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Revisiting my gaming VC predictions from August 2021 and looking ahead to the rest of 2022 and beyond. How are recent negative market signals impacting games investing? What should we look for from gaming VCs in the months ahead?
If you’ve been monitoring economic news recently, you will no doubt have noticed a number of doom-and-gloom headlines. As we’ve covered in this space previously, many gaming firms in the public markets have been feeling the pain of a wider economic drawdown spurred by a variety of factors: rising inflation, geopolitical uncertainty, supply chain disruptions, and changing data privacy regulations, among many others. But how are these public signals impacting the gaming venture market?
In a recent letter to founders titled “Economic Downturn”, Y Combinator cautioned that “things don’t look good”. Similarly, Sequoia Capital — authors of the infamous “R.I.P. Good Times” letter in 2008 — alerted its founders of a “crucible moment” for the venture market.
Though both of these entities have some presence in gaming, they would be more accurately described as generalist funds. Further, not all generalist funds have displayed the same bearishness. Andreesen Horowitz, for example, recently announced its new Games Fund One to the tune of $600M (not to mention its massive $4.5B Crypto Fund IV, which may also invest in…
