ADAPT OR PERISH


Agostino Simonetta, Chief Commercial Officer at GSC Game World, suggests that companies still trying to apply the old way of developing and publishing games are the ones in most trouble


O


ver the 30 years of my career, I’ve had the great fortune of being involved and playing a small part


in what I call the digital revolution that has democratised game development and publishing. From working on early mobile and digital


games at Sega, launching PSP minis and the self-publishing programme at PlayStation, and continuing the same work at ID@Xbox, I have learnt the importance of always understanding the evolution that was happening and could come. I have come to see the gaming ecosystem as essentially Darwinian, something I have been arguing for years.


TWENTY YEARS OF EVOLUTION The digital revolution had three ingredients. Digital distribution became viable alongside retail (Steam on PC, the App Store and Google Play on mobile, PSN and Xbox on console, etc.). The platforms opened up to self-publishing. Development tools (Unity, Unreal, etc.) became cheap and accessible enough for any developer with a laptop. None of these alone was the revolution. Together they meant anyone could make a game and put it in front of players. The same revolution changed how players found, paid for,


and played games. Monetisation models multiplied (free-to-play, subscriptions like PS Plus and Game Pass). Ways to access games changed too: Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview let players engage during development, and entirely new platforms emerged (Roblox, VR, cloud streaming, etc.). And games themselves stopped being finished products, becoming always-evolving experiences that grow and change with their players.


THE BUBBLE THAT HID IT The digital revolution had spurred enormous growth in gaming, and from the late 2010s onwards money flooded in to chase it (VC, PE, stock market money, platform investments, etc.). Soon the investment outpaced what real growth and profit could support. It felt structural. It was never going to last, but few wanted to see it. With all that money coming in, the industry over-expanded, costs


ballooned, the number of games released rose with them, and it built for the size of the funding rather than the size of the audience. It ignored the evolution underneath, and it ignored a simpler limit too: players don’t just have limited money, they have limited time. Then the music stopped. The funding


dried up, valuations fell, and the contraction hit all at once. The last few years have been extremely difficult, and we must


acknowledge the human impact: tens of thousands of jobs lost, careers disrupted, studios closed.


THE NEW ECOSYSTEM The underlying reality the bubble had been hiding is now plain to see. While the money was flowing, the industry didn’t need to focus on profitability or to understand what was actually going on. Survival now depends on both. The old rules have been rewritten: the barriers to create and


distribute games, the development costs, the consumer pricing, the access to players. The long tail (yes, the Chris Anderson book) now offers real returns on small games and small investments. The barriers have collapsed, not disappeared. Every week, every month, every year, new successful titles emerge


from new studios and new companies from all over the world, often built on new business models, new cost structures, and new ways of reaching players. The ecosystem is not dying, it is simply evolving, and it does not care about the ways many of us, myself included, are used to working.


ADAPT OR PERISH We all need to understand, accept and embrace this new ecosystem, with new approaches, new business models and often very different economics. The companies still trying to apply the old way of developing and publishing games to today’s problems are the ones in most trouble. For the companies and the people willing to evolve, there is a bright future. This is Darwinian evolution. Adapt or perish.


May/June 2026 MCV/DEVELOP | 47


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