The story of Samson: The buggy GTA-style game that just had to launch this month

This week, Xbox cuts Game Pass pricing. The US games market enjoys a bumper March and the BAFTA winners are revealed. Plus, a modern industry tale. [music] We speak to a developer at the layoff half its team. We scoped the entire project and get it launched before the money ran out. Hello and welcome to the Game Business Show. This is your Thursday news analysis show. We obviously do a show on a Tuesday, usually on a Tuesday, which is our feature show. This week, uh for reasons outside of our control, uh the feature show went out on Wednesday. So, if you missed it though, it it's a full of news. It would actually fit very well in our news show. It was with Matteo Sapio, the chief strategy officer of Poncle, that's the developer of Vampire Survivors and he announced all sorts of stuff. He announced that Vampire Survivors now has over 27 million players or has had 27 million players. It's opening studios in Japan and Italy. There's over 15 games in active development and when it comes to games they're sort of planning, there's even more, it's like 20 games.

It is licensing out its engine to other brands and studios to build Survivors games. There's a Vampire Survivors engine, it's letting other people use it to make to make games. This includes Warhammer Survivors. So, Poncle will make games based on IP that it knows, but if it's an IP it doesn't know, an IP it's not familiar with, it's letting them use the engine so they can make a Survivors game. That's interesting. It has paused third-party publishing plans however, they published a couple of games last year, but it they had mixed results. So, they um they're not sure they they they did they did enough to support those games. They're taking a pause on it. They want to put more structure around it. Do catch the episode if you have time. I think it's an interesting chat, although I have just done a pretty good uh synopsis there of of the big big stories that came out of it. Before I dive into the news for the last week and there's lots of news, it was a far busier week um this past week, I do need to plug our event in June, that's the Game Business Live. It's on June 8th at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles. I'll be there, Geoff Keighley will be there. I am interviewing EA Entertainment President Laura Miele. I'm

also interviewing video game legend, Naughty Dog co-founder, Crash Bandicoot director, THQ president, former THQ president and former Meta executive Jason Rubin and of course, I will be speaking to the Game Business regular and top analyst Matthew Ball. Um tickets are available now. We have a two-for-one offer at the moment that ends in two weeks, I think. That's our early bird period. Um if you're a paying subscriber though, you can come as part of your subscription. You just need to register. You should have a link in your inbox. If you haven't, drop me a line or check the Game Business Micro air and things like that, which is obviously only for paying subscribers. There is a link that's in there on how you can get your ticket. Also, if you're a Summer Game Fest industry ticket holder, you can also come along to the event, but you do need to register. You do need to register to be in the room. You can't just turn up with a with a Game Business subscription or a Summer Game Fest industry ticket and get in. We've got about 40 companies coming along actually. It's pretty good. Um I hope to see you there. Anyway, let's get to the news. And Xbox

has announced its Game Pass pricing reduction. So, it's reduced the price of Game Pass Ultimate by about 23%. It's going from $29.99 to $22.99. That's every month. It's also reduced PC Game Pass. That is going down from $16.49 a month to $13.99 a month. As a result of this though, future Call of Duty games won't be included in either service when they launch. New Call of Duty titles will now arrive on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass around a year later. That's upcoming Call of Duty games. Past Call of Duty games are staying in the service. That is absolutely fine. Nothing is being taken out. And we talked about this quite a bit last week and we knew this was going to happen, although we didn't know the exact details. So, I won't spend too long on it. I think it's key that Xbox hasn't made any promises around future price changing price changes. They promised to listen and learn, which suggests that there may be indeed be more changes to come. Um the only people I can think that lose out as a as a result of this price drop are people that subscribe to Call of

Duty, subscribe to Game Pass, sorry, to play Call of Duty for maybe a month or two and then leave. These gamers now either have to be patient or buy the game at full price. For all other gamers, it's a clear win. For long-term subscribers to Game Pass Ultimate, this works out as an annual saving of $84. Even if they feel obligated or they want to buy the next Call of Duty at launch, that still works out as a saving. So, it's it's it's good for most people. I think Xbox are still going to find it hard to re-engage lapsed players. The people that left Xbox Game Pass last year because of the price hike, are they just going to come back cuz the price is a little low? It's still not as low as it was. Xbox will need to lean into its big franchises. They've got a big year for games, Forza, Fable, Halo and Gears of War. I don't think it's any accident that this was announced and it's now you know, effective immediately, this price drop, because Forza Horizon 6 is out in May. And Forza Horizon 6 is really really highly anticipated. 2.7 million wishlists on Steam, third most wishlisted game at the moment. So, that looks set to be a key title. As I said last week, Xbox Game Pass is

struggling for growth and it isn't living on that initial dream Microsoft had back in 2018 when it started putting brand new titles into the service. This price drop is unlikely to solve those long-term issues. I did have some thoughts around it. Maybe subscribers to Game Pass get a set amount of credits they can spend it on whatever they want in the service. Or maybe it can be like Sky's in the UK where you get a base subscription and then you can bolt on things like, "Oh, I want retro games." I'll add the retro game bolt on. "Oh, I want shooters." I can have the shooter bolt on. "I want indie games." or whatever. I don't know. Ultimately, Xbox they do admit in the blog post that there isn't a single model that's best for everyone. So, this is the challenge that they need to try and solve. So, that was the big Xbox Game Pass news. Um also, that this what happened on Friday is the BAFTA's took place. I was there. It was a great event. Claire Obscur Exhibition 33 picked up the big prize, the get best game prize, but it didn't sweep the floor with everything. It also won debut game and performer in a leading role for Jennifer English. Another game that scooped up three awards was Dispatch from Ad Hoc. Um it

won for animation, audio achievement and performer in a supporting role for Jeffrey Wright. Um those folks were on our show, if you remember, a few weeks ago and they didn't actually think they would win anything. They thought it was all going to go to Claire Obscur, so well done to the Dispatch folks. I'm delighted for you. You were great on the show. Other big winners, Sucker Punch and Sony's Ghost of Tsushima received awards for music and technical achievement. Atomfall, quite surprisingly, won best British game. Despelote received Games Beyond Entertainment prize and South of Midnight was awarded for new intellectual property. That's great to see for South of Midnight. Death Stranding Death Stranding 2 There's There's wrong there. Death Stranding 2 on the Beach won an award for artistic achievement. Blueprints won for game design. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and No Man's Sky won for narrative and evolving game. Arc Raiders picked up a prize for multiplayer and Lego Party won family game. I think Donkey Kong Bonanza should have won something, but it didn't. Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen won the Fellowship Award, which was announced before the event. But well done to all those winners. Lots of winners there. There was one odd story

that came from the BAFTA's though. The BAFTA's, they don't really show many games. It's not like the Game Awards. There's not many games revealed during the BAFTA's, but they do do some bits. They showed the intro sequence to the new James Bond game, 007 First Light, for instance. It was supposed to show a game called The Quiet Things from BAFTA Breakthrough winner Alex Jones. It was however, its appearance was canceled 24 hours before the event. BAFTA said it felt BAFTA said it felt the trailer might be triggering and the game deals with childhood trauma and abuse and so made the decision not to show it. They you know, they couldn't let people know in time apparently warn them about it. Jones was devastated by the call. The trailer's out now and I've watched it and it doesn't actually seem particularly distressing and I'm pretty sensitive to those sort of things. It's possibly a victim of an overcautious BAFTA. They had a very famous recent TV controversy around Tourette's sufferer. So, maybe they're just being particularly sensitive, but it's it's a shame. It's a good trailer. If you have a chance to catch watch it,

um please do. It's called The Quiet Things. US market data is here. Just landed in my inbox just as I was recording and it's good news. March US game sales are up 8% thanks to strong sales of Crimson Desert, MLB The Show and Pokémon Pokkén Tournament, Marathon and WWE 2K26 are also up in there as well. Overall for the quarter, game spending is up 5% to $14.6 billion. The UK hardware spending was up 69% in March to $500 million. This is cuz of the Switch 2. It was the best-selling console for both March and the year to date with PS5 in second place. PS5 saw a surge in sales towards the end of March when PlayStation announced they'd be raising the price in April. Nintendo Switch 2 sales remain 12% of head ahead of Nintendo Switch sales launch aligned and that now includes the first Switch's December. Now, December's quite a crucial month for Nintendo hardware and now we have a better sort of launch aligned figure because both of them both those consoles have now gone through their first December. Let's move on from data. Let's move on to a bit of a quick incidental story. There's two

new Japanese games divisions that have launched from large Japanese entertainment brands. They're like buses, clearly. First, Hello Kitty creator Sanrio has launched its self-published game brand Sanrio Games. It plans to release 10 games over the next three years. That's according to Bloomberg. The first game is Sanrio PartyLand. It is a Switch and Switch 2 title that's coming in autumn 2026. In the past, Sanrio has released games under licensing agreements. It says it will continue to do that, but will leave the planning and development of other titles to and joining Sanrio is Toei. Toei has established Toei Games, an in-house publishing label. If you've not heard of Toei, then Toei Animation is best known for Dragon Ball, One Piece, Sailor Moon and Digimon. Most of those IPs are already big in video games and most of them under the stewardship of Bandai Namco. Now, here's the thing. Toei Games isn't actually working on any of those animation IP. They're planning to do new IP with creators in Japan and also other markets. Initially, they're targeting Steam with plans to go to console after that. Toei CEO Fumio Yoshimura said, Toei Games aims to implement create entirely new IPs from

scratch rather than simply utilizing existing IPs. We'll leverage the technology and expertise we've cultivated through video production in into our new game business. Um interesting. Um sticking with Japan Koei Tecmo has raised its financial forecast for the year. Um that is the year ending March 2026. Um Pokémon Picopia which it developed has done very well. Neo 3 has also done very well. The company now expects ordinary profit to increase from $232 million to $345.2 million. That's quite a bump. That's 50%. Operating profit is now due to rise 16.1% to $225.9 million. Well done Tecmo Koei and interesting news there coming out of Sanrio and Toei. Lots of news. Sorry. Loads of news to go through. Um this is a small one we've been covering obviously Build a Rocket Boy and Minds Eye. The strange drama around that game. The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain is taking them to court over alleged data privacy violations. This follows a report. I think I read it in gamesindustry.biz around the installation of the Terram surveillance

software onto PCs of staff. This is without informing them. So the the IWBG is taking Build a Rocket Boy to court over that. Um on this is a bit of an indulgence story for me because I'm really proud of Rebecca Valentine. Rebecca Valentine is new is a senior is been a big news journalist at IGN. Used to work with me at gamesindustry.biz. I learned a lot from Rebecca and she is now joined Kotaku. I know it's not the most popular website amongst some of my listeners, but she's joined Kotaku as a senior reporter. Uh it's interesting. Kotaku seems says it's it's doubled its traffic lately and that's that's impressive considering what's going on in the media landscape. Trying to bounce back Kotaku after a few recent setbacks, but um that's great great hire. Good luck to Rebecca. This is another story that I'm going to bring up. I don't normally talk about game announcements unless they're particularly big. But Nintendo has just announced the Tune Raiders. Um this is a game they actually announced it last year on the Nintendo Today app. Not a Nintendo Direct on their app. They've now announced that the game is coming out on July 23rd also

through its app. We've not had a direct appearance of this new Splatoon game ever. And Splatoon's a pretty big game and it's a Switch to exclusive. Um Nintendo do seem to be quite experimenting with how it communicates with its players at the moment. It also announced the release date of Rhythm Heaven Groove via the Nintendo Today app and I wouldn't be surprised if the new Star Fox game that it hasn't announced yet but will do soon might be announced in the same way. I I I'm surprised. I wouldn't I would have thought that a direct is more likely to reach a broader audience because someone might come in for Mario and then discover Tomodachi Life or whatever, but it'd be interesting to see the results of that. I guess some of these game announcements are relatively small and people might see that as a disappointing direct. So um interesting approach there by Nintendo and I'll keep an eye on it. Gosh, loads of stories. Um the Elden Ring movie has a release date. It'll come out on March 3rd, 2028 with production beginning this spring. It's also announced the cast which includes Kit Connor, Ben Whishaw, Berton Birch, Winston Price, Peter Serafinowicz. Uh he was a he was at a Dark Souls event I went to years and years and years ago. I think he's a big fan of the uh of

FromSoftware. So he must be delighted. Um Nick Offerman, Ruby Cruz, Kaylee Speny and loads more. Elden Ring was a breakout RPG hit of course. I don't need to tell you that. The game has sold over 30 million copies and it's being fast-tracked to the cinema. So um big news. And finally, Iron Galaxy had to lay off more staff. The studio is responsible for some truly great remasters and remakes including the Metroid Prime remaster which I loved and last year's excellent Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4 which is also brilliant. Um Iron Galaxy said on LinkedIn he'd hoped the games market might get back to normal but is now having to accept that current market conditions aren't going to change. It already had to cut staff last year. It's not known how many redundancies have been made, but great team great studio. I I I hope I hope they can stabilize. Um that's it for stories. A much busier week uh than last week. I didn't even mention the fact that Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, is stepping down to be replaced to be replaced by John Ternus. Um it might be good news for games. Tim

Cook never seemed that bothered about games. Maybe John will be different. Who knows? Anyway, onto our main segment. A bit of a different one this week. Uh you may or may not have seen this game that's just come out called Samson. It's a sort of GTA-like game. It's a lot more focused than GTA. It's made by Liquid Swords. Liquid Swords is a developer formed by Christopher Sundberg. He's the best known to be the co-founder and chief creative officer of Avalanche. Uh they're the team that direct worked on Just Cause. Christopher directed that game. Now Liquid Swords had no trouble finding money back when it launched in 2020. Uh they got NetEase to support them. But when they needed that last bit of publisher funding in 2025, well the money wasn't there. They couldn't find it and they had to make a decision that some of our listeners and viewers will be familiar with. Keep going and hope a publisher turns up or cut the team, rescope the project and try to make it work somehow. They decided to do the latter. The game launched this month. It's a little bit

of a mess. It's very buggy, but people seem to think there's something about it. There's something underneath all of that that's that's worth paying attention to. Um certainly the vibe is a bit more positive than what Minds Eye went through last year. Anyway, the story is a classic industry story and I asked Christopher, "Hey, would you be up for telling it for the fine listeners of the Game Business Show?" And much to my delight, he said yes. So here he is. My chat with Liquid Swords Christopher Sundberg. Hello Christopher. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Well, congratulations for getting Samson out. How's the launch gone? It's gone a little bit so-so I would say. Okay. The game suffered from way too many bugs, lack of polish and so on, but we're correcting it almost daily now. So it's starting to become more more positive the reception. But for us in it was just a a must to get the game out. Yeah, but it's like I've said in numerous other interviews that any game released in

this day and age of the industry is is a success for everyone. So we're glad to to be contributing to that success. Well, let's go over the backstory cuz some of the listeners might not know. Obviously you formed Liquid Swords. You you obviously come from Avalanche. You worked on Just Cause and and then ran that studio. But you then formed Liquid Swords was it in 2020? Yeah, late in 2020 in sort of the high point of of the pandemic. And at a time when there was lots of money around. Yeah, and my non-compete I just expired after I sold Avalanche to to Nordisk Film. Mhm. When I left Avalanche, I couldn't really see myself as going back to to games again. Oh, really? Cuz I was so fed up with it with all the industry and then focus that shifted so much to to other things than making fun games. So um But then this idea of making a bigger game popped up in my head and do it differently with a smaller team than

than usual and just approaching in development in a different way that I at least I have done before. So that's when Liquid Swords was born. Mhm. Now, in what way were you looking to make games in a different way? Simplifying the development process? That kind of thing? Simplifying the games process the development process. Not focusing on on buzzwords and strange business models. Um focusing more on making a fun game, but also making the work environment fun. It should be fun to go to work and I think at least my team has really missed working on site with the with the team and and yeah, there's so so many things that we can optimize and so on. So rarely any meeting here at Liquid Swords are more than 30 minutes. Yeah, that's good. So developers and well anyone in the company for that matter can spend more time working on the game than than sitting in meetings. Mhm. So well,

what was the vision then? Was the Samson it looked like GTA, but obviously a lot more focused. Was that always the the vision or was it more ambitious? No.
And I I know you had to change it.
So it was much more ambitious up until a little more than a year ago. Mhm. Uh when we realized that the the publisher climate was terrible. Mhm. We were quite far in a number of discussions, but we felt that we couldn't trust this game to be picked up by by a publisher. So we decided to self-publish the game. We had quite a a large budget ask as well. So I think that's what Yeah. We just had to adapt to the current state of the games business. So that led to lowering the ambitions, cut away some of the the meatier heavy RPG aspects of the game that we had a bunch of stuff, but also made it easier for us to to focus more on some of the

three pillars that we have. So that was a good part and then the bad part was that we had to lay off half the team. Oh, wow. Uh about a year ago. Um that was terrible. Those were our friends Mhm. and co-workers and great developers. So the team was 50% of what it was. Yeah. Are you allowed to share what how big you were and how how where you are now? 96 including some contracts. Mhm. Con- consultants. And then we laid off. So we were about 40 something and then some have left after. Mhm. So I see it's basically the situation was you had this investment. I think it's from NetEase. I think you've put some money in as well and some others. And then you got to a point where you obviously there was a time with lots of money, lots of investment. Then the market shifted a few years into your development cycle and I'm I'm this I'm paraphrasing here and then you basically you needed the runway. And so

that means you had to make cuts. I mean it's it's sort of a standard industry story, unfortunately. That's been a lot of the case for a lot of people. Yeah, because the alternative would have been to just take the risk and bet on the publisher signing signing the game, but um we weren't really prepared to take that risk. Yeah, it's still around. Our way of adapting to to the challenges this industry throws our way. Mhm. Well, with it's the same time though, the industry does seem to be with the successes that are coming out of the industry are games that are a little more focused. You know, we are seeing you know, we use the word double-A a lot and I know that probably reference means budget these days, but I often find games like Descent or Clustertruck are kind of really they're very very good at what they do. They just don't try and do everything and that seems to work. It's easier if you can that can be the goal from the beginning and it isn't something you have to pivot to halfway through or more than halfway through development. Um but um it does seem to work. Yeah, in hindsight it would

probably have been better if we set out to make the game that we we just released, but um not focusing on going so wide with the wide feature set. Then the game could have been more successful than it is today and and it would have been a better game. Yeah. Well, has it been successful enough? Are you are you feeling confident about it? Cuz obviously you talked about how you had basically had to get the game out because you needed the you needed to is you know, otherwise you're going to run out of you run out of time. Has it been successful enough? Is it is it showing signs that it will be or It's it's starting to pick up. We are releasing new updates and and patches and so on now weekly. So it will be what most expected it to be and we're releasing it on console in September, I think. All right. I don't think we're allowed to that many new features, but we'll definitely work on polishing the game and and uh It'll run as intended sort of thing. Yeah. I looked at some of the reviews and looked at the consensus. It seems to be

that yes, it it's got bugs in it and it isn't necessarily in the state people want it to be in, but the but at the same time people seem to think there's something about it. There's something there that you know, given a bit of time it's might be worth playing later down the line or something. At least that's the vibe I'm getting.
Yeah, you're absolutely right and and the the the wish list have gone up. So and there's definitely a desire to play the game out there, but we don't want to treat our players like digital guinea pigs. No, yeah, there's the commercial realities. I guess by the time it comes to console you have you have to get it out before GTA though, right? As the uh There's another pressure there. Well, GTA I don't even see it GTA as a as a competitor. It's it's like a phenomenon. Mhm. Everything in entertainment it competes with the next Taylor Swift concert it competes with the um next show on on Netflix. I think when a new

GTA game releases it's it's just Christmas for everyone. It's it's like Yeah. I know people that don't even play GTA that will get GTA. And it's just because they wanted to be able to say to their friends that they have GTA 6 at home. Yeah. But all that said there will always be room for games aside GTA.
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, I'm not I'm not I wasn't saying there's not a room for a a sort of more focused slightly different game. It's just you still don't want to be out next to it though, do you? But the price point's really interesting. You've got this $25 price point. I don't I'm not totally sure I've seen many games that have that specific price point. How did you land on that? When we cut down on the ambition level Mhm. we wanted the the price point to sort of reflect what type of people would get. Mhm. Clearly [clears throat] signaling that it's it's not a big triple-A 200-hour experience, but more like a 25-hour experience to signal that it could be

you know, rough around the edges. Mhm. Kind of like what we were delivering before was this epic rock concert with Led Zeppelin and what we delivered was the the Sex Pistols. You've been self-publishing it. You talked about that. You talked about you weren't going to rely on finding a publisher. How have you found that experience? It was interesting. We we self-published a couple of games when I was still at Avalanche, but we had more financial muscle behind us then. In this case it's been a positive experience to to self-publish Mhm. because we're in total control. So if the game is really successful, it's it's because of us and if it's not, it's because of us. So we can't blame anyone. Well, yeah. I had the Descent folks on and um a couple of weeks ago and they obviously small much smaller company. They couldn't find a publisher, they couldn't get a publisher so they self-published. I said, "How did you find that experience?" and they they grimaced. That was their that was their reaction. It was a lot harder than they think they had expected, but it sounds to me like you knew what you were

getting into. We knew what we were getting ourselves into, but we have also worked with a go-to-market company called the Caketown here in Stockholm. So they helped us on the marketing side of things. They set us up with TriplePoint PR and was handling all the PR and so on. So if it wasn't for them, then we would never have gotten this game out because we intentionally don't have that skill set. You talked about how you were at Avalanche and you sort of like I'm sort of done with the video game industry, but you got pulled back in to create this thing and obviously it's been difficult, right? It's it's the story is is tough for for all sorts of reasons. There's nothing necessarily to do with you anything you've done or your team's done. I think you talked about there being an industry hangover, but I think a hangover suggests that we might shake this off. I'm not entirely convinced we will. Um as how are you feeling now compared to you know, how you felt coming out of Avalanche? Um it feels a lot better despite the launch being a bit so-so. It's really

fun to to go to work and that's what I missed back at Avalanche. It's fun being in control of our own destiny and and that's what makes it very inspiring to me to to go to work. And as you said, I don't think the games industry will it will never come back to where it sort of was. I'm I'm very glad for that cuz it wasn't healthy where we were. No. Well, I mean one of the things I think we've learned as an industry or at least I hope we have. The more I've done I've done I've been doing over 100 of these episodes now and I've spoken to lots of different companies and a lot of them admittedly are the successful ones. But it seems to be a realization that the worst thing you can do in the video game industry is chase a trend. Yeah. There was a time when the every that was the MO of most major companies, but I think there's almost a realization that if you do that by the time your game is out, the trend has moved on.
Yeah. And there was so much competition for our time and you know, so many TV shows and there's all accessible at touch of a button. You

really have to do be be different to stand out. You really have or at least do something that we haven't had for a while. So I think there's a realization across the business, you know, from the biggest companies to the smaller ones that that's kind of what you got to do. And um that's a hugely risky thing to do at the triple-A level and I think you probably won't see too much of that at that level, but um maybe the mid-level is where that lot of that investment's going. But anyway, I feel that's what the industry's learned from this and there will be lots of failures still, but we also have these successes all the time. Hopefully Samsara will turn out to be one of those. But it's like the quicker the games or we as an industry realizes that we we put ourselves in this mess, the quicker we can find a solution to it, but there won't be a solution that fits everyone. Yeah. That is the same across the board. I'm not saying that we had the right solution doing what we did just going on our own, but it worked for us and we got a game out and that's a big step on the way. So I

would just like to encourage everyone that is struggling out there to to just look at what the the sort of the end goal is and and what's best for your business, not what works for for everyone else and as you said, chasing trends. Yeah. I shouldn't mention any names, but uh I worked with publishers that or a publisher that you could follow the newsletters from gamesindustry.biz and see how they change their their business strategy. Yeah. The day after that newsletter came in your inbox. Yeah. That was my fault, I'm afraid. Um
[laughter]
um one of the things I always say is look, we have people like yourself on the show and this this podcast and they'll they'll tell their stories. It's like you don't those stories are designed to inspire you, but they have to you've got to relate it to what you're doing. Like you can't just go this is how um Sandfall did it and this is how Saber Interactive is doing it and this is we should just follow that. And no, no, you've got to you've got to make it apply to your the art that you're

creating and the team that you've got. You can't just copy and paste, but hopefully you can hear something that makes you go ah. Where where do you hope to be in sort of 5 years or whatever, you know, I guess I guess there's an element of still going, right, at this point. Do you have a an ambition in mind? Well, obviously I want um Samsara to to be successful and grow into a franchise so we can release maybe the game we were originally setting out to Mhm. as a sequel to this, but I think we had sort of a cap when we grew a few years ago. So we we wouldn't be more than 100 that we we actually our release agreement with our the landlord here we we're not allowed to be more than 100 in in the studio. So that's sort of hard stop to how much we could grow. To me, success is building on what we have and look at it long-term rather than just chasing a quick buck here and there. I see this as a sort of an endurance race. I'm a

retired endurance athlete. So, uh I've approached almost everything I do in this business on the long-term, not just trying to make a lot of money and then retire. I think sometimes that's been the problem in the business is there's a lot of people that try to make money quite quickly from it and then they all go away. It rarely rarely works. And it was great when Notch sold Minecraft to Microsoft, but everyone was just setting the bar at that level without even thinking that it was a very unique Yeah. I think persistence and patience is actually something that is really really important. I mean, I can understand why the games industry isn't necessarily built that way because there was a time when you was a game was releasing in a box and you had to drive as many sales in that first week or that first month as possible because then it would end up in the pre-owned bins and and then it then it and everything moves on. But now, as you're saying you say with Samson, right? You know, it's come out. It's it's had a so-so launch. I think

it's got some, you know, you gave me got some players there. It's then about, you know, what happens next. You've got to be patient with it. You've got to keep going. You've got to keep doing I mean, I see that you put out a road map for the 2026 and it's sort of you you've got to keep you've got to keep doing this thing. You've got to keep going cuz that requires patience. Yeah. It requires persistence. It requires having a runway of money as well, which is the which is where things get tricky, but No, you're absolutely right. It it's like I don't have any rush or even a desire to sell Liquid Source to someone. I'd rather see us being successful on our own. We've gone through highs and lows and we know what we have in the bank. So, we'll just keep on doing the work and significantly improving Samson and then create stability for the studio and the company as well. Mhm. On the long-term and then we can start to experiment a little bit with whatever that might be, but show that we we can deliver quality. It's uh

it's our absolute focus right now. Well, I'm I'm out of questions really. I mean, I do hope the I hope that happens. I mean, it does it does feel like a very console friendly game. Yes. I think that console release should be good. That was the plan from the very beginning was to deliver on on PC and console simultaneously, but then for financial reasons we we couldn't and we we don't have the bandwidth or we didn't have the bandwidth internally to take it to console, but now we do and the game is already running on consoles. It just needs to be more optimized. Is is it I'm assuming PlayStation Xbox is is that is that or is there a Nintendo as well? Uh no, it's it's so graphics heavy that it wouldn't run very well on the switch too without some serious compromises on on the graphic side of things. But uh definitely PlayStation and Xbox. Yeah. Yeah, it also suits the audience a bit better as well on those machines. Well, I'm out of questions really, but I do feel like your story is sort of sort of I think there'll be a lot of people listening to this that that can relate to this journey. You know, you had to

make that call of do you just keep going, cross your fingers and hope a magical publisher emerges or do you make the the bold the difficult call of cutting things and doing it yourself. I think that's I think there's lots of people that'll be able to relate to that. Yeah, absolutely. It it's uh uh it's not easy making games in this day and age and nor should it be. When I don't have sort of a a battle to fight then I get very lazy as a person. So, I will always work best when my when my kids are growling a little bit and I have to chase something. And I think that that's what happened to me at at Avalanche. It's like we had so much money in the bank and it's like we didn't have any problems signing big games with publishers. We had a franchise with Just Cause that was running along quite well despite the sort of flawed Just Cause 4, but everything was

so in place. There was this infrastructure that you could always rely on and lean back on and that's what will make us successful too that we will get that infrastructure and and sort of a safety net when the day comes, but it's all up to us to to get to that day and everyone knows what's at stake. Well, I think that's why competition is a good thing and it's why being out of your comfort zone is a good thing at an individual level as well as a company level. You know, I I've always moved on when I've stopped learning stuff. And instinctively you want you you know, it's it's safe and it's you know, you know what you're doing, but that's sort of forcing yourself to try and chase something. I always get worried when any sector of the industry starts losing competition cuz I always think that's what drives a whole of market cuz we all we all get it's not just you're talking about the hunger, right? It's just you always get a bit of a buzz and a bit of excitement when you're forced to when you're just trying to do something new and you're having to try and because your competitor's doing this, you're going to do this and that kind of that

kind of is a good dynamic for the market. I think it's a good thing for people individually. I mean, I say I know not everyone's built the same, so I might be just I might I might just be imprinting my own personality onto everybody. But it but it I I it sounds like that to you. Yeah, we we've never pretended to be any bigger and better than we are. Uh yes. Um so, um Um we've been quite honest and and that's almost it's hard not to read all the comments on on Twitter or X and so on, but it's like what is very heartwarming is that so many wanted it to be much bigger than it was. They almost thought we were lying when we've been repeating the saying that this is a game that is a bit rough around the edges. It's it's not a 100-hour experience. It's Um but it's almost like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you keep on saying that. We we know when there will be a new Just Cause in the end.

[laughter]
Well, maybe it will be in the end.
This launch is actually very similar to to Just Cause 1. Well, I'm going to take up enough of your time. Um thank you so much for sharing your story. As I hope it goes very well and I look forward to the console releases. Look forward to those uh those landing in a um well before GTA comes along. Yeah. Thank you so much. Well, thank you. So, that's Christopher there. Thank you, Christopher, and good luck to you and the team. Now, before we leave, I do actually have one last little segment for you. Um last week during London Games Festival, I hosted a few sessions where game developers and other companies sort of announced some things. And one of the things that I thought that was announced on stage was was something called studio situations. This is from Games Leadership. It's a it's a company operated by Mel Phillips. Some people in the UK industry will know who Mel is. I thought this was really cool. I'm holding it in my hand for those that are watching. Um you start with a situation. So, in this case I'll pick one out. So, if you start

with a situation, so it could be the game's direction isn't locked in, okay? And then you get a incident. So, in this case a major falling out has fractured the team. So, you know, that that's a bit of an issue. And then you then you pick a resource and the resource might be Oh, they first they got to pick a role. So, in that case I work in narrative. And then a leadership level, so I'm the lead narrative lead. And then you pick a resource, which might be strong team morale, low morale, tight schedule. Some of the resources are good, some of them bad. Um and then there's a wild card segment at the end. Anyway, the idea behind it is to sort of do create a bit of a role play for studios so they can sort of prepare for difficult potentially difficult situations. Mel explains it a little bit better than me. So, here's a very short clip of Mel explaining um the idea behind studio situations. This is the studio situations. Studio situations.
Yes, come on. Fill us in. Give us the pitch. I'll give you the pitch. So, the idea is that we could see we're seeing

patterns in game studios. We're seeing the same patterns globally as well. It doesn't matter [clears throat] on how big or small the studios. We're seeing the same issues arise. And one of the things that we're not doing is communicating what's happening and and planning ahead for all of the issues that might happen within our studios. So, we've created a card game that looks at gives you a scenario like a situation and then you add to it as it changes. And the idea is that you do this with your team. You have a conversation as you go and you discuss like how would we deal with this in real time. And and it's based off So, my father is very worried about like issues that might happen. So, when we go and stay in like a hotel, he'll be like, "We need to find the fire escapes just in case there's an emergency." And there's there's some kind of truth like research has shown that if we talk about issues before they happen, you can become more adaptable. You're more flexible. You're more resilient. But only if you've had those kind of plans in place already. So, this gives

you a really safe way, you know, with before the pressure is added and you're you're in [clears throat] the middle of game making, you can exist and find this situation and talk about it in a way that maybe when it if and when it happens, you're more prepared. So, there you have it. Studio situations. It's out in July. They're testing at the moment. You can pre-order it from the store page at gamesleadership.com. I just thought this was really cool. I thought it could be quite handy. It's it's an interesting way of thinking about um game development. Anyway, that's it for today's episode of the Game Business Show. We will be back with more news analysis, insight, and interviews in the days and weeks ahead. To make sure you don't miss a thing, head to the gamebusiness.com, put in your email, and every single time we release an episode, you will get a newsletter from us. Also, don't forget to get your tickets to the Game Business Live in June. We'd love to see you there. But, until next time, thank you for tuning in.