Like lightning

Change is afoot in the world of videogame publishing. Where once the average player might have been able to name – and count on one hand – the companies that brought to market most of the big titles they purchased, today the picture is much more complicated. Selfpublishing is on the rise, of course, as is the indie dev-pub model. But we’re also becoming aware of ever more sleeping giants: companies that have, quietly, without many of us noticing, become forces to rival the biggest publishers and platform holders.

Look at Devolver Digital, which, quite apart from having one of the year’s best runs of releases, from Death’s Door to Inscryption, has just become a publicly traded company, with an initial valuation of almost $1bn. Or at Embracer Group which, despite being a name that remains unfamiliar to many, announced earlier this year that it had in the region of 120 games in development.

In that context, November’s Thunderful World event feels like a statement of intent. It’s the first Direct-style broadcast from Thunderful Group, a Swedish developer-publisher-distributor-investor conglomerate that – to oversimplify slightly – grew out of tiny Gothenburg studio Image & games.