PREPARING YOUR GAME COMPANY FOR GROWTH: FOUNDER STORIES
From being investor ready to strategic exit, maneuvering between breakthrough success and total failure, and the personal impact it has on the game entrepreneur.
By popular demand, the Dutch Games Association is once more hosting DGA Talks focusing on the growth of game studios. This special session, part of the Dutch Game Week 2025, features four inspiring speakers.
All speakers are founders who bring valuable experience and actionable insights on building and scaling a studio, securing growth funding, and preparing for a potential exit. They won’t shy away from sharing personal insights and hard lessons learned.
“Making a game is the easy part. Running a studio is harder.”
This talk is about what happens -after- your game is released. When ‘I made a game’ changes into: ‘I’m running a company now’. Deloryan shares the change from a solo creator to leading a studio of more than ten people, and what it looks like to grow into that role while already being in it. She’ll talk openly about the exciting moments, the uncomfortable ones, and the human process of figuring things out along the way. There’s no handbook or magic potion for this part. Most of us are learning it in real life, together.
“Delivering the Universe: surviving through three publishing deals”
Koen is a studio and game director known for creating compelling game experiences by utilizing cutting-edge technology. He directed the award-wining titles Deliver Us The Moon (the first Unreal Engine to support NVIDIA RTX), Deliver Us Mars and is currently developing Deliver Us Home.
“From start-up to strategic sale and completion of the earn-out. Now what?”
Laurens has been through a wilde 15 year journey with CoolGames, where various investment rounds and several hit games were sometimes followed by set-backs, nervous investors and restarts of projects. CoolGames was sold in 2023 to Keesing Media Group and its earn-out period ended this summer. Laurens will share many tips on how to scale a games business, do’s and don’ts of working with investors and what to do after the studio that he drove to growth is now owned by another company.
“Building a (service) company in the games industry: legal foundations, business plans & iteration”
René Otto is considered by many to be one of the leading video game lawyers in the Europe. He acts like a trusted legal advisor for over 300 developers, publishers and esports companies. Considering his unique knowledge on the legal aspects of the video games and esports industry, he is frequently invited to speak on international events and as a guest lecturer at BUas.
Because the well-being of the video game industry is close to his heart, René has frequently committed himself to represent the Dutch industry on a national level on topics such as the regulation of loot boxes and the evaluation of the Dutch Copyright Act.
In addition to his legal work, René tries to contribute to the games industry in several other capacities, including as founder & secretary at Breda Game City.