Game Republic recently partnered with and attended the Pocket Gamer Connects London event on Monday 20th January (with a second day on the Tuesday 21st January). As the first industry event of the year, it was great to catch up with GR members and industry friends, as well as check out some talks and panels to gauge the general zeitgeist of the games industry – is there more optimism for 2025 and beyond?
In the panel, The State of PC/Console funding with Chris Hainsworth (The GameCFO), David Solari (Soul Assembly), John Clark (ex-SEGA/Curve) and GR member Charles Cecil (Revolution) much of the discussion followed on from a previous session featuring Stuart Dinsey (Curve Games) who said that publishers have realised that “spending more doesn’t mean getting more,” and that the industry is going back to “proper indie games with smaller budgets.”
There are definitely green shoots for 2025 (for example, we had confirmation that a game shown at GaMaYo in November has just been signed by a publisher) but the oversaturation of games means that discovery is going to remain an issue. Charles Cecil said that the industry “Is not going back to what it was regarding the level of funding,” and that he is, “not expecting a lot of money from the big players and platform-holders,” and that Revolution is happy with the Kickstarter campaigns they have run, saying that they are “fortunate to have such a brilliant community of fans of Broken Sword.”
John Clark said that the opportunity for releasing games is better now with fewer games and competition in 2024,” while David Solari commented on VR and that the recent change for Meta Quest combining the App Lab and the main store has severely affected developers, with some seeing 80% fewer sales.”
Another panel, “Through Trials and Triumphs – Lessons From Two Generations of CEOs” featured long-time GR member and supporter Carl Cavers, CEO of Sumo Group, plus Alexander Bergendahl (Lootlocker), Carolin Krenzer (Trailmix) and Henrique Olifiers (Bossa Studios). Carl Cavers said that the industry has changed in 20 years but the fundamenetals of good leadership – resilience, flexibility, vision, hard work and perseverance – haven’t changed. “Sumo had great launch in 2003 due to the different co-founders and complimentary skills – it’s so hard to run a company on your own. Find what you are good at and look for people who are talented with complimentary skills.”
The panel also gave good advice on the fact that VCs can make a break a company, because they want “hockey stick” growth – you might have to move at a speed you might not be prepared for. Having the right support is paramount (Sumo and Bossa have used Sir Ian Livingstone) and it’s ok to admit that as CEO, you don’t know everything – share info with industry friends and other CEOs to get advice. However, ultimately you need to know what you and the company stand for – Carl said that Sumo was told that mobile was the future, not PC/console, but he and the studio didn’t believe that, and they were right – you sometimes have to trust your instincts. Better to fail at your own vision than someone else’s…
Next up was a presentation by GR member Jarvis Crofts from Alibi Games, talking about the state of Indie publishing, including market challenges (reduced investment, rising costs, B2B partnerships maturing), unpredictable sales and harder to predict success (103,000 games on Steam, 37% of time spent playing on Steam was for games more than eight years old) and the shift to stability, specialisation and sustainability (specialist publishers, smaller more-focused dev teams, smaller investments of up to £500K). Jarvis said that Alibi Games looked at 632 games last year, engaged with 161 developers, evaluated 52 titles, had 11 games through due diligence and signed 3 games. They sign 2-3 titles per year at an average of £350K per game – GR members can ask for an email intro to Jarvis and the great team at Alibi Games.
Finally, a panel on How to Find Your Publisher and What They Are Looking For featured Christina Barleben (Thoughtfish), Gina Jackson (Pitchify), Bobby Wertheim (Kando Factory), Charly Harbord (The Powell Group), Johan Toresson (Raw Fury) and Reese Wright (Devolver). Valuable advice on pitching docs included keep them short, start with a visual and X-statement, overview of the business model and the budget, then a video on the third slide – and a good game build can save a bad deck – but not the other way around! Every single publisher is different so tailor your pitch to them – but don’t go overboard (no need for splash screens with their logo on).
We enjoyed our day at PGC London – a cracking start to the year with some good talks, insightful panels and plenty of meetings with publishers and platform-holders, before we hopefully bring them to a Game Republic event later in the year. Watch this space!

