Three years ago in 2012 Starbreeze released Syndicate, a game developed for EA and that didn't do all that well. Only Jeff here on Giantbomb really liked it. At that time Starbreeze was in big trouble and their shares were worth 0.07SEK or about one cent! (after they merged 10 shares into 1 a while back that is now listed as being 0.70SEK instead) Starbreeze have said that they are trying to become a publisher because they know how the big publishers like EA can fuck small developers and leave them with very little. They say that they know how it feels to make games for big publishers and because of that they think they can get market share by having decent contracts and from what I've seen they seem to have a model where they split everything 50/50 with the developer.

Since 2012 Starbreeze shares have increased in value by almost 2500% and they have gone from printing new shares to not go bankrupt to making profit and growing in a few years. I hope that their plan is not only going to make the company grow but also that it can create a more fair market for game developers.

It seems most of their success so far have come from Payday 2, a game that Razor recently put on the top 10 most played games on the world. But I am glad they have supported smaller games like Brothers even if that was not a financial success.

So what do you think? Could Starbreeze become a big publisher or is that project doomed to fail? I am glad if Sweden could become a major country in video games. DICE is owned by EA, Mojang got baught by Microsoft, GRIN went bankrupt and the only big video game company we have aside from Starbreeze is Avalance which have had some success with their Jast Cause games.

Starbreeze have their Sci Fi FPS game Storm coming out in 2017 and they are making a game with the Walking Dead license but they have started on their publishing deals by making a deal with a small Croatian developer who are making some sort of WWII game (not much details about the game exist).

sounds like a plan

Starbreeze is a dev studio, that gets most of it's funding for an over head Lion Game Lion. They had to get a go ahead from Lion Game Lion to continue supporting Payday 2 for 2 more years.

Then there is this: http://starbreeze.com/2015/05/starbreeze-launches-publishing-business/

I don't know what to make of it... is it Starbreeze or is it Lion Game Lion using the Starbreeze name? Are they going to become a big publisher? Probably not, but maybe they'll be comparable to Devolver.