Just a little conjecture here. The Kickstarter was extremely successful in terms of raising capital, quickly building a fan base, and showing that there is a market for the style of game Warhorse is proposing. So what would happen if the Kickstarter campaign opened some eyes and maybe one of those publishers suddenly got interested?
If you were Warhorse, would you retain the creative freedom or go the safe route and partner with a big player?
Warhorse already gave their whole presentation to many publishers and were denied by everyone. If you haven’t read their blog talking about the journey I would suggest it. It’s quite interesting. Anyways, I hope you would have a little more faith in warhorse that they will stick to their original vision. They gave publishers a fair chance and have a dedicated individual funding the project. I personally think there is NO chance they would accept a publisher at any point in the creation of the game now, barring any huge financial disaster.
if they can write a contract that gives them 50+ million and total creative control, then probably. but that’s not going to happen.
I think a publisher would think twice about trying to strong-arm warhorse, since they already have the resources to complete the game, and it would generate a lot of hate from the community.
Hah I think you’re giving publishers too much credit honestly. There are some good publishers but in general publishers seem to be so out of touch with what gamers actually want in a game and just warp a game into something so much worse then it could have been.
Heh, true.
It’s amazing how they don’t understand, that they don’t follow the trend, but they create the trend with superior funding. It’s like watching a dog trying to catch it’s tail.
But honestly, I would probably be suspicious if Warhorse wasn’t indie. Imagine if we’d heard about this game at the next E3, coming from EA or Ubisoft, complete with dubstep trailers, setpieces and demos with oddly smooth and slowly moving cameras.
But I think their weird fetish for MMO’s and microtransactions is just a phase. They’ll find something new.
They are as safe as they can be with the external investor allowing them creative freedom while still pumping in funds. The whole point in the KS campaign was to open his check book for the development of a whole game rather than just selling the idea to a publisher.
Medal of Hono(u)r: Knights of the Round Table here we come.
I’m pretty sure that these publishers wouldn’t tolerate the presence of their current investor which takes 10% of all their income. But the publishers’ fears was actually that it was a niche market with low earnings, I don’t know if raising over one million dollars through kickstarter proves otherwise in the eyes of a publisher, but as a fact it is noteworthy in the current history of Kickstarter.
Edit: As a second note, if Act I proves super effective, in terms of sales then we might see publishers backing act II and III, but only if they don’t try to control the game too much, then we will have to fund them again.
You mean Call of Duty: Black Knights XII or Battlefield 25 Medieval Warfare + Turkish Invasion DLC
Where did you get that current investor takes only 10% of their income? Their investor actualy owns 70% share of Prague Game Studios s.r.o., which is company running Warhorse Studios. So the investor’s share is much bigger than just 10%.
And for the original question, Dan said that some publishers have already contacted them after kickstarter succes. And I can’t see any reason why should Warhorse make a deal with them. It would have to be really crazy deal bringing loads of money and most importantly complete creative freedom for Warhorse to be beneficial for them. And this is not gonna happen ever. Now they have enough money from private investor who is out of business and complete freedom, what should they want more? If they make a deal with a publisher and give up their creative freedom, I would consider it as some kind of betrayal, because we have backed them in condition of absent influence of publishers…
The reason for that Warhorse can’t make a deal with them is exactly because you just said that the investor now owns 70% of their shares… Which means that if the investor doesn’t want them to contribute Warhorse simply can’t because they do not have enough shares to dispute it. The investor would rather want to keep all the money themselves rather than sharing it with a publisher. The actual people who started Warhorse doesn’t actual have a say in the end anymore, if what you’re saying is true. And regarding my sources of the 10% income try the “Why kickstarter” section under the Kickstarter campaign page.
Edit: actually under these terms neither part would bow to the will of the other, it’s already been proved that the game will prove successful and the contacts from the investors amplifies the sense of this even further. The publishers has lost this one because they did not take a risk for once even recommended by an experienced team, so the private investor won, I find it very hard to believe that the investor will come to a compromise with the publishers in order to get more money for the project, if they really need money they can just take a loan that is how secure the investment is right now.
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So true it’s almost not funny. Almost 
These comapany shares are same from the beginning (70% investor, 17% Dan Vávra, 13% Martin KlĂma). For the rest, well, of course that Warhorse can’t make a deal without a consent of the investor. How could they when the investor actualy IS Warhorse, having majority share. But he can decide he won’t fully finance the project, make the deal with a publisher (as a Warhorse) and distribute income shares based on ratio of investment… And this is how it was supposed to be from the very beginning.
That quotation from kickstarter says that kickstarter money is only about 10% of total budget and has absolutely nothing to do with income shares. Beside of that, how did you come to the conclusion that investor share is 10% from the information that he provides 90% of budget ??
The thing here is, now where we’ve seen how much potential for earnings this game has, it’s pretty secure just to take a good loan at the bank and not share anything with a publisher at all. And regarding the kickstarter income, because I had no other sources really, but you don’t seem to share your sources either. It makes more sense to take 70% than compromise with a publisher who wants to change things and take a large amount of the income as well and actually knock the investor out of his strong position as the primary share holder. The investor kept them running for two years I think so I certainly don’t think he minds waiting one more in order to get more of the investment home.
https://or.justice.cz/ias/ui/vypis-vypis?subjektId=isor%3A100178765&typ=full&klic=rw8bnq
Official public list of czech companies
I don’t think that investor wants to share with a publisher either, it’s just not true that it’s not possible. They can divide their shares pretty easy.
The point about that kickstarter income is that your conclusion doesn’t make any sense.
Thanks that link was very enlightening, And true in the light of this information my conclusion doesn’t make any sense, but you didn’t seem to make it that simple as to tell me it directly. At least I think we can agree on that it’s not very likely that this investor will try to split it with a publisher.
At this point, if I were Warhorse, I would like to think I wouldn’t sign a corporate publisher.
Firstly, because they have enough money (in combination with their investor) to do exactly what they planned. Signing on a foreign publisher (while perhaps increasing their budget) positions their vision as subject to change, if only because a third party now has a legal stake in their product and thus could have some control over the final outcome (as far as I understand it at least… mind you I’m not a business major so I may be wrong on this point). In short, they know they have a winning formula and shouldn’t compromise it by bringing on a third party.
Second, my above point might be entirely moot- if only because from what I’ve heard, producers deal largely with post-production, marketing and distribution: however, given Warhorse’s proven prowess with garnering the attention of the community and industry, why even bother with marketing that could potentially compromise the relationship with the community they’ve fostered to create? Aside from more dev diaries and such, I feel like corporate marketing is only going to taint this immaculate conception in ways that make my skin crawl. In the initial video log, Dan exclaimed pretty clearly his aversion to marketing people. In that light, it also seems like a step backwards to take such a measure now that they have a sure deal, and have positioned themselves as opposed to that (marketing) section of the game industry through various posts and videos.
Third (and Warhorse may very well disagree with me on this, I dunno…) it sort of turns over the revolution in consumer capitalism that they are a part of. Think about it- since the 80s at the latest, capitalism has taken the form of large corporate empires, governed by a small number of very rich people, all of a homogenous perspective. Focus groups and marketing statisticians are the advisors to kings, and the result, over and over again (whether looking at video games or really any other industry) is a bunch of manufactured, hr-and-marketing-dictated shit. By turning away from this corporate imperialist model, they have simultaneously situated economic power back into the hands of artisans and individual consumers. The result, is a turning over of the dominant social order of neoliberal globalization, in that it disempowers “elites” and empowers “the little guys”. This is a beautiful, world changing phenomenon that challenges everything western-style capitalism has gravitated toward: and speaks to an aspect of social justice not (to my knowledge) embodied within the free-market since import-substitution-industrialization came about with Henry Ford. Things are changing. And to sign on a major corporate publisher for the sake of it being a “big player” contradicts everything positive that happened through this campaign…
Which is why, if I were Warhorse, I wouldn’t sign such a deal.
One is the money, since there s no guarantee who will point how many shares have in the company. Also not to the value of the share. This teaches us the stock market.
The other is the product , the idea of ​​the game itself . And the associated chances of success , even monetary. A risk is the theft of ideas, data , development work. Warhorse the state of development and the projection must continually expand and protect new ground and develop unique selling points.
If major publishers showing interest and smell profit, they are only trying to projects at an advanced stage as inexpensive as possible to buy. It does not work , they will go through a similar project on their own. It is the quality of staff and , above all, the vision for future developments to be the criterion , which ultimately determines the success .
Large publishers have failed more than a decade to listen to a huge , affluent target group to understand their desires. Perhaps this is now possible an indie studio?
