Sometime in 2009 a handful of us sat down in Austin, Texas to launch a new video game label that would embrace the fun in video games and never let go. The label would invite developers from around the world to partner with a team of passionate folk whose sole focus is to make their artistic vision a reality.

Since then we like to think we’ve done just that. Devolver Digital has grown in many ways from that first picnic table meeting over beers, but our team is still driven to bring interesting and unusual games to the forefront and help developers and our fellow Devolvers achieve their dreams.

Today we’ve become a publicly traded company. At first blush that can certainly sound like a departure from a group of friends starting a boutique game label, but really it’s a kind of validation for our team and our partners. We’re insanely proud of what we’ve accomplished over the last decade, and we genuinely believe this will make us even better.

The employees of Devolver Digital are still the majority owners in the company - from those of us at that first picnic table meeting to those that joined this year, everyone at Devolver Digital owns a stake in the company, its future, and its future’s future.

So what does this mean for your sixth favorite game publisher? This means Devolver Digital will be able to continue to invest into all the games we’re working on now, partner on new ones that we’ve previously not been able to consider, and add more of the fine people we love working with into our cadre of consummate video game professionals.

That last point is an important one - over the past year or so we’ve brought our longtime partners and friends Croteam (Serious Sam, The Talos Principle), Dodge Roll (Enter the Gungeon), Nerial (Reigns, Card Shark) and FireFly Studios (Stronghold series) into the strong but gentle arms of Devolver Digital. Those developers and our team looked ahead and saw that we’d be working together forever so we lovingly acquired them, mostly so they would hang out with us more. The games and experiences that these four studios have planned are incredible and each maintain their full creative autonomy afforded to them throughout our relationship. No specific plans for Enter the Gungeon 2 but rest assured we’ve asked them more than once.

The team at Devolver Digital is forever thankful for the support you’ve shown to us and the developers that have trusted us as partners and we’re beyond excited at what the future holds. We’re all still sitting at a picnic table talking about video games, it’s just a bigger picnic table. Oh, and please buy Inscryption.

As Devolver Digital announced its going public, Sony congratulated the publisher, revealing it is one of its new investors.