5 years in the past, Sumo Group was relentlessly increasing into a UK publishing powerhouse. After years of profitable work-for-hire and co-improvement work on titles from Useless Island to Sackboy: A Huge Journey, the firm steadily acquired different studios, together with co-dev specialists Crimson Kite, Lab42, and PixelAnt and indie groups The Chinese language Room and Auroch Digital. A push into creating its personal IP started with 2017’s Snake Cross, born from an inside sport jam, and in 2021 it launched Canadian dev Timbre Video games and in-home publishing label Secret Mode.
Then, the world modified. The publish-COVID downturn gripped the trade. Tencent, which bought Sumo in 2021, turned more and more assertive with its portfolio, and Sumo modified course. In June 2024, the agency introduced it will be shedding 15% of its employees. In February 2025 it stated it will refocus “solely on improvement providers for companions”. Over the course of that 12 months it divested The Chinese language Room, Secret Mode, Timbre Video games, Auroch Digital, and the Polish branch of PixelAnt, with the agency’s unique founders departing in the summer time. Final month, it introduced one other spherical of redundancies throughout the employees that stay.
The latter course of remains to be ongoing when GamesIndustry.biz sits down to speak to co-CEOs Gary Dunn and Andy Stewart, and so they will not give particulars, citing the must help employees throughout the ongoing session. “There has clearly been a shift in the video games trade lately,” says Stewart. “Like many gaming companies, we have needed to make some robust choices alongside the method. Nevertheless, Gary and I have been in our roles since final summer time. We have stabilized the enterprise in what we expect are fairly unstable occasions. We now have a clear vision for how Sumo fits into the new world.” It is a vision targeted squarely on different corporations’ IP.
Funding and video games
Bloomberg previously reported that the thought to step again from in-home IP originated from Tencent, however Stewart says it was a course that “Gary and I had been very supportive of. It wasn’t a Tencent directive as such. It was one thing we would been eager about for a whereas, and it got here after a run the place we thought, ‘we actually wish to concentrate on our core enterprise.'”
“We labored actually onerous to make it possible for every one in every of our divested studios discovered the most fitted residence. And Tencent had been actually supportive of that method. Secret Mode I believe is a actually good instance, as a result of we discovered them unimaginable house owners in Emona, who look like giving them the proper funding and a spotlight that Sumo simply wasn’t going to have the ability to do with our present technique. The good factor from that’s that [Secret Mode] is now one in every of our companions, and we’re actually excited to be working with them on a number of full sport initiatives.”
What’s left remains to be “one in every of the bigger UK improvement homes” – Stewart won’t be drawn on the whole employees discount – however with a narrower concentrate on its prior specialisation of co-development and work-for-hire across a variety of disciplines, together with visible improvement and porting alongside full improvement. The agency disputes the assertion that it is not creating new IP, although. The excellence, says Dunn, is that the agency stopped engaged on IP it funds itself. “We nonetheless do new IP. We nonetheless proceed to make entire video games for individuals. We’re doing two for Secret Mode at the second, Nutmeg! and Tabitha, we’re engaged on different massive full video games for different shoppers and their IP. We’re nonetheless very a lot a full sport developer.”
Dunn says that whereas Secret Mode and the different studios “had been very targeted on their very own IP, issues that Sumo wanted to fund,” the slimmed-down Sumo Group has “leaned into our strengths of the previous twenty years, which is being creatively wonderful with different individuals’s IP and creating different IP for different individuals.”
That power – confirmed by the prior work on video games like Hogwarts Legacy and Fallout 76 – is now bolstered by the agency’s publishing expertise, Tencent help, and, in some circumstances, financial institution stability. “Creating Secret Mode, we discovered a lot from it,” says Dunn. “Sitting in a writer’s chair has helped us. And in addition we’re backed by the whole Tencent market dataset. So what we’re trying to do now is proactively establish the place our excellence matches with a associate’s IP and we will create a business, knowledge-based mostly enterprise case to take to a writer.”
“What Gary and I are actually targeted on is that type of consumer service side of sport improvement,” says Stewart. “Listening to our companions, but additionally bringing them alternatives that they weren’t probably considering of, and options to issues they perhaps did not assume they’d.” That features, says Dunn, options that publishers “might not have been capable of fund, as a result of in the proper circumstances, we’ll be very happy to co-fund it.”
“Would not it’s nice if the workforce that made Sackboy: A Huge Journey might go and reimagine Crash Bandicoot?”
“We have come out of precept danger, however we’re joyful to share danger as a result of I believe that is actually vital. I wish to create a new method of working whereby we’re actually invested financially in addition to creatively, so we’re all genuinely wanting for the similar outcomes. We’ll be speaking to our companions at GDC about how we wish to do this, we’re presently in the technique of figuring out these IPs. I imply, would not it’s nice if the workforce that made Sackboy [A Big Adventure] might go and reimagine Crash Bandicoot? “
The character of funding Sumo gives is versatile, says Stewart, relying on what works for every associate. “It may very well be one thing like a diminished fee. It may very well be a deferred cashflow. It may very well be a full funding or partial-however-important funding in the product itself. We’re attempting to be inventive.”
“A few of our shoppers, they do not wish to give a royalty away, they only wish to work with us on a work-for-hire foundation. A few of our shoppers actually admire [our having] that type of pores and skin in the sport and having a developer that actually aligns to their vision.” Sumo presently has “two or three” initiatives in improvement at the second, and might be assembly extra potential shoppers at GDC.
Scaling to swimsuit
It is going to be touting a broad skillset. Alongside its established popularity in co-dev Dunn highlights the agency’s work constructing accessibility choices for Fallout 76, and that the agency is in dialog with a variety of companions about constructing experiences in Roblox. “Platform-agnostic means a totally different factor than a few years in the past,” says Stewart. “Roblox is certainly one thing that may’t be ignored, and we have groups which might be very succesful in that.”
“We have experiences there that we’re trialling now,” says Dunn. “We have got a lot of expertise in cellular gaming by means of the Midoki acquisitions, they’re a part of the Leamington studio now. We nonetheless run Knighthood and Plunder Pirates efficiently. We perceive lengthy-time period gaming, we perceive various platforms. We have been very aware about the capabilities we have nurtured. We attempt to wrap an providing round every associate and say, ‘wherever you wish to go, we will go together with you.’ Roblox and cellular are all a part of that service that we offer.”
“Roblox is certainly one thing that may’t be ignored, and we have groups which might be very succesful in that.”
Sumo’s expertise extends from titles like Human Fall Flat all the method as much as dwell-service titles like Warframe from Tencent stablemate Digital Extremes – an association that Dunn says the studio “needed to earn.”
“It would not come alongside mechanically,” he says. “We have cultivated the relationship. And it is a nice instance of how our enterprise has modified and how our co-dev expertise has needed to change with it.”
“One in all the dominant components of the trade the previous 5 years is that extra gaming {dollars} have gone into fewer franchises. What meaning for a firm like us is we have to work with these huge IPs and combine into that dwell ops part and that sport-as-service part, which is exactly how we have partnered with Digital Extremes. And we’re actually happy that it is a rising workforce.”
Each see Sumo pitching to the full vary of builders and publishers, that are presently navigating an trade panorama that’s rather more difficult. “Publishers are reacting to the change in participant behaviour, and so they’re targeted greater than ever in the direction of their established IP – away from excessive danger new sport launches – and in addition mitigating the rising price of AAA improvement,” says Stewart. “If we spend money on established IP, then it is perhaps by means of publish-launch content material, dwell providers, or it may very well be full sport remakes and remasters are perhaps seen as a safer wager.”
“The new IP, new sport reimaginings, they do nonetheless exist. They’re nonetheless on the market. We’re having a number of conversations with shoppers on some actually thrilling new initiatives, however budgets are smaller, and we’re having to adapt to that. And we’re very well suited as a enterprise to have the ability to be fast and agile and convey video games to market on low budgets, but additionally then be able to scale once we discover that success.”
The sense is of a enterprise that has taken some onerous knocks, however is satisfied that it is in a place to serve a improvement panorama that has modified radically lately, with abilities to fulfill each dwell-service behemoths and indie startups. “We’re assured we have discovered our place in the new world of gaming, and we’re additionally capable of scale from the place we’re at present as properly,” says Stewart. “We’re assured in the future, and we’re arrange properly to go once more.”