Based in 2004, Virtuos has grown into an enormous firm in terms of the manufacturing of video games. As an exterior developer, Virtuos‘ crew has crossed 4,200 skilled sport devs who can complement the groups at sport studios and publishers as they end their video games.
The Singapore-based firm can end smaller video games with an enormous shot of staffing on the finish or interact in long-term co-development with sport publishers as they begin the video games. Virtuos has an enormous presence in Asia, and it has labored with practically the entire prime 25 leisure firms on this planet, with both work on video or sport content material.
I’ve caught up with Virtuos CEO Gilles Langourieux a number of occasions lately — together with final February 2024 and in October 2024 — to get entry to his chicken’s-eye view on the worldwide image of creating video games.
I noticed him briefly on the Cube Summit in Las Vegas and caught up with him in a web based dialog this week. As soon as once more, we talked about all the things from the state of the sport jobs market to the usage of AI in making video games.
His firm began in China in 2004 with a studio in Shanghai. It expanded to different cities like Chengdu and Xian. Then it acquired Sparx in 2011 and moved out of China to relocate its headquarters to Singapore in 2018. Langourieux’s firm has labored on nicely over 1,000 initiatives for the highest digital leisure firms internationally.
Not too long ago, the corporate labored on DLC for Cyberpunk 2077, Metallic Gear Stable Delta: Snake Eater, and extra. He’s excited to see video games coming like Marvel 1943, Judas, Gears of Battle, Mafia, Doom and extra. In our dialog, we touched on how tight budgets might result in extra creativity, the contraction of gaming, the must be international, the shift to the large sport engines like Unreal vs proprietary engines, the necessity to rejuvenate older IPs,
Right here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
Virtuos CEO Gilles Langourieux at Gamescom 2024.
GamesBeat: How was DICE Summit? I noticed you there briefly.
Gilles Langourieux: I loved it, however I spent an excessive amount of time in conferences. It’s unusual. Normally I spend extra time at DICE on the ground and listening. For some purpose I had too many conferences this time. Perhaps as a result of there’s a lot reorganization occurring.
GamesBeat: It’s the identical for me. I needed to schedule numerous again to again conferences. I ran out of time to simply go discover individuals and say hiya.
Langourieux: However due to you–for instance, I learn via the transcript of the dialog between Neil Druckmann and his counterpart Cory Barlog at Santa Monica, about creativity. That’s one I might have preferred to attend in individual.
GamesBeat: It was fascinating, the mature manner that they had of trying on the conflict between enterprise and creativity. You may create ceaselessly and iterate time and again, however lastly, when somebody offers you a schedule, that’s when it’s a must to ship.
Langourieux: For those who apply that to what’s occurring on the extra international enterprise stage, the identical might be true. With extra funds constraints, we’d find yourself with renewed creativity. Similar to the deadlines are forcing Neil’s crew to provide you with the very best that they’ve, tighter budgets may additionally arrive at an identical end result.
The Virtuos workplace in Paris.
We’ve made this large transfer to spend money on three growth studios within the west. We felt this was obligatory on two fronts. First, to exhibit clearly to the business that we’re sport builders. Now we have full sport growth capabilities. Second, to make it simpler for our groups to interact with purchasers throughout pre-production. If you wish to do co-dev proper, you want to begin early. To start out early, you want to construct belief throughout pre-production. It’s simpler to construct belief throughout pre-production in case you have groups in the identical tradition and the identical time zone.
What Pipeworks on the west coast, Umanaïa in Montreal, and Abstraction in central Europe convey to us is that proximity in time zones and tradition. They’ve been doing co-development for a few years. They’re good at embedding themselves with purchasers early. We convey the flexibility to scale. They’ve possibly had extra limitations there.
Greater than ever, we imagine in our mannequin of bringing flexibility to sport growth studios. We predict studios face, with funds constraints–they must depend on leaner, extra agile inside groups. Our a part of the business is to convey that flexibility to them by making it simple. Up to now, in our historical past, we began in China. Our groups have been far-off, offshore groups, completely different cultures, completely different time zones. We’ve been profitable with that mannequin, nevertheless it was time for us to get nearer to our purchasers, so we are able to begin work earlier and deeper. Then we are able to get everybody working collectively when there’s a have to scale up.
GamesBeat: There’s an fascinating distinction taking place. I wouldn’t ask you to touch upon them particularly, however Netease appears to be going the other way. They’ve appeared on the high quality of the triple-A content material like Black Delusion: Wukong and determined that the groups in China are able to do plenty of triple-A video games. They need to double down on these. The consequence for them is that they only completed investing some huge cash into western studios that they now have a look at as too costly. They might not want these individuals anymore. They could retreat from all of that.
Langourieux: They’re a writer. We’re a growth studio specializing in co-development. How we must be arrange is kind of completely different. It’s crucial for us to have international groups working with purchasers in each area. Now we have enterprise relationships in North America, Europe, and Asia. The simpler it’s for them to work with us, the higher our enterprise. By definition, we’ve got to be international. This has nothing to do with the technique of this writer or that writer. Now we have to be international.
Virtuos engineers at work.
The purpose we are able to agree on is that sure, there’s nice growth expertise in each area, together with China. Black Delusion: Wukong has demonstrated that in a stellar manner. We’re making an attempt to have studios in each expertise pool that issues and take the very best of that expertise pool and make them work collectively. What’s distinctive concerning the Virtuos setup is that each one our studios are good at working collectively. Relying on the wants of this sport or that consumer, we are able to discover the best expertise in the best place and make them work collectively to create an answer. We name that the “glocalized” strategy. It’s international and native on the similar time. I don’t suppose many publishers have that very same strategy, or want that very same strategy.
GamesBeat: What number of studios do you continue to have to spend money on? Is that clear to you but?
Langourieux: Our technique just isn’t a roll-up technique. We’re not making an attempt to accumulate many studios. What’s essential for us is to have one studio in each geography the place nice video games are made. We’re nonetheless lacking a few geographies. We’re making an attempt to finish the puzzle in order that we cowl all of the essential geographies the place video games are made. We cowl all of the essential expertise swimming pools and we cowl all of the essential platforms. However as soon as we’ve got a studio like Pipeworks, we don’t plan so as to add two or three opponents to Pipeworks in the identical space. We simply plan to assist them develop as a lot as they’re in a position and keen to develop.
Black Shamrock was a studio we acquired in Eire in 2017. There have been 15 individuals on the time. At the moment it’s 200 individuals and one of many largest in Eire. Now we have a monitor of rising the studios we purchase, not stockpiling increasingly studios that find yourself competing with one another.
GamesBeat: How many individuals do you have got altogether now? Nonetheless within the 4,000 vary or so?
Langourieux: We broke 4,000 with these three acquisitions. We’re now at 4,200 throughout 25 completely different places of work. I need to insist once more, these are all studios engaged on the identical platform, to allow them to all work collectively and kind options collectively to serve the manufacturing wants of our purchasers.
GamesBeat: How does a number of the outlook break down for you in 2025 and past?
Langourieux: There’s good and unhealthy. On the plus facet, we’re very completely happy to start out the 12 months with the discharge of DLC 2.2 for Cyberpunk, which illustrates how we will help a consumer increase their IP whereas persevering with to develop different video games. They will fulfill an current viewers whereas persevering with to develop different video games by counting on a few of our artistic groups. We have been very excited to see Metallic Gear Stable get a launch date. That’s going to be an incredible showcase of our high-end Unreal 5 co-development capabilities. We’re excited to see the Swap 2 get introduced. We had an incredible run on the primary Swap with greater than 10 titles developed for the platform. We predict the subsequent one goes to be very fascinating.
The Virtuos crew in Montreal, Canada.
That’s all of the optimistic. On the similar time, the setting continues to be a bumpy one. We see cancellations. We see the overinvestment bubble of 2021 and 2022 persevering with to deflate. Now we have to maintain all our groups on their toes and use our international group to mitigate these sorts of points. We proceed to see cancellations.
GamesBeat: There are nonetheless some unhealthy firms among the many large ones, or firms that aren’t fairly completed with their unraveling course of.
Langourieux: On that be aware, I like to match it to 2008, after we noticed the disappearance of Halfway and THQ nearly in the identical 12 months. That left some unpaid invoices for fairly a number of builders. I’m not seeing that proper now. I’m not saying that received’t occur, nevertheless it doesn’t appear to be any of the most important publishers, a minimum of, are going out of enterprise. There’s some reorganization taking place for certain.
GamesBeat: How are you unfold throughout not simply geographies, however capabilities as nicely? Issues like Unreal versus Unity retailers and other forms of specialization throughout the group.
Langourieux: 5 years in the past, greater than 60% of the work that we have been doing was completed in proprietary engines. At the moment I believe it’s the opposite manner round. Greater than 60% of the work we do is finished in middleware engines like Unreal and Unity. We do extra work on larger video games, and larger video games are typically made extra with Unreal. If you hear Epic declare greater than 50% market share, it’s according to what we’re seeing on our finish.
There’s a optimistic ingredient to that. Ability units switch extra simply than earlier than from one undertaking to a different. For instance, when we’ve got a big cancellation taking place, it’s simpler for us to reorganize and have groups work on different initiatives. Their Unreal abilities are helpful on different Unreal initiatives. Up to now, after we had an enormous cancellation on a proprietary engine, if the identical consumer on the identical engine didn’t have extra work for us, there was a delay by way of retraining the crew to do co-development work in a unique pipeline.
GamesBeat: I requested Tim Sweeney about this as soon as. One consequence of getting plenty of shifts towards Unreal may be that plenty of video games begin trying the identical. He stated which may have been true across the Unreal 2 or 3 stage, however now there’s way more customization doable inside the engine.
Langourieux: I utterly agree. In reality, we began one thing we name the Virtuos Labs, that are small studios purely targeted on engineering. One of many bigger labs we’ve got now could be Abstraction Video games. They’ve 100 individuals, an engineering studio. Among the work they do is precisely that. They customise pipelines primarily based on Unreal to make sure sorts of video games which have their very own particular taste, their very own particular gameplay due to that customization effort. We do see that occuring.
The Virtous constructing in Xi’an, China.
GamesBeat: Do you see a transparent calculation on–if an organization adjustments to a extra normal sport engine as an alternative of a proprietary one, does that save a certain quantity of manufacturing prices?
Langourieux: What I’ve seen and heard essentially the most is across the ease of discovering and coaching expertise. When you’ve got an ordinary pipeline, it turns into simpler to recruit and quicker to onboard expertise in comparison with proprietary engines, which create a barrier to inception of expertise, and in addition, in a manner, a barrier to inception of co-development companions. One measurement doesn’t match all. We’ll proceed to wish proprietary engines and work with them, as a result of in lots of cases they permit the creators to get extra out of the {hardware}, to optimize for sure forms of gameplay and sure forms of rendering. However having one normal makes it simpler on the HR stage.
GamesBeat: Are the macroeconomic elements trying any completely different in the present day than six months in the past? We nonetheless have inflation in america. We’re not seeing an enormous development wave. We nonetheless appear to have a slow-growing economic system.
Langourieux: If I look continent by continent, China and southeast Asia appear to be essentially the most dynamic proper now, adopted by Korea. Japan is a blended bag. You may have two sorts of actors there. Some are nonetheless restructuring. Others are very bullish about making merchandise for the worldwide market to compensate for the slower native market. Europe and North America are each nonetheless working via a brand new strategy to sport growth with safer bets on merchandise made by smaller groups.
I learn the articles worrying about employment within the west. As soon as the mannequin has been rebalanced, there’s no purpose for employment to not take off once more. It could be another way, with extra reliance on freelancing and exterior growth than earlier than. Leaner inside studios as nicely. However there’s no purpose for development to not decide up once more. There’s an urge for food, for instance, that we see throughout the board for rejuvenating IPs. IPs that have been left on the sideline as a result of we have been solely funding enormous bets on large video games as a service. Now there’s a renewed urge for food for trying again on older IPs that would make for smaller, extra artistic titles.
GamesBeat: I’m beginning to see extra formation of latest publishers. That’s completely different from the pattern I noticed round lots of them closing within the final couple of years. Our job market counter, Amir Satvat, thinks we had an fascinating crossover month in January, the place there was lastly extra hiring than firing within the month. On a six-week trailing foundation, that is the primary time he thinks that’s occurred in 30 months or so. Do you see any matching knowledge in your facet suggesting that the layoff wave may be balancing out with extra hiring?
Virtous crew in Paris.
Langourieux: I don’t have knowledge that’s pretty much as good as his, however what I see on our finish is that we’re capable of proceed rising our headcount. We’re tapping into completely different international markets, that are working at barely completely different rhythms. When one market is going through a cancellation, we glance to a different market to compensate.
GamesBeat: What else do you discover concerning the construction of the exterior growth business? I’m inquisitive about what it’s prefer to function in a market the place there’s one firm that’s a lot larger than you, a minimum of by way of what number of employees they’ve.
Langourieux: It’s thrilling. Now we have groups which have the chance to work on unbelievable manufacturers. Simply take into consideration a number of upcoming titles. Marvel 1943, Judas, Gears of Battle, Mafia, DOOM. There’s a lot occurring. If you’re working in an organization at our scale, you may concentrate on the positives and be sure you affiliate your groups with the most probably winners of tomorrow.
There are nonetheless plenty of winners. You go to DICE and also you meet individuals. Not everyone seems to be sad about cancellations and layoffs. You may have a smaller variety of firms which might be delivering profitable titles. They’re completely happy and optimistic concerning the future. We attempt to concentrate on serving to these firms. Our individuals get to work on these sorts of promising video games. We additionally attempt to dodge the bullets. I believe that’s a good manner of describing what it’s prefer to function at our measurement.
GamesBeat: What’s your course of for locating these companions and initiatives like? You get out to plenty of occasions.
Langourieux: I do. It’s an fascinating a part of my job. Now we have, I suppose, two parallel methods. Our studios have current relationships with different studios that they keep. Among the relationships we’ve got are as outdated as the corporate. Among the preliminary purchasers we began working with after we fashioned the corporate are nonetheless purchasers in the present day. Our studio management maintains these relationships round IPs or manufacturers that we’re acquainted with. One instance is the Remaining Fantasy model. We’ve been engaged on that nonstop for greater than 15 years.
Then we’ve got a worldwide crew round enterprise growth. They converse to studios throughout occasions to exhibit the fantastic thing about co-development completed nicely. There’s a real magnificence and luxury when you have got co-development partnerships established early on in your manufacturing cycles, which might be supplying you with extra choices and extra flexibility as you progress via the event of a sport. Our groups are there to exhibit how we assist purchasers design, develop, and ship. That third D, delivering, is usually the essential piece. Having the ability to ship one thing at high quality and on time. That’s the Virtuos manner.
Now we have evangelists round what good co-dev appears to be like like. They’re capable of clarify how essential it’s to start out early, how essential it’s to have the flexibility to scale steadily, how essential it’s to place in place the identical techniques on each side that give transparency. Early, scalability, transparency. They present what attractiveness like for co-dev. That’s how we’re steadily including increasingly purchasers to our enterprise, via these evangelists.
I don’t know for those who’ve met Lindsay Gupton, the top of Pipeworks. He’s been doing this for 26 years now. They’re so good at it. I’m fortunate to have such a grasp of co-development be part of the group and assist us present our American purchasers how it may be completed even higher in the present day with the addition of Pipeworks.
GamesBeat: Are you operating into working with a number of co-development firms on the similar time?
The Virtous crew in Montreal.
Langourieux: I don’t suggest to our purchasers that they put all their eggs in a single basket. It’s completely doable to have a number of co-development studios facet by facet. I do advocate that they modify from the outdated mannequin of getting dozens of siloed smaller studios. It’s troublesome to coordinate them, to maintain them aligned on the identical imaginative and prescient. Fairly often it’s a must to do the mixing and polish your self in that older mannequin. We suggest going towards a simplified mannequin, the place you depend on a smaller variety of larger co-development companions who will deal with the coordination, who will deal with the mixing for you.
The mannequin the place you’re working with many alternative smaller exterior distributors doesn’t scale very nicely. It results in plenty of closing points towards the top of manufacturing.
GamesBeat: Unity had their issues round value will increase. They introduced in a brand new CEO. It looks like they’re in a extra steady state of affairs. Issues are a bit extra predictable. They’re not at conflict with their prospects anymore. I think about that’s a very good factor for firms like yours.
Langourieux: All I can say is that though there was plenty of noise round this, we haven’t observed an entire change in who’s utilizing what engine. It’s troublesome to vary a pipeline. There could have been a few cases the place these adjustments have been made, however the state of who’s utilizing what hasn’t utterly modified so far as we are able to see. I believe it’s good for the business if they’ve a company and pricing construction that makes their purchasers happier. It’s good that they managed to right course.
GamesBeat: I used to be going into an interview not too long ago with AWS about cloud sport growth. What do you consider the state of that proper now?
Langourieux: It’s crucial. Preliminary efforts are on the way in which from many alternative events. You talked about Amazon. You may see what Microsoft is doing with their very own cloud answer. The gamers in China are additionally very energetic. Alibaba, Tencent, they’ve various cloud initiatives. It was additionally fascinating to listen to how Asia is the fastest-growing marketplace for Xbox, due to gamers experiencing Xbox via the cloud. The units they use in lower-income nations are much less highly effective, however that’s compensated for by the truth that they entry video games via the cloud. That ought to proceed.
We’re completely happy to see these new applied sciences. We’re trying ahead to seeing this new infrastructure combining with AI to result in new forms of video games. At GDC we plan to showcase, with Inworld, new forms of video games that may be created due to AI. I count on we’ll be solely certainly one of many related initiatives. It’s required. We aren’t going to develop the business by merely rejuvenating outdated IPs or making smaller video games. We additionally have to convey utterly new forms of gameplay.
GamesBeat: Have you ever seen AI instruments arriving but which might be residing as much as a number of the hype?
Langourieux: I wouldn’t level to a single software. I believe we should always level at a mixture of instruments that when assembled collectively, one after the opposite, let you rework a standard workflow into one thing that strikes twice as quick. The primary wave of AI use appears to be extra structured this fashion, fairly than a killer app. I haven’t seen unbelievable video games made via a single immediate but. Perhaps others have. However I’ve seen whole workflows accelerated. I’ve seen new forms of gameplay changing into doable due to the infinite prospects that AI now presents.
GamesBeat: We nonetheless possibly have plenty of influence forward of us.
Langourieux: I’m satisfied of that, completely.
Virtuos crew in Singapore.
GamesBeat: Do you count on new consoles on a sure timetable after Nintendo? Are there any explicit indications?
Langourieux: No, I’ve no indications. What I’m most enthusiastic about is to see how we’re going to faucet into the subsequent bucket of potential avid gamers, individuals who can’t purchase an costly platform, however are enjoying via both a lower-end cell system or lower-end PC. We’re capable of entry them via a mixture of cloud infrastructure and adapting content material to swimsuit once they prefer to play, what they prefer to play, and what they’ll afford. For those who have a look at the lower-income economies in Asia, in Africa, in South America, there are nonetheless plenty of new gamers to go after.
GamesBeat: Do you see developments like metaverse and blockchain coming or going?
Langourieux: Nothing new on that entrance. It’s nonetheless a minority of labor for us, not the bulk. The transfer that’s persevering with is IPs which might be sturdy in a single area making an attempt to develop their participant base in different areas, or making an attempt to increase to swimsuit new demographics. That’s in all probability the place we see essentially the most motion. Moreover the change in mannequin that we already focus on, from larger studios to smaller studios, larger titles to leaner titles at launch.
GamesBeat: I talked to a consulting agency that was targeted on IP technology. That they had an fascinating standpoint across the ordinary conduct of sport studios. They iterated ceaselessly on gameplay, with a recent construct day-after-day or each week, and examined that exhaustively. However one of many outcomes of that was that they typically thought concerning the IP behind the sport in maybe the final three months. Issues like world-building and character design have been extra of an afterthought. They spend a lot time on gameplay that you simply don’t get the type of sturdy IP that comes out of one thing like The Final of Us.
Langourieux: I grew up with that type of strategy, the place you’re in search of a sport design and expertise breakthrough earlier than you assemble the remainder of your sport round it. I’m not sure that it’s a singular recipe. To paraphrase Neil from his DICE dialog, there isn’t any distinctive option to arrive at a profitable sport. Sure groups have this technique. Different groups favor to construct a universe first and work out the sport design down the street. We see each.
Virtuos at Gamescom 2024
One thing that’s newer in PC and console gaming, although, is what you may name shopper publishing, the place you have got groups which might be targeted on creating and aligning a neighborhood with a sport on the similar time the sport is being constructed. Completely different groups have alternative ways of doing it, however the frequent theme there’s that you simply need to have avid gamers which might be sturdy representatives of the viewers related together with your growth from early on. Then steadily, as they show you how to nail down the content material of your sport, you snowball them into one thing that’s going to be your neighborhood. When the sport is able to exit within the open, they rally the troops, the core avid gamers, across the sport. This strategy to creating video games in co-creation with a neighborhood wasn’t mainstream for PC and console 5 or 10 years in the past. It’s changing into increasingly frequent, although.
GamesBeat: Matthew Ball identified that one of many large challenges is that so many individuals play older video games for such a very long time now. Name of Obligation Warzone stops me from having numerous time to play model new video games.
Langourieux: However is in the present day’s Name of Obligation Warzone the identical because it was a 12 months or two in the past? The work that goes into it–it retains altering. There’s a lot new content material. I don’t totally perceive that argument. Sure, it’s the identical title, however there’s plenty of work going into including, adjusting, increasing the content material. It turns into a brand new expertise month after month. In return, there’s further income coming in from the gamers in several methods. I don’t suppose that’s unhealthy in any respect. I don’t see the way it’s completely different from 20 years in the past, when individuals performed a sport after which purchased the sequel.
GamesBeat: The purpose that Matthew and a few others have made is that the window of time for individuals to check out a model new IP that they’ve by no means heard of earlier than is smaller. Reside service video games eat plenty of their time. They’ll check out a brand new sport, however they received’t do it each month, maybe.
Langourieux: That’s completely true. You don’t have that time frame the place you’ve completed a boxed product you liked and also you’re ready for the subsequent field to ship. Discovery is tougher because of this.
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