Steamforged Games (Guild Ball etc) Receives £5m Investment, Ian Livingstone Joins Board.

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**Azreal13**

Steamforged Games has raised an investment of £5 Million (roughly $6.46 million) from London-based Foresight Group, an infrastructure and private equity investment manager with £2.9 billion under management, the companies announced. The investment will be used to support new product development, development of retail channels, and to help accelerate international growth.

Steamforge is planning eight new games in the next 24 months, according to the announcement. The company was founded around Guild Ball in 2014, had a big hit with Dark Souls, and released Resident Evil 2 earlier this year. A license for Devil May Cry, another CAPCOM game, was announced this month (see "Steamforged Games Acquires ‘Devil May Cry’ License").
Update: Foresight made the investment from three funds, a company representative told ICv2: Foresight Regional Investment Fund, which makes small (up to £5M) investments in the North West of England, NorthWales and South Yorkshire; Foresight VCT, which invests in later stage growth capital opportunities; and Foresight 4 VCT, which invests in fast-growing, unquoted UK companies.

The investment comes with a high-profile name attached: Ian Livingstone, who co-founded Games Workshop and had a multi-decade career in the videogame business, will join the Steamforged board as a non-executive director in a deal facilitated by Foresight. Foresight Senior Investment Manager Ben Dawson, who co-ran the deal for Foresight along with Matt Pomroy, will also join the Steamforged board.

Steamforged CEO Rich Loxam, who co-founded the company with Mat Hart, welcomed the investment. "Steamforged has grown beyond all of our expectations over the last five years and Foresight’s investment gives us the scope to drive the business forward in the years to come," he said. "We look forward to working with Foresight and utilising the investment to continue development and extend the reach of our games."

Foresight’s Dawson lauded the company. "Steamforged has achieved a lot in a short space of time and on limited resources," he said. "The team has an excellent track record in creating, developing and launching games, and with a strong product pipeline, combined with our investment, we see very exciting times ahead."

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/43073/steamforged-games-raises-5-million-roughly-6-5-million

**infinite_array**

Eight new games in two years seems insane.

I was already a little wary of Steamforged, especially after the continuing Dark Souls problems and the shuttering of the forums.

Maybe Livingstone will help out?

**RiTides**

Yeah, I'm also wary of them - I tracked their Godtear campaign closely, and between the handling of that and Dark Souls... I guess I'm just not a fan anymore. They really don't seem to care about backers at all

That said, much the same could be said of many big game company's KS campaigns... sooooo, it might be worth checking out their stuff at retail. But there are too many other good options for me to want to deal with all that drama

**Azreal13**

They're a text book example of a company experiencing growing pains. I recently had a three week wait on a customer service issue, only to receive what fundamentally amounted to a shrug of the shoulders. In my case I'd kind of expected it and had made a contingency, but it was still terrible and would have been a massive turn off for a customer less informed than me.

They've also had some huge blunders like discontinuing their metal range (and also having a fire sale for Black Friday to clear out the stock) before their resin replacements were ready (and supply and quality issues with those that are) meaning great swathes of the Guild Ball range aren't currently available for sale.

Then there's been delays on almost all new releases, I mean, ok, the shipping container getting flooded and all the stuff needing repackaging can't be helped, but that only explains one occasion.

We've also had minor missteps, like releasing a multifaction box because they don't do single blisters at retail any more, meaning the community has had to essentially sort itself out by buying and splitting them, or releasing a box that many established players owned five out of six models, and making the only alternative to buying the whole box for one model a limited release.

BUT! for all that, I still feel quite confident that things will work out, while they might be slow to respond to individual cases, I've never felt that they were deaf to the issues and it simply is a case of resolution taking time, or proposed fixes not working out and requiring new approaches. I would say that now is probably not the time to be jumping into things blind, but despite the issues they've still got me as a customer for the foreseeable future.

**RiTides**

I tried to feel that in the past, as well, but closely following the Godtear campaign fulfillment (and not closely the Dark Souls fulfillment) has really changed my mind. As an example, here's a KS-exclusive set of models they showed during the campaign, and then the version they'll be producing:

They pitched it as changing things to make it more accessible (less graphic), etc, but completely failed to respond to the nearly 100% response rate from backers saying "We don't mind if the concept changes, but this new execution is terrible!"

On the models they'll actually be selling, nothing suffered THIS level of lost detail (just look at those minion models!). But for a set of models that basically doesn't matter for their future bottom line (in the sense that they'll never be selling more of it than they already have) they completely phoned it in.

I just can't support a company that treats their fans that way... too many other companies are responsive and reap the benefits in community goodwill and thus more sales. GW now included!

**highlord tamburlaine**

That's a pretty drastic switch. Yikes!

I really want to like Steamforged. I really do. They keep getting licenses of games I'm interested in.

I guess retail is the route for me then.

**Seabass**

What happened with the Dark Souls game that was so bad. I bought my copy and had it here. It's a fun coop game, though I was to understand there would be expansions that haven't seen yet...

**Overread**

Kickstarter can certainly make a company feel growth pains super fast and often burns out some companies because they find they really don't know enough to make it all work. Even just getting such big sums of money to work with all in one go can suddenly move someone in tax brackets and how tax is calculated and the like. All big learning hurdles on a time limit to deliver.

Hopefully this big investment and professional large end companies and aids will help them through these growth pains and improve their performance. Certainly the investors feel that the company is legit and has serious potential to put that kind of money onto the table. £5 million is vast and with increasing their skill pool with new high end staff it might well turn them around a lot.

**RiTides**

Seabass - There's a Lot of items still outstanding from it, 2 years after the estimated delivery date (with no new estimated timeline - although maybe this funding will change that).

Overread - That's a fair point, of course, but I don't think it can excuse their completely ignoring backer feedback on things which don't really cost them all that much (changing a sculpt before it's in production).

Anyway, apparently this touched a nerve

but I just needed to express my disappointment with how they've handled their business in recent times (after a magnificent start with Guild Ball). Hopefully they change course - I never would have thought GW could do so, but it happened!

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

The do seem to have been a bit poor recently when things go wrong customer service wise (well silent, which is worse as you've no idea whether they've got your message, are dealing with it or have decided to say no)

I get the annoyance about the wave 2 Dark Souls stuff, but lot of the complaints were about how grindy the game was which is just like the video game

It's also interesting that they've got a similar investment that CMON a couple of years back and i'd say they were far from being as strong

**Flashman**

After the initial success of Guild Ball (still a great game), they have been pin balling from problem to problem.

No release seems to go smoothly and delays happen more often than not.

They appear to be moving in the right direction in some respects (some personnel changes over the last year I wouldn't argue with), but could do with stabilising rather than starting more and more projects.

**Azreal13**

I think it's probably worth noting that an element of the investment was from a fund explicitly backing projects in their geographic area, so while I'd agree they're not the prospect CMON was, they're probably quite interesting from the perspective of operations solely in the North West.

As for the broader discussion, I can't speak to experiences as a KS customer, as I've dealt with them exclusively at retail. Frankly I've kinda given up on the whole KS thing precisely for these reasons and the fact that trying to second guess things I want/need months or years from now is hopeless. I mean, I'm still waiting on models from projects I backed to use for 40K ideas, and I've not played a game of 40K since mid-7th!

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Flashman wrote:
After the initial success of Guild Ball (still a great game), they have been pin balling from problem to problem.

No release seems to go smoothly and delays happen more often than not.

They appear to be moving in the right direction in some respects (some personnel changes over the last year I wouldn't argue with), but could do with stabilising rather than starting more and more projects.

Agreed, what's odd is that the issues seem different each time, but it's now got to the point that nobody's that unlucky and one has to consider the constant in the supply chain equation.

With regard to stabilizing, they've announced today that they've pushed back their next Steamcon to 2020, which hopefully is a sign they're moving less essential jobs from their collective plate to address some of the root issues.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

They probably need somebody senior to go out to china regularly and 'babysit' things there,

if only so the know things are going wrong when they happen and plans can be changed not weeks/months down the line when their factorie(s) realise they're not going to catch up/fox the issue and have to tell them.

It's one of the things CMONs good at and even they get caught out on occasion