Shame on you Playway...

[Korben]

Playway is a terrible company. If I notice that they are the publisher of a game I am interested in, I won't buy it. They are known to consume and crush small developer companies for their own gain.

Here is what I think happened to Strategy Labs, aside from the facts on a few websites THIS IS ONLY MY OPINION, but it fits Playway's shady reputation:

I think that Jacek Turek (The CEO and sole developer for Strategy Labs) got into some trouble and ran out of money while developing his game, as it takes a really long time to develop a game as a sole developer. Just then, in swoops Playway, pretending to come and save the day. They offer him a salary to continue developing his game in exchange for a portion of his company. As time went on he was forced to give more and more of his company to Playway.

If you look on the Strategy Labs website today, you can see at the bottom of the front page who owns what percentage of Strategy Labs. Playway owns a whopping 69% of his company, Jacek owns 28% and the remaining 3% is owned by foreign investors. Playway having 69% of his company have full control over any and all decisions that are made. Like when the game will be released, for example.

It must have been really hard for Jacek to let that much of his company go. It was most likely either let it go or abandon the previous years of developing his game and lose everything.

Being that Playway now holds 69% of Strategy Labs' shares, they probably forced him to release the game in the state it is in today, which is clearly not ready for release and Jacek knew it. If it would have been released fully fleshed out and optimized, he could have sold it for a lot more and had way more sales and it would have been successful, but he had no say in the matter, no longer being the major share holder.

Playway probably forced him to release it, which in turn hurt sales and his companies reputation. I understand that companies have to make money, but doing it with malice and no regard for anyone or anything except Playway's profit margin, are immoral business practices at best. Besides, Playway have made their money over and over again...it isn't like they are starving, just really, really greedy. In 2016, Playway was listed in the top 80 of the largest companies in all of Poland and this kind of behavior is how they got there.

Disclaimer: I did buy this game, having not seen that Playway was involved. I returned it, as Playway will get nearly all the money from it and I refuse to support them. For Example: I bought the game for 22 dollars CDN. 30% of that goes directly to Steam ($6.60). Leaving $15.40 left. Jacek only gets 28% of that, which is only $4.31 per copy sold and this does not even include Playways fee for publishing this game in the first place, which is usually 10%-20%. So, Playway might walk away with 89% of the revenue after Steam takes their cut. Jacek might get an estimated $1.70CDN per copy sold. Yes, he probably got a wage to finish the game from Playway, but in the process they managed to sneak away with nearly all the royalties and destroy his company along with his hopes and dreams for the future.

Even if he sold a modest 10,000 copies, which I doubt he did (owner estimations are only 6,400 to 8,000 on SteamDB), he would barely clear 17 grand...and that is for close to 5 years of hard work. Not only that, Jacek had plans to make a lot more city builder type games which you can see on his website. So, he loses out and we all lose out on all the cool games he was planning to make...but hey, Playway gets to make their money...

[Granny Annie]

hmmm, glad I'm not in the business, reading all that makes me dislike the way a greedy company can be so destructive to the individual.

When it's a company, money seems to be the only reason they operate. Don't know about other parts of the world, but small business enterprises are suffering here in Australia, seems the only businesses that survive are the corporations - their lower prices and the greedy desperation of the average person to find a bargain, means that shops like the corner deli or small enterprises, as in a game maker, go broke, while shareholders are the profiteers.

[Warlock83]

Playway is not a giant, they don't have any big games under their belt. It's a dividend company, they have a lot of cash, but not their own, but their investors'. Their strategy is to release a large number of low-budget games. It is doubtful that you will ever come across any of their games that interest You. Builders of Egypt is the exception that proves the rule, if it weren't for this game I would not even know about their existence and I am from Poland. I got interested in them two years ago because I was eager for Builders of Egypt to come out, and I started listening to podcasts about their release plans. That's how I know it's their unique business model that they pride themselves on, because they pay out most of their profits as dividends to investors as quickly as possible.

[piosue]

I keep seeing multiple posts like this and i can't make sense of any of them. I have no idea what, if anything, in this post is accurate. It is full of "I think" and "probably" and these guys "swooped in" and "forced" their way. Really??

It basically sounds like the dude ran out of money and sold off part of his company for operating cash. And the investor pushed to release the game to recoup their investment. But what exactly is the problem with that????

Unfortunate ... sure. But unethical? I feel bad for the developer guy I guess but if he sold the majority of his company willingly then nobody forced him to do anything. Nobody sneaked away or stole anything.