| Ryuu96 said: As others have said already, that list is incomplete, but also, I don't think it's accurate to combine blue and yellow together either. If your argument is that less publishers exist today, a lot of those blue (acquired) publishers still actually exist functionally as publishers and are still actively publishing games. At the start of the list we have 2K Games listed in blue, they are still an active publisher. Alongside 2K, Take-Two formed another publishing house with Private Division (blue) with the specific purpose of publishing indies, EA has something similar. Then we have Embracer Group, sure, they have acquired a lot but Embracer is mostly a holding company, anything that was a publisher which they acquired is still a publisher, not much has changed. THQ Nordic, Deep Silver, Saber Interactive, Gearbox Publishing, etc. Those all still exist as publishers and have active publisher projects, though it doesn't look like Saber Interactive is listed, Deep Silver is Blue, as is Gearbox, but THQ Nordic isn't listed in blue despite technically being a subsidiary. Deep Silver and Koch Media are listed separately but Koch Media always used Deep Silver to publish everything and that remains true today. InXile is listed as a former publisher but I honestly can't remember them ever publishing anything, Modus Games is in blue but it's still listed as a "Indie Publishing Label" Hell even Sega is listed in blue because of the merger with Sammy, Lol. So looking at just the colours is an inaccurate measurement, a lot of the blue are still publishers. I could go on but I'd be looking over that list all day, Lol, it looks outdated overall and even the stuff it has is misleading, alongside missing some things such as Curve Digital, Versus Evil, Playtonic Friends, Dangen, Annapurna, etc. Some new ones missing too like New Tales, a new publisher created in 2022, Tencent created a new publishing label in 2021 called Level Infinite, Koch Media created a new publishing division called Prime Matter, etc. |
A publisher becoming a subsidiary of another publisher effectively makes it in control of one party. Since my argument is about risk and control from the perspective of publishers, it's fine to combine both. Subsidiary organizations aren't as diverse as separate organizations on average.
But the list is clearly not exhaustive, but I have no way to actually do the leg work to provide an exhaustive list and I used what is the easiest method to provide context to my point. While there are publishers not on there that have formed, there are also those that are not on there that also have been defunct, and those who have consolidated that they haven't noted have consolidated. Therefore, it's unlikely to significantly change the context itself.
