Life is Strange dev Dontnod headed toward an IPO

Dontnod, the French game developer behind Life is Strange and the upcoming Vampyr, has registered with the French regulator Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) and taken the first steps toward going public on the Euronext Growth stock exchange.

A translation of a story from the French publication Le Figaro notes that listing on the exchange and opening up for an IPO should give Dontnod enough of a solid cash boost to continue partially funding its own games alongside investments from publishers, as it has with publishers like Focus Home Interactive for Vampyr.

"By financing a small part of the development ourselves, we take a controlled financial risk, but this allows us to generate larger royalties if successful," Dontnod CEO Oskar Guilbert tells Le Figaro. "We are not abandoning the classic model of full funding by the publisher. We want to achieve a smart balance between the two models."

The Dontnod CEO continues, explaining that the company had been eyeing an IPO for some time but that it "had to first reach a certain maturity," something that he notes has taken a significant amount of work, likely in the wake of some financial trouble during the studio's earlier years.

“The global video game market, which is already worth $109 billion in 2017, has a strong dynamic and we want to take full advantage of it,” said Guilbert in a translation of a statement published by the AFJV. “The original works of our studio, developed by experienced and passionate collaborators, have enabled us to appeal to the world's largest publishers and a very wide audience, and we intend to continue this momentum through this IPO project.”