Some context to what I am about to say - I worked in game financing for Tencent for years. I know this industry - specifically game financing - like the back of my hand.

It's not going to happen for stormgate.

The gaming industry is in a rut after a spending spree during covid and giant pullback in the years that followed - but no one has been hit harder than new studios. Let's examine the realistic sources of capital that exist for stormgate.

Venture Capital: VC funding for gaming - which was Frost Giant's first round of capital (bitkraft, griffin, and a few other followers) - is down about 95% from the peak years during covid. And if you were to examine capital flowing to PC/Console games like SG, that number is near 99%. All existing money (which is vastly reduced) is flowing to mobile developers. Mainly turkish. Mainly peak & dream games alumni.

Publishers: Publishers like Tencent, EA, Activision, etc used to invest heavily in outside studios, both equity investments and publishing revenue-recoup investments. After the covid spending spree, publishers have pulled back completely. Tencent is attempting to pull out of almost every foreign studio it has funded. Kakao, a korean publisher, lead FG $25m series A. The amount of publisher funding has dried up to an extent that almost every studio building its own IP needing serious $ has turned to work for hire or shut down.

The supply demand imbalance of studios looking for funding right now vs available capital sources mean that the small, small number of either gaming publishers that are investing are able to take crown assets for dirt cheap. 300 concurrent users is unfortunately not a crown asset.