On August 15th, Iron Galaxy posted an official blog post from Adam Boyes, the current Co-CEO of the company. In it, he states that he is planning to leave IG at the end of this year to pursue another project.
I encourage you to read the full post for more info about him and his time at Iron Galaxy, but there's one particular section that may be important to us Rumbleverse fans:
As for what’s next? I’ll talk about that later. The most I can say right now is that an industry that I love is suffering. My new inspirations are to find ways to help people who make games solve their biggest problems. But that is a story for another time…
Hopefully "another time" comes soon, but how could Adam's future aspirations be related to Rumbleverse?
NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS PURELY WILD SPECULATION BASED ONLY ON THE TONE AND CONTENT OF ADAM'S LETTER
In the past two years, literally thousands of game devs have been laid off from their jobs from companies of all sizes. The year 2023 was a record breaking year for layoffs, and 2024 is looking to break that record if it keeps its current pace. Many people attribute these layoffs to over-hiring during the pandemic and corporate/shareholder greed, which Iron Galaxy has been very responsible at avoiding under Adam's leadership. Most of these devs still want to work on games, so those that can afford to take the risk may band together to see what they can come up with on their own. However, many can't...
One of, if not THE biggest problem that indie and even small-medium size studios have is getting the funding they need to complete and market their game. Whether it be just enough money to feed and house one or two people for a couple years, or enough to pay several people and enable them to hire professional expertise when it comes to marketing, voice acting, music, etc. that they may not be proficient at. This is typically where a publisher comes in.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Adam knows Rumbleverse. Being the Co-CEO of the company that made it, he would understand what is required to make it playable outside of the Epic ecosystem and have a rough idea of how much that may cost. He would know how much money the game made while it was live versus how much it costs to maintain the service, and what changes his current team believes they could make to become more profitable in the event of a revival. Adam has all the information a publisher would ask about and more.
For 2024-2025 at least, many people in the gaming industry believe there will be a severe cutback on available funding due to all these layoffs, as well as a larger aversion to risk. Publishers will be clutching their purses for a while to ensure their own survival, signing only a few games they believe to be surefire hits. They also may experience a brain drain from the industry because... well... people need food and shelter. Unfortunately, the games industry has always had an issue with job security, and now there are thousands of people without work all applying to limited openings. Many of them will need to seek work outside of games to keep food on the table.
Perhaps the biggest way a person could help the games industry right now (aside from unionizing) would be to help get more people the resources they need to work on new games. To become a game publisher.
Creating video games is a passionate endeavor for passionate people, and our industry needs help more than ever before. You haven’t heard the last from me, and neither has IG.
The question is: would reviving a game be the best option for a start up game publisher?
He would know...
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