In this episode, host Alexanda Takei, Director at Ruckus Games, sits down with Spike Laurie, Partner at Hiro Capital, to dissect gaming finance's grim reality in 2025. The conversation starts with a discussion on the industry's downturn, marked by studio closures and a reduction in funding, particularly at the Series A level. Venture capital, once a goldmine for game studios, is now retreating, and if not retreating, shifting many of their investments to infrastructure.

The duo discuss hard questions such as founders' frustrations that VCs have set the bar too high for the products they are making, whether investing in infrastructure actually sidesteps content risk (given the clients of ‘picks and shovels’ are venture-backed gaming studios), and whether a fund would ever return raised capital back to their LPs given the recent market’s low returns. They discuss what options founders have in 2025 and what Hiro may be looking for as they deploy Fund II ($340M USD). They also discuss Snowprint Studios' sale to MTG and how that relates to fund strategy in games. The episode concludes with a look at what the future holds for gaming VC in 2025, with a focus on the importance of backing resilient teams and innovative IP.

We’d also like to thank AWS for Games for making this episode possible. AWS for Games aligns purpose-built game development capabilities — including AWS services like Amazon GameLift as well as solutions from AWS Partners — to help game developers build, run, and grow their games. For more information, visit https://aws.amazon.com/gametech/

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Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.