World of Warcraft did not raise funds to build the game, so they were able to release the game when it was finished and not succumb to investor wishes that would compromise the game

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You don't think Blizzard had VCs by that time? :D after years of well recieved games like diablo and warcraft 3...

I’m reading a book from development in 1999 and it said they did not raise funds for WoW

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I’m reading a book from development in 1999 and it said they did not raise funds for WoW

https://a.co/d/iyzaJw2

Hm, maybe not directly for wow, but I am guessing the hierarchy of who owns what etc was already quite complex with few layers of holding companies like Vivendi etc? I didn't read the book though so have very surface level pop-knowledge of it. But I am sure they were well founded and supported financially by that time, and definitely not a startup. You can't build anything with a team of 200 for 3 years without investments of some sort

Ok well if this is the case then huge respect to them. Also for making a profit and re-investing it into their following titles. A lot of web3 companies are more like startups though, just friends try to make something cool, and it's very fast moving and changing environment. If you move slow in this industry, by the time you have something decent to ship that you built in your spare time with no investment, the whole meta and trend will change 10 times. And if you did manage to build something relevant and well received on time, you can't sustain it without the dreaded "marketing" and community building, and this requires a lot of time, labour, luck and skill. It's possible to create good web3 game from grounds with no help, and there's some chance you can get to profitability before you burn out and get in debt, but the chance is very slim and investment would help. I think the bigger problem is the toxic VCs that don't care about your product, push you to launch token asap and then dump on you.

They had income from earlier games is what the book said. I think WoW took like 5 years overall? In the early days the team was like 20-40 people

Haven’t gotten to the point where they launched (2004)