Olifiers: Video game financing has undergone major changes

The video game industry has grown by leaps and bounds, reaching record highs in recent years. A lot of money has been invested to make ever more powerful products to outperform each other and be the best in the market, causing that, in the middle of 2025 and with the difficulties of funding, everything is starting to change. At DevGAMM in Gdańsk, we talked to Henrique Olifiers, co-founder of Bossa Studios and with a long history in the industry, who sees how the current publishing and funding trend has changed.

Nowadays, there is less funding than two years ago, because of what publishers are asking for in order to fund a project, they want full game mechanics, no demos or concepts. "It's leading to layoffs, cancelled projects, reduced budgets, increased signing requirements and things taking longer to get done," said Henrique Olifiers.

"I think the trend is for publishers to become funders. Traditionally, publishers had many functions, helping with quality control, localisation, price selling, negotiating with platform owners, securing exposure, marketing, public relations..." These essential parts of video game promotion, it seems, will return to the developers and publishers will take on the role of investors, not partners working from day one with the studio.

Another trend is the automation of certain aspects. For doing project localisations, AIs are becoming more and more advanced, to the point where they do it perfectly. "It is very difficult to resist automation, there are too many forces going in that direction," commented Henrique Olifiers.

It remains to be seen how much the industry will change in the coming years. Two years ago nobody believed that AI would make such a difference, and now we can't imagine the future without it, so we just have to wait and see what trends emerge in the future.

You can watch the full interview with subtitles below.