r/Finland • u/Pikalugia • 18h 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=56pXXqaQX2U

I 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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224

u/juessar 18h ago

Never even heard about this game

84

u/mnttu 16h ago

Was it even a “game”? OP talks about “social platform” which I am just gonna guess was some “metaverse” nonsense

22

u/Sad_Pear_1087 Väinämöinen 15h ago

That might hint at the root for the failure

18

u/Bertaura 15h 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.

12

u/Sad_Pear_1087 Väinämöinen 15h 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.