Who buys a studio is the best predictor of its fate, according to the analysis

A new analysis of over 300 game studios acquired by big companies since 2000 shows one in three studios has since been shut down completely, half of which were shuttered within five years of the acquisition.

Sebastian Cardoso, who has previously worked at Riot, Crytek, and EA, spent about three months tracking 303 PC and console studios acquired over the last 25 years. He published the results on his Game Studio Unlocked newsletter this week, alongside the full dataset.

According to his findings, 60.8% of acquired studios either saw their games decline or were shut down altogether, and just one in four acquired studios "came through both producing at or above their old level, as well as institutionally whole."

The biggest factor, he found, was who bought the studio. All 17 of Activision Blizzard's ownership periods ended in decline or closure, as did every one of Disney's, Midway's, and Thunderful's. EA's figure was 83%.

Of the 283 developers in the census, just 71 studios, or 25.1%, were still making games as well as before and hadn't been hit by mass layoffs, absorbed into their parent or lost their leadership, although some of that is down to Cardoso's own rules. He counts a studio as having declined if it was absorbed into its owner or moved onto support work, even if its games held up. Take those cases out and the 60.8% figure drops to 51.6%.

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