe Newell.
Fact is that steam, no one else, started the road down the licensing and not ownership of games path we are firmly on with regards to PC.
Most PC’s don’t even have a disc drive any more, it’s all downloads.
And Gog is the only one that still allows ownership and not licensing of software.
So yeah, you do know nothing at all.
“hurr durr nobody else has does it yet so clearly it can never happen”
Nobody else has 70%+ market share. The others are all competing for a bigger slice, they can’t afford to be predatory.
The market leader can and the rest will follow suit. Haven’t you seen overdraft charges (just now having laws change…decades after becoming a problem), minimal interest rates on savings accounts, ads in streaming services across the board (netflix wasn’t first but the second they did it prime announced it), a reigning in of account sharing based on IP addresses for streaming services (happening across the board after a couple of big players did it)…
I get that you just can’t imagine a world where your game library is RIPPED out of your hands after a 30 day notice of service changes… i’ve seen it happen time and time again for various platforms and games. Digital services can and will fuck you eventually.
Signed: Hellgate London lifetime subscription holder
They are completely different business operations. Please stop.
I’m sorry my opinion and analysis of these things is different than yours. I guess the difference between you and I is that i’d rather us both have a chance to voice those opinions rather than simply silence what you do not believe in.
I’m not following any dogma or parroting a political party line… i’m not being a fanboy either (which is very dogmatic.) Are you?
It’s not opinion, you just don’t understand and there’s no excuse for that.
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Stakeholders aren’t necessarily shareholders.
They’re talking about being a publicly traded company. Of course every company has stakeholders. Of course everyone who works at Larian likes getting paid for their work.
