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Comment by tracerbulletx | Hacker News Reader

There is a middle ground between the massive decrepit zombie studios, and indie. Larian, Grinding Gear Games, Remedy, Valve, and CD Project red are still admirable studios that release mostly masterpieces and are clearly passionate about their product as an art form. Valve and CD project red might have a few caveats, but overall still nailing it if they're capable of HL:Alyx and what Cyberpunk2077 is as of right now. You can't make things of that caliber without being great.

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Valve (US) is indeed the odd one out in this list as it is a behemoth in the industry.

Larian (Belgium), GGG (New Zealand), Remedy (Finland), CDPR (Poland) ... I'm spotting a trend here.

Meanwhile Blizzard (US), Maxis (US), EA (US), Rockstar (US), Bungie (US), Lionhead (formerly UK, now Microsoft (US)) ... there's got to be a pattern?

Adding Lucasarts, Origin Systems (not a personal favorite) and Westwood Studios to the list of formerly great US studios

Also add Infocom and Sierra, both of which got destroyed after being bought.

I kind of forgot about Sierra. My opinion at the time was, and still is: Whatever Sierra made (mostly adventures and flight sims), usually Lucasarts made something similar but IMO better.

Sierra released a lot more games, though. LucasArts quality was generally better, and the games more memorable due to clever use of humor, but I think Sierra had an epic feel to their games that LucasArts didn't quite match - and Sierra also had more "adult" games, such as Gabriel Knight and Phantasmagoria (if that's your kind of thing!). I think they are both great from different perspectives.

Let's not forget Access of Tex Murphy fame either :).

>Larian, Grinding Gear Games, Remedy, Valve, and CD Project red

This is a rollercoaster of a list. Valve's $7.7bil versus a company who's only product is Path of Exile?

There's no way Valve's valuation is anywhere close to $8b in 2023, right?

They probably make that much in revenue yearly, the number from 2019 has to be way out of date.

Aren't GGG owned by Tencent?

I believe op's point is that they're 1) not independent and 2) not making exploitive games. Exploitive monetization is a fairly subjective call but it seems pretty agreeable that being owned by Tencent certainly makes a studio not "indie".

Gog is owned by CD Projekt, a Warsaw listed company whose major shareholders are still the three founders of the company (https://www.gpw.pl/company-factsheet?isin=PLOPTTC00011#share...).

It's not owned by TenCent.

You misread. GGG = Grinding Gear Games. Who are indeed owned by TenCent as of 2018.

Apologies!

My only real criteria was studios I could think of that seem to still make games like they (and the leadership) are passionate about it and are making S tier games still. I put GGG on it because Path of Exile 2 looks like what a company with the vision of Blizzard in its hayday would be making today.

Oh wow, googling it, Larian is only 5 years younger than Blizzard? I thought they were some post turn-of-the-century young company.

I mean, what is the criteria to be in this list?

CD Projekt has more employees than Bungie, and the current market cap is ~70% of what Bungie was bought for?

> CD Projekt

They also benefit from Polish salaries. I think at one point a couple years ago they were barely paying $300-700 a month to staff.

While salaries in Poland are much lower than in the US, $300 a month is... exaggerating it quite a bit.

I'm just vaguely remembering the numbers (or confusing them with Ukraine). It might be higher but it was definitely sub-$1k.

Regarding Ukraine salary sub-$1k belongs to juniors mostly.

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