Humble Games aims for studio acquisitions and in-house development

Humble Bundle general manager and executive vice president Alan Patmore has stated that Humble Games is exploring the possibility of studio acquisitions and first-party game development in the future.

Humble Games is a digital storefront that allows users to purchase a variety of games for a variety of platforms, including mobile. The company is best known for the Humble Bundle, which allows users to purchase a variety of bundled items on a pay what you want model, with a portion of the proceeds decided by the user going to a charity of their choice. To date, the company has raised over $240 million for charitable causes.

Speaking to Game Developer, Patmore stated that while the company is currently focused on its existing partners and acquiring new IPs on a “deal-by-deal basis”, it is considering a move into first-party created content in the future.

"It has to be that we're investing in a product that has franchise potential," said Patmore, "Ideally we'd be expanding and building off some of our core franchises. Wizard of Legend 2 is the tip of the spear of that initiative.

"So, we're looking at continued IP acquisition and then we also want to move a little bit more upmarket—which means investing in higher quality products if it makes sense from a game perspective."

"I think [studio acquisitions] could be in our future as well," he said. "It makes sense from an economic standpoint. Right now we're doing second-party development, so we own the IP and we have a developer building the product for us. The natural evolution of that is to own the studio."

A mobile model

While Humble has previously focused primarily on PC, it does offer a variety of mobile titles- and as the world’s most accessible gaming platform for developers and gamers alike, mobile acquisitions and the in-house development of mobile titles seems like a likely place to start.

Part of the reason giants such as Netflix are focusing on mobile in their initial efforts to enter the gaming space include a low production cost and a quick turnover compared to console or PC development - as such, the company may explore mobile early on, allowing it to gain a vital foothold while immediately opening up new revenue streams.

"The overall long-term vision is to eventually have first-party development. We look at our history and our arc, and it started with the principles of being a dev-first publisher. Then we built out our services so we could become a full life-cycle publisher. We've gone through that, and now we're focused on IP acquisition," said Patmore.

"So, we've started acquiring IP and working on second-party projects, and the next part of that evolution is first-party. So yeah, it's all part of our roadmap."

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