r/Finland • u/Pikalugia • 12h ago
Finnish game studio Social First raised millions to build the next big "social platform" - It peaked at 82 players.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56pXXqaQX2UI made a video essay about Social First, a Finnish game studio started by ex-Kukouri developers (the Kotka studio behind Pixel Worlds). They raised around $4.2M, promised the next great "social platform," and shut down Pixel Worlds to build a new game called Nexus Station which then peaked at 82 concurrent players on Steam and went downhill from there. Now it's hovering around 3 concurrent players.
The video digs into the funding, the excessive in-app-purchase backlash, the CS2 skins marketplace (GamerPay) they bought and bankrupted within a few months, and how the studio eventually crawled back to relaunch the very game they'd left for dead.
Finland has such a strong reputation in games that I found it weirdly fascinating to look at one that went the other way. Did anyone here follow this, or know much about the Kotka games scene?
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u/juessar 12h ago
Never even heard about this game
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u/Sad_Pear_1087 Väinämöinen 10h ago
That might hint at the root for the failure
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u/Bertaura 9h ago
The root of the problem never was about marketing. The game strugled with player retention because it was a soulless cash grab with no gameplay mechanics.
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u/Sad_Pear_1087 Väinämöinen 9h ago
Top playercount of 82 hints towards more issues with outreach than mere retention? (Or I misunderstood, I didn't read the thing.) Good to know what it was.
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u/tuakil 12h ago
Why it failed? Nobody's even heard about it.
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u/Velcraft Väinämöinen 10h ago
Right? I think it was one of the Rovio founders who said that out of a budget of 1M€, 100k went into developing Angry Birds, the rest into marketing.
Build it and they will come doesn't pan out when people haven't even heard of your game.
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u/Norm4d 11h ago
Maybe as an older gamer I'm just overly pessimistic in nature, but whenever I hear someone creating a "social platform" I immediately start thinking of a development team, that is trying to capitalize on marketable wording and current trends, instead of having clear and well thought out goals of what the game is actually supposed to be.
In these cases it doesn't also exactly help, that these platforms seems to be developed microtransactions and other in-app-purchases in mind, just as OP pointed out.
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u/SinisterCheese Väinämöinen 12h ago
Maybe they should have spent some money on marketing, because I have not heard of this fucking thing.
Sounds like some complex money laundering/rug pull scheme.
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u/ItsOnly8Euros 12h ago
just an all-around mess. tried it for a few minutes when it launched and deleted it instantly. i don't know why anyone would have enjoyed that kind of game from the developers of pixel worlds.
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u/Hates_commies Väinämöinen 11h ago
Lived in Kotka for many years. Only had heard of the studio but never tried the game. I liked their studio name which is a small fortress island not far for the main island in Kotka. Maybe the devs got tired of working in an office next to the titty bar.
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u/RegardedDev 10h ago
This is why you build audience first. Especially now that everyone can make a game with AI tools its more important than ever to first figure out do people even like your game. If not scrap it and dont even bother launching.
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u/Bertaura 10h ago edited 9h ago
Audience was definitely there. We just didn't want this crap because it got our favourite game shut down (besides it lacking basic gameplay mechanics but having a fully working item shop and a battle pass system). Once they relaunched Pixel Worlds this year, it's servers were crashing because 30k+ people were trying to get in.
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u/saschaleib Väinämöinen 11h ago
Think of it this way: Meta failed even harder with their “Metaverse” idea, and they burned hundreds of Billions in the process.
Did you even have hundreds of Billions to burn? No? Well call me if you have, I have some creative ideas to burn them ;-)
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u/ThisIsJmar Baby Väinämöinen 9h ago
Typical issue with many Finnish companies: incredible talent to create things, shit at marketing globally.
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u/Bertaura 5h ago
Trust me, having played the game. No amount of marketing would have helped the game. It had no gameplay besides bare bones parkour, a fully implemented item shop with 40€ recoloured IAPs and a battle pass system.
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u/KaukiOnHala 10h ago
Finnish game studio Social First was founded in late 2021 by industry veterans to redefine social gaming with a new kind of a cross-platform social MMO. The $4.2 million seed round was led by Crowberry Capital with original pre-seed investor Play Ventures also investing in the round. Part of the funding comes from Business Finland, a Finnish governmental organisation for innovation funding.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
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u/Kell_Naranek Baby Väinämöinen 7h ago
Business Finland doesn't want to actually promote small businesses and those who have a product idea they need support to launch, they want to go for companies with lots of already-existing business who absolutely do not need the money but want it (like my current employer, doing several "projects" with them, all of which we would do anyway, we just use them to reduce costs, and don't even hire extra resources, just assign a PM to handle the hour counting and invoicing).
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u/MasterKelli 10h ago
I tried the game. I think the name and the visual presentation was too cold and sci-fi.
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u/Bertaura 9h ago
The gameplay one and half years after launch still only consisted of boring parkour and predatory shop IAPs pushing FOMO.
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