SHP Forums

Sounds about right.

I agree, but he also didn't seem to raise one important point - often developers rely on the publishers to fund the development of the game, and we're not talking small money here. For that kind of investment and risk, the publisher has the right to have its say. Kinda like shareholders having a right to have their say and vote on shareholder meetings.

The difference I think is that shareholders don't directly intervene in the actual operations of the business - they just assign or fire board members, the supervisory board, decide on dividend payouts, annual bonuses, and other significant corporate actions such as M&As etc... Once the board members have been assigned, the board can do as it pleases without shareholder intervention, but must have its annual meeting to justify their actions and show their success (or explain their failure). Imagine some big shareholder without any tech knowledge telling Apple what the next IPad should feature. That has failure written all over it. That is IMO what game publishers are doing - sticking their nose too deep into the actual operations of the developer (who knows much better what they're doing) instead of only sticking to the major decisions.