Valve Turns Video Gamers Into...Investors?
Author:
Category:
Tags:
Date Posted:
July 21, 2009 4:19pm
Bookmark:
Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, is taking an interest into turning gamers into investors. The investment would be Valve games they want to see in the future. Currently gamers tend to get some say in the actual game, but not which games they get to see come to market.
According to Newell, "One of the areas that I am super interested in right now is how we can do financing from the community."
"So right now, what typically happens is you have this budget - it needs to be huge, it has to be $10 million - $30 million, and it has to be all available at the beginning of the project. There's a huge amount of risk associated with those dollars and decisions have to be incredibly conservative."
These community funded games would help to push the development of titles investors/gamers want to see on the market. The current balance lies in the hands of the publishers who provide fundage via publishing deals. If investment was to come from the community, they would hold the power of sway.
The idea would be to allow gamers to be early investors in a project, after which they could possibly get a return as well as a copy of the game.
Comments
2 Comments
By
Cuchaz
on July 23, 2009 11:31am
That is quite possibly the coolest thing ever! I think I'd do it if the investment fee was small enough.
By
BioHazardous
on July 23, 2009 2:07pm
My take on how it could be setup:
An investor would create an account with them and add money to the account like you would with any brokerage firm. Then instead of stocks you have a list of possible projects with mini landing pages to describe the ideas in full detail. You choose the project(s) you like and allocate funds accordingly.
Since they said the investment needs to be up front, there should be a no risk initially unless it gets fully funded and the project actually starts. That way if they decide "no we're not going to do this" then you get your money back as it shouldn't have cost them anything yet. Then you can choose a different project. Rinse and repeat.
An investor would create an account with them and add money to the account like you would with any brokerage firm. Then instead of stocks you have a list of possible projects with mini landing pages to describe the ideas in full detail. You choose the project(s) you like and allocate funds accordingly.
Since they said the investment needs to be up front, there should be a no risk initially unless it gets fully funded and the project actually starts. That way if they decide "no we're not going to do this" then you get your money back as it shouldn't have cost them anything yet. Then you can choose a different project. Rinse and repeat.
| Notification [x] |