[STEAM] Devolver Digital decides video games and publicly traded companies don't mix, announces plan to go private once again to save it some money and headache

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A lot is wrong with the games industry, if you

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, and a lot of its issues can be traced back to the same place: studio executives prioritizing the shareholders at the reins of publicly traded companies. Indie giant Devolver Digital, which went public in November 2021 and has seen its share value nosedive since, is the latest company to learn this firsthand.

Devolver plans to go private again, and its reasoning offers a clear and timely explanation of how shareholders hobble, hollow out, and otherwise hurt companies, and especially game companies.

An

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posted to Devolver Digital's investor relations page confirms that the company has proposed to be delisted from the ***'s AIM market. The proposition will be voted on at a September 8 general meeting.

But it's the "Reasons for the Cancellation" that really stand out. Devolver went public on the back of, among other games, Fall Guys, an enormous hit that injected a ton of cash into the company. "Since then," Devolver says today, "the global video games industry has undergone a ******* of significant disruption and volatility, characterised by

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for studios and publishers, platform rationalisation and

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across the industry."

Devolver's directors also "believe that the Company's share price does not reflect the true market value of the Company and that the stock market has not rewarded the Company" for its successes.

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(Image credit: Dennaton Games) It's when math isn't meeting shareholder demands that corners tend to get cut. Make no mistake: shareholder expectations are a primary factor in a lot of obviously unfinished games being released (to squeeze into a fiscal target) or in

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(to reduce reported costs,

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).

Abolishing shareholders (and private equity) would not instantly solve all of the games industry's problems, but if you size up all those problems, you'll find that many distributaries come from this river. Several publicly traded game companies have, of course, found success, but behind them is a graveyard of companies and games that were ground to bits trying to get a line to meet arbitrary milestones. And Devolver's bid to go private is one of the best summaries I've seen of the situation in some time.

Here's a key line from Devolver that seems to echo the threat of cut corners: "Consequently, the Company has at times faced increased pressure to deliver short-term market expectations that do not necessarily reflect the underlying long-term value creation potential of its portfolio and development pipeline." (This is also where enshittification comes from: squeezing more money out of the same stuff by sacrificing quality or displacing values.)

A Devolver spokesperson minced no words in a comment to

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: "Being private will allow the Devolver Digital team, especially the finance, legal, and executive team, to singularly focus on the long-term health of the company and less on satisfying the requirements of the public market, which have nothing to do with being a successful game publisher."

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