Former staff from Gearbox, Id Software and Warner Bros have set up a brand new publisher called Cooldown Games.
Among the founders is CEO Steve Gibson, who was previously president of Gearbox Publishing. He is joined by chief product officer Matt Charles, Erick Cobbs, who is working as chief business officer, COO Jackson Hardesty, chief revenue officer Brad Schliesser, CTO Jimmy Sieben, and CMO Jeff Skal.
Cooldown boasts that its six co-founders have collectively been responsible for generating over $1 billion in revenue, including eight titles that have shifted over one million copies.
“Our team is confident rational business models will be a long-term strength of Cooldown Games and that just might be a refreshing contrast from many recent industry trends,” Gibson said.
“My passion of helping game makers reach as many game players as possible while making sure that it’s a rewarding experience for everyone involved is at the center of all of this. Let’s make some great games together.”
Skal added: “Over the last five years, we all individually noticed that we’ve been gravitating away from many of the predictable new releases. We noticed that was because most of us already have ‘forever’ games—for me and Brad that’s World of Warcraft, and for Jackson that’s DayZ—and most of these giant new releases were just asking for more than we could give. When we started Cooldown Games, we quickly realised that there’s a ton of gamers out there just like us—and we wanted to find the best games that can fit in between our sessions, or seasons, or even just after raid night.”