Steamforged Games: $30m raised & this is just the start

George: 0:00
Hi there. My name is George and I help independent creators launch their products and games. On this podcast, those creators share their journey from an idea to an actual product and everything in between. Today’s guest is Rich Loxam. He is a former teacher, turned CEO and co founder of Steamforged Games. Steamforged Games has raised an eye watering 30 million three zero across 19 projects with over 170, 000 backers. This year marks the 10th anniversary of his company. So we’re going to dive into the rich crowdfunding history of Steamforged games and look at what lies ahead in the future. Welcome Rich.

Rich: 0:35
Thank you very much. And yeah, it’s crazy to hear it out loud that, you gotta, don’t stop and think about it, but yeah, yeah, that’s a pretty pretty crazy numbers. Yeah.

George: 0:44
It is pretty crazy, especially thinking about where this all began. So take us back 10 years ago before you were the CEO of a huge gaming company, where were you in life at that time?

Rich: 0:55
Yeah. So, so myself and and Mat Hart, my co founder, we, we were, Tournament gamers. So I used to travel around playing games like War Machine and, and, and, and likes that and Matt also kind of was really interested in the painting side of that, and we got to be friends, reached out and kind of between us, we kind of sat down one day and we, we kind of went, He was a video game producer in London, and I was a design teacher and studied design. And between us, we thought, well, we maybe have the skill sets to actually make a game ourselves, which, you have that crazy idea with the beers around the table and then fast forward two years from then, working after, after work, and then just putting the hours in till the other hours in the morning, we managed to create our first concept, which was, was Guild Ball, which was the opening pitch and the opening line for that was, if you imagine Gangs New York and then throw a football in the That’s kind of what you get, right, and that was Guild Ball. So it was a great opening pitch. It, it kind of took off at the time crowdfunding and Kickstarter was kind of in its early days. And definitely a different beast to what it is now. in, in those days, you could have half an idea with, What are you going to do? And it was much more of a kind of like people would want to see that idea realized. And so we, we really hit the market at a good time. Then that was just well timed and we launched Gilbourne there. It raised, I think it was about 130, I think, all in at the end, a thousand pound, which was, enough to fund the project, but nowhere near enough to quit the day jobs. So it was an awkward kind of number. But yeah, we, we managed to work through that and, we, we delivered the campaign for the year what we said and then we went to retail. So we just pull, we plowed all out working. both jobs, both of us plowed all the additional kind of money on profit that was made, not a lot of it, but we plowed it into the retail side, hoping that that might take off. And I remember we went to the first kind of trade show there and it sold out. There was queues out the door, it sold out. And it was a, one of that realization moments, actually, we may have. The style of business here, which hadn’t hadn’t really dawned on us at that point. It was, this is a passion project that all of a sudden has now become something else.

George: 2:56
How did you even know what to do? you’re a design teacher, your co founder is a video game designer in London. Where did you even start with figuring out?

Rich: 3:06
So I think on the, I think from a creative side, we always had a vision, we could work out, we knew how to make right rules. We knew how to, what good game design was or feel what I was, and Matt had a very clear vision on the art style and how to achieve that from his, video game producing kind of role that he’s been in. So between us, we managed to get that side of the products really kind of right, so that the product itself was good. When it comes to the business side, we were quite, naive, we had no serious experience. We have some idea what happens there, but we always felt if we make a great product, then let’s see what happens. And I think that was, Our journey from that point actually, when we went to retail, we worked with some local stores to help kind of support that. And when we really started that ramp up we noticed that, now we need to get, get kind of serious and really kind of take this, what we’ve created and, and build a business. And that was the start of a long journey, from there to get to where we are now.

George: 4:04
We’ll get to where you are now, but there are some, some steps in between. So your first campaign Guild Ball you just said did about 130, 000 pounds, dollars, it’s all the same these days. And then your next campaign was dark souls, correct?

Rich: 4:17
Yes. Yes.

George: 4:19
And that one did on Kickstarter alone, 4 million.

Rich: 4:22
Yes. It was staggering. Like, I mean, at the time it was. what we worked out is that, there was enough after Guild Ball launched a retail, we worked out that actually there’s probably enough funds there to take me out of teaching. I was the cheaper of the two of us, Matt being a video game producer. So getting one of us full time to start with was, was the first port of call and we did that. And then. Towards the Christmas time, we managed to go to the, the UK licensing expo down in London, and Matt had some video game contacts there, one of them from Banner Namco who kind of said, would you like to work on Dark Souls, the board game? And, and, we kind of, we were a small studio at the time, but we had great ambition. We’ve always presented ourselves as, as kind of. A full rounded outfit, we always showed the, our passion and what we wanted to do and Bandai, trusted us with that kind of IP to grow from there. So we, we started working on that. We took the plunge with Matt at the Christmas time to get full time. And by the April we were, we’re hitting the go button on the Kickstarter. I remember. we, we didn’t know exactly what to predict again back then it was, we didn’t have notify me pages or things like that. We had some idea of what could happen, but I think we pressed the button within two minutes. It was kind of up to, 100, 000 and, 15 minutes. It was over a quarter million. And we knew at that time that we were onto something crazy and, we’re on the phone to, we’re running through stretch goals. All the kind of in that campaign, it really showed us about. And I think this is, a crowdfunding thing about what to do right and what to do wrong on crowdfunding, right? We, we’ve always been very open about this. We didn’t get everything right on, on Dark Souls. we were brand new to this realm and the, and the thing, and I think we, we over committed in areas. We have issues outside of that with things like Brexit that happened, but what we did do over the course of, of what the campaign did do for us was really start the fundamentals of turning us from A couple of guys with an idea to the journey of like right now, we need to establish a full business to deal with where we are, we’re not, we moved from that kind of small game, the small idea that was doing quite well to another league of kind of issues, good issues, but definitely, there’s definitely two parts to that to deal with.

George: 6:33
But I guess also I wonder if this was a conscious decision then at some point is you start as two friends who love games and you start your first game and then it’s 130k. Great. Then you’re able to leave your full time jobs. That’s a big leap of faith. But then all of a sudden you’re you’re raising into the millions and then this is like you’re saying becoming a And running a business is very different day to day than just bringing out games with your friends. So did you even want to run a business? Did you want to be a CEO?

Rich: 7:01
I mean, this, it’s a good question. at the time we were, I think me and Matt, Matt was CEO. The older of the two of, I’m sure you won’t mind me saying with, with more kind of industry experience. And, people may have pointed to Matt to be the, the CEO, but Matt turned, turned to me and said, actually, between the two of us, you are the right person. You, to do this. He said, you’ve got the, you’ve got the temperament, you’ve got the right skillset sets, and I’m there to support you with that journey. And I forever thanking with that.’cause, it is something that. As the time started going on, I saw Matt really had the passion to continue with the creative side and I trusted that to him. And at the same time, he trusted the management of the business to me. I was always a young CEO, I hadn’t done this role before. I was, I was, it is the true entrepreneur to CEO kind of experience. And I started with, with on that journey and, and kind of had to try and surround myself with knowledge to help Build that, and then I don’t think any CEO sits there knowing the full plan from day one, right? I think they grow as as the team grows and as the knowledge goes and I think One of the key parts of my skill set that i’ve always had is I always listen to those around me and help that guide Me and help learn from that and that consistent learning especially, the other days from From Matt and from others around has really helped me hone ourselves to when we got to about 2019 We actually got external investment when that kind of second layer of the company started coming at that stage

George: 8:23
What was that? That investment because on your kickstarter page it mentioned it mentions you guys are private equity, backed So so what does that mean?

Rich: 8:31
So with the with the growth that we’re having in the company, by by 2019, We were we were Really on a trajectory of high rapid growth, as an SME at that time. And when you look in the market, it was all the hallmarks of a rapidly exploding company that was on the high trajectory. So we got investment for growth. This was a, this was to help. Realize our plans. We had ideas about how we could structure and build that next layer of the business and by then, me and my very clear that to do that. I think, external capital would help grow that. So foresight come in as as there’s around, kind of options and foresight come in as an option. There’s a minor minor partner. under the VCT. And they were able to support us with the journey basically. And they come in, put the, 5 million pounds into the steam forge, which was fantastic at the time because it allowed us then to really start building the layers within the business and the infrastructure. And that for me was the journey from transitioning from the experience of Matt, and others around me. Into the CEO role to actually now having people like Simon Spaulding, ex Hasbro coming in as exec chair to support that journey. We had, several hires on the board, X Games workshop with Toby Davies, and we had Judy Guan come in and we had John Hyam, the financial director come in. We had a kind of a board was built at that time of people that. Really, really bolstered my ability. And again, being a young CEO, I’m kind of in the room learning from these people and helping them grow on that path, but also listening to how they could help me grow the business and direct and help do that. I really do believe that. a strong CEO is not someone that just sits there and tells you what to do. It’s, it’s listens to the board and helps craft their direction and what they should be doing, and listen to all those expertise and bringing that together in a coherent plan that can be deliverable.

George: 10:25
Man, that is really amazing. And not to sound harsh, but it’s amazing that you survived through all those phases as the original sort of founder CEO, because What often happens is external investors come in, they put in, a board in place, the board may be unhappy about one thing or another CEO, original CEO is out, they bring in a guy, that they want to have brought in and you are like just hanging, hanging in there. In fact, thriving through all of that from, from early days up to now. So that’s really Pretty incredible. Does it ever stress you out just how big this has gotten?

Rich: 10:57
No, I think I think during the, saying that, those things there is a good point, there’s been a lot of faith in, in me and Matt, there’s business leaders, and what we’ve done with the company and that’s never changed. there’s been a waiver of faith in what we do. I think I’m so blessed to have people around me and again, humbled by how much they see the vision that we put forward and, how we craft that direction that people buy into and believe into that direction and support it, so yeah, you’re absolutely right. It’s a difficult journey and it’s it’s kind of crazy that we’ve had to go through those steps. And, we’ve, again, been through crisis in that time. We’ve been through Brexit, so we had to manage that. And then, post 2019 COVID to manage as well. And, all the time, the faith’s been high in myself and the team. And I think, yeah, the stress levels do rise. And I think over time, I’ve managed to, I think in myself, better how to deal with situations. I think in the early days, I would be quite reactionary, quite straight away, right, let’s do this, do that, and I think nowadays I can spend that extra five seconds and that’s 10 seconds just to think about the situation jumping straight away. And, it comes over time and I think, I’m not perfect. I am young. I am still learning. I think I’d rather learn this role. But I think there’s a level of, of, of skills that I’ve now built up from the experience around me. This really helps me with people. And I think, even back to my teaching days, that, teaching really does, build up a level of skills in you to deal with many different people coming together with many different attitudes and, and bringing a kind of single voice there. And I think that’s always helped me with trying to get through tricky situations and manage through them and making sure that everyone feels like they’ve been heard and listened to and make sure that when we come out of that room that there’s one direction that everyone can buy into.

George: 12:45
One of the other amazing things I think that has happened recently in this journey is you struck an exclusivity deal with Kickstarter and I’m guessing this from Kickstarter side. I used to work at Kickstarter when I worked there, this was not a thing that Kickstarter did. And I’m guessing it has a little bit to do with the competition heating up from, from game found I’m just guessing. Were you guys the first studio that Kickstarter ever had an exclusivity deal with?

Rich: 13:11
Yes. Yeah. We were working quite heavily in the, in the background, obviously Kickstarter, we’re, we’re trying to, go through some transition themselves and looking for advice and being one of the, I think. several of the big creators they were talking to, about kind of where they could go. And I think we, we suggested that, exclusivity deal would be something that may help them bolster and grow. we’d be happy to, to go into that, and, we’ve been doing that for kind of just under a year now to help kind of grow together. I think, I think. Although we were seeing maybe, maybe spread on by others more kind of for from our point of view as it was a case of how to celebrate the creators on Kickstarter and really highlight those that were doing kind of really good things for the platform, bringing people to the platform. we I felt like, from our campaigns that we were achieving, we were bringing a lot of faces and we brought a lot of, large IPs to it, our own IPs as well, and really kind of celebrating that tabletop space. So we were really happy when we, when we engaged in exclusivity and the joint press releases. And, and, we look forward to, that kind of how it’s been achieved this, just in this last year. So.

George: 14:17
It is pretty cool. I, I feel like what’s nice about it is that you guys didn’t sort of, Jump ship after growing up on Kickstarter and then just like jumping on to the, the other shiny thing. Yeah. So I thought it was a cool move. And does it mean anything else for you, for your campaigns? Somewhere you mentioned that you guys are marked as a backer favorite, which is something I, I hadn’t heard of before. I know there’s a project we love. What is that?

Rich: 14:41
So I think when you click on the Steamforge one, there’s a, there’s a backer favorite and you’ll see that on the profile and it kind of appears and it’s just been, cause of the reviews that get, kicks out, get fruit for the things. I think the whole thing around. It was partnership with Kickstarter and it was building kind of getting the back of favor status and really highlighting to the audience that it was all about, building security for, for not, just for us, but for the, for the wider consumer and, cause at times, there has been projects that haven’t worked out on the platform and I think. And I think, we wanted to celebrate the security that we’ve done. we’ve done over 15 projects now, I mean, 17 or two, all completely delivered, raising low and large amounts of costs. Of money, but delivering thousands of parcels worldwide now, and we do that not because we, we don’t price things super cheap and that we, our prices are correct. we work our margins out. We are, it is a business and we, we try and make sure that the user gets the fair value for what they’re doing, for committing that money up front and then giving us that time to make the products. But we always deliver and that’s, that’s the key for us that, in this time, especially, we’re. Where the economy is right now, security is very important to people, when they’re putting money behind projects and getting products delivered. And if we felt at the time that the exclusivity deal last year, alongside, kind of emphasizing where we are was, was really important to our audience.

George: 16:02
And one other thing, I think that’s very interesting about your business is that we had Jamie Stegmaier on this podcast, very well known tabletop publisher as well. And basically he said that he kind of graduated Kickstarter. So he did his first couple of campaigns there. He’s well known for it. And at a certain point he stopped doing Kickstarter because he said, well, my business is now running without the need for Kickstarter. So I I’ve graduated, but you guys are quite the opposite. You have a partnership with Kickstarter and it seems very sort of a core to your business model. So why, why is it that you guys. Continue to use Kickstarter as a mature business.

Rich: 16:37
Sure. I think, I’ve got a lot of respect for Jamie and what he’s built, with Mr. Mary, he’s done an incredible job and has an incredible low fan base. And, and I think his journey is definitely one route you can go, turning that audience that he created and moving them into the direct direct model he has now and working with the, the stores and, and getting these games everywhere. He does a fantastic job of that. I think we all want a wingspan in our corner. Like, well I think. Our model is, I think when we come to Steam Forge and maybe this is a little bit different about us that we have diversified, but not always where people see. So people still see the kick, Kickstarter is still quite a part, crowdfunding is quite a part of our business. we do general revenue from that. In the board game space, but we also have direct to retail lines with our RPG ranges that people don’t know about. So as much, so epic encounters is one of those that we do work in directly stores, animal ventures in our RPG lines go there. We also have done multiple kind of dark souls card game to retail. And so we have spread our kind of range across the board, tabletop and adventure game space over the last kind of 10 years. So. Rather than stay just in board games that a lot of publishers do and maybe with that we’ve actually diversified across Different brands and different genres, which has really helped kind of help the company Especially in the times of waning popularity or things like that really stabilize kind of our overall Kind of income as you say, so, we have street, solid revenue streams across our Direct to retail business alongside our Kickstarter as well

George: 18:07
And with your Kickstarters in terms of where your backers come from, I noticed that you don’t work with any of the big marketing agencies. I think, that, that makes a lot of sense is for example, 80 percent of your Kickstarter backers on any given project, are they repeat backers from your previous projects or like, where do they come from?

Rich: 18:26
Sure. We were building a very solid core base of funds. And I think one of the values we have in the market obviously is we have With our license or partners, they bring an audience as well. Right. So we, we typically have, a core that come through Steamforged, our discord is kind of over 8, 000. Now it’s growing in size. Our mailing lists are quite massive at this stage of, of course, Steamforged fans, and those people will continue to follow our projects and go from project to project. Like you say, But I think every time we do a project on there, a new IP where it’s own IP or license IP, we’re bringing in a brand new audience and they don’t always cross over, but they’re always very passionate about the IP they love. for instance, you fear is a really good example of one that we acquired, last year that has built a brilliant audience around itself and, and, and those, those people, they come for that game, and that, that experience. So we don’t try and. Oversell our audience across brands. We don’t kind of go, Hey, do you like Ufeel? Well, you love Resident Evil. That’s not, that’s never been our kind of tactic. It’s more a case of, look, we make great games. We make big board games. There’s a game for everyone in life. And we think that, we try and cater for a wide variety, but our Discord, especially has been really nice to see where we’ve grown. Although, we’ve got multiple game groups in there and you see the people crossing over into groups. That’s really nice to see that. Those hardcore fans are now kind of crossing over and getting that real connected piece in there.

George: 19:50
And is there something that you do fundamentally different in your campaigns today compared to say, like 10 years ago, or is it still the same playbook?

Rich: 19:59
Massively? Yeah. Massively. I think we, we open with that. I think, back in very early days in, in 10 years ago, it was much more of a, We have an idea and this is kind of where it’s going to be and here’s most of it. I think if you had that same approach now, I think people, especially with the trust part, it would be very difficult for people to trust and back a project that isn’t fully versed. So, when, when we are going to kickstart and now or any crowdfunding, we have to think about, especially our size, having an all round product. And even anyway, it’s tricky for indie developers. I think now that, now they really need to be coming with a product that is very well rounded now. Tools have improved since then, for your printing and kind of the access to technology now is to the point where it is, you can create some incredibly good sample work and at home, they can really kind of sell you products, which wasn’t around 10 years ago. So it does help, but I think you do have to have a, an end to end product that people can believe is achievable. And also. Again, coming back to the security part, they need to trust and believe that you can deliver that product as well, and again, that you’ve really costed it correctly. And I think there’s a caution in the market when, when a project looks far too good and it’s got, I say a hundred minis in it and it’s 40 bucks. It’s like people straight away, red flag, dangle this discount, surely can’t be. And I think it’s, it is right to do that. we, we should hold ourselves accountable for an expectation. I think, In the early days, when costs were a bit cheaper and that, yes, there was these, large projects like that. But where Kickstarter is now, it’s much more controlled on what you can expect. Now, you still get great deals and, there’s still great opportunities there, especially as direct to consumer. So there is, there is a margin for that, every business has. But when you factor in all the kind of costs, you’ve got the Kickstarter plus the shipping, the international shipping, the manufacturing, it really does start to erode, away at that mark.

George: 21:44
And do you guys run ads aggressively? For your project or it just comes organically.

Rich: 21:50
Yeah. So we, we work we’ve worked quite heavily with backer kit on the advertisement side so we’ve worked with them for a number of years now. So especially with lead gen the side and then active campaigning, ads are an incredibly important part, like getting, getting that notify me page up is, is really crucial nowadays to, to steer a steer of where your audience is. And then consistently engaging with the audience, I think during the campaign as well, I think that there’s, you really need to make it an experience for the consumer. And I think our team does a fantastic job of, of making people engage with the campaign and come back on a daily basis and really see, and reward that as well. I think if, if, If it’s quiet and you just kind of put in the campaign open, it goes and you’ve got monetary incentives. you get that kind of connectivity. We really like to do daily unlocks. We do see the like campaigns where you can choose your character and really try to engage that. Cause I think kickstarter, although, there’s a kind of discount sense of what you get in a value piece. It’s also experience, that, that 10, 14 days is a real experience that people remember. And then really hook onto. And I think it’s our duty to really, as a, as a publisher and designers to really service that community during that time. And then after that time, not just forget about them, but help nurture them, put them into our discord, build the relationships and keep that going. So that the, they feel like the, and they are part of the wider Steamforged group, we love all the games we make. And we absolutely love. The, the products we make, and it’s great to see that again, has been a fantastic tool for us to really home home, the audiences. And how we have our designers in there that communicate with the teams and see ideas popping through and we see the models being painted, it’s a really connected. thing, I think social media now can sometimes feel a bit vapid, and I think things like Discord and Facebook groups really actually cut through that and actually just give us a real grounding with the community and with the people that play our games.

George: 23:46
Yeah, I feel like Discord has been one of those like breakout new technologies that just popped up and now everyone’s using it for everything, Mid journey, the AI generating company just didn’t even have a website. They just had a discord where you could do that. Speaking of new technologies, and you also just mentioned 3d printing. Looking ahead, what are some of the sort of new technologies that you are excited about as a gaming business?

Rich: 24:10
I think the AI world is going to be fascinating. And there’s a lot of, ethical pieces around it that needs to be worked out but, there’s a lot of interest around kind of what that’s going to do to the gaming landscape. So we’re watching and see, we don’t currently use AI in our things. And I don’t think we’ve got any plans to do that, especially until the ethical pieces is worked out. But we, we’ll see. We really want to see where kind of the world goes in that and helping, I think tools that could help our design help our artists create wonderful worlds and anything, anything that can help kind of explore what we do and create, is definitely something that’s of interest to us. I think some of the interesting, the video, kind of manipulation for someone that’s coming through is very interesting, video technology production. We have in house production ourselves and then, seeing how that can be used. I think just looking at the past 10 years, how much it’s adapted and how much we can do now is, is just crazy. So I’m quite excited for the next 10 years of what that can do. I’d love to see the virtual tabletop side, kind of really grow and more interaction there. And, can we give people experiences way before they even get the product on. the table? it’d be interesting. Honestly, my opinions vary day to day on it all and where it’s going to be. So I’m very open and then to see what will happen. And I listened to all points of opinion on it as well. I think so. It’ll be, it will be very interesting what the next few years holds and where it all lands.

George: 25:32
And technology aside, what will the next 10 years hold for, for Steamforged games? Like what do you guys have planned? What’s your, what’s your big vision for the next 10 years for the company?

Rich: 25:42
Yeah. So we’ve reached a point where we’ve been through, several pieces of kind of Instability, I’d say, in the market with COVID, with Brexit, we’ve gone through those journeys over the last thing and through all that, we’ve strengthened as a team, our culture is incredibly strong, our core team is fantastic, we’re currently working with some amazing licensing partners, and we really want to grow that, we’ve maximized our internal capacity, we know exactly what What we can do in a year internally in that. And now we’re working with some external partners to kind of further grow our reach and what we can do and what we can produce. I’d love to say, in, in five or 10 years that we continue on the route we are, but actually just widen that net and, I think. Some of our products, we need to work more on kind of widening that marketing because they’re great products and people haven’t seen them. So I’m really trying to get that reach out there and continue to, increase our quality and our production to stay up there with the best in the industry. I really want to see our brand being talked about with the likes of, you know,, Stonemaier and, and, and, etc.

George: 26:47
If you could give some advice to someone who is in that same position today that you were in 10 years ago, someone who just loves games and is thinking of starting a game what advice would you have for that person starting their journey today?

Rich: 27:01
Sure. I think for me, it would absolutely be to just start doing, just get your prototype made, get your idea down and start working on it. just if you can, like I said earlier, the technology around now is so great to produce, concepts and, and the work and then get rough ideas around, it’s, It’s so much easier to access that, you know,, YouTube and tutorials around and education available free online is, is staggering, absolutely staggering. and I think it’s all there. It’s all in your gift to take that and run with that and build it, build good networks, build good people around you. And, and get a prototype made and then start showing it, create that visual, the VTC models, start showing the examples, give it exactly, take yourself to trade shows and get it out there. I think there’s so many cool ideas that can land, don’t feel, I think sometimes feel the feeling they have to do everything that on the road, and like, they have to, Make the company do the kickstart man. And, it’s not always the way, there’s, there’s big companies like ourselves, like I said, we’ve, you fear I mentioned earlier that, we’re working with dire games now that on that, for the third iteration coming up in the cruel frost the new kickstart and that’s, that’s from them. Trying to do a Kickstarter the other day, not failing from it. We rescued the Kickstarter. We’ve worked with them. They’re now a fully fledged design studio, which we, pay development money for to continue working with. It’s a great relationship, And I think sometimes people get really hung up on trying to do everything themselves and actually it’s okay to start, with up partners and working with people in the industry as well.

George: 28:32
That is great advice. Do people ever pitch their games to you? to you? Or do people send you submissions for their ideas?

Rich: 28:38
Yeah, we often hear, we’ve got so many trade shows, we’ll have pitches behind doors and, people kind of email in and submit, requests. So we’re always interested in kind of some of that side on the publishing side. And conversely, we, we actively look in the market for, people potentially on crowdfunding that have run into trouble or people that have got great ideas that we think we could. Work with and grow and we will approach them. It’s definitely a twofold kind of area there. we, I think, over the last couple of years, our business kind of outreach, I would say, has really grown and been part of Steamforges growth as well. And I think it’s been really rewarding. we took Streetmasters recently, which is, again, a title that was in trouble. We managed to bring that back to the market. Very happy about that. And new fear, like I said, it was a past one. We’ve got other titles that will be announced in the future as well. That we’ve worked on, which again, I think people have ever been receptive to that. we took negative situations and positive and, not, not just from a kind of really good guy Steamforged sense, but more from a, there’s a strong business sense around that as well, to help these games that are really good, not die and disappear somewhere.

George: 29:47
You are kind of becoming a private equity company in games a little bit yourself.

Rich: 29:51
It’s a little bit of buy and build going on. Yeah. So, it’s something that we, we noticed that, we’re growing and, we’re not, we’re not buying companies, we’re buying IP, but it’s definitely, we have ended up buying IP and then working with studios that built the IP. So, there’s definitely an element of that. And I think we’re doing quite a good job of it. you can ask our partners, like in Dyer, these relationships now are going on two to three years and, we’ve, they’ve been very, very positive. So it’s It’s definitely a new, a really nice part of Steamforged for the last couple of years that we’ve built and it’s really rewarded everyone involved. So I want to continue to kind of explore that and build that for the company.

George: 30:27
Amazing. Rich, thank you so much. I would like to remind people listening to this, that you’re hearing a man speak who 10 years ago, was Was a teacher with a dream and now he’s buying IP left and right. And he is acting like his own private equity firm in gaming. It’s just been such an incredible journey. Thank you for sharing this with us, rich, like really appreciate it. Super inspiring story. And I hope you, you continue to inspire many more budding entrepreneurs who are sitting in a game store right now with a dream.

Rich: 30:54
No problem at all. And yeah, that’s like an absolute pleasure. Thank you for inviting me on and be able to talk about story. Like I said, if you, if you want to reach out to us and, Steamforged and talk like that, we’re always around the discord. We’re always. There, and then, we, we’re always happy to, to chat on and bounce ideas with people. So, yeah, thank you very much.

George: 31:13
Thank you.