Real cases

Anonymous names

Actual money lost

Opportunity description
A match-3 project from an experienced team with multiple shipped titles and one major hit in their track record.
The opportunity looked serious: strong genre expertise, cohesive team, proven market category, polished production capability, and a top-tier publisher involved in the project.

Deal size
Approximately $10M total over several years.

Why it looked investable
The investment case looked reasonable from the outside:

• experienced team
• real production capability
• previous success in the genre
• strong publisher upside
• huge and long-term potential return

What went wrong
The key risk was visible at the idea stage: the USP and narrative direction were not properly validated against the target audience.
Instead of testing that core market hypothesis quickly and cheaply, the team moved into long production. They invested heavily into meta, narrative, polish, and production quality while the core product question stayed unresolved.
The real question - whether this specific USP and narrative angle could create enough player demand in the current market - was never answered before the money was spent.
Even if the project continued, a stop-loss point should have appeared much earlier - not after the investment reached $10M.

My role
I reviewed the project vision doc at the idea and early pre-production stage. I flagged the core market, USP, and narrative risks before major production spending started.

Core lesson
A strong team and a proven genre do not protect the investment if the core market hypothesis is wrong and remains untested.

Opportunity description
Anonymous mid-core action RPG project built around an external IP.
The opportunity looked serious from the outside: an established game company, experienced management, publishing and development background, and a plan to build a mid-core action RPG from pre-production to release in roughly 14 months.

Deal size
Approximately $3M invested in development.
The investment was meant to fund a full production cycle for a mid-core action RPG: pre-production, production, technical implementation, content, polish, and release preparation.

Why it looked investable
The investment case looked reasonable on the surface:

• established game company behind the project
• experienced management
• regional market strength and international ambition
• attractive genre with meaningful upside
• IP and entertainment angle that could support positioning
• a production plan that looked credible on paper

From the investor side, the deal could look like a structured bet: serious company, experienced leadership, known genre, and a defined production timeline.

What went wrong
The key risk was not the management layer. The key risk was the actual execution layer.
Investors saw experienced management, but did not sufficiently verify who would actually build the game, how the team would be assembled, and whether the production plan was realistic at the ground level.
The execution team was effectively being built on the go after the investment. Pre-production was weak. Art direction was not properly locked. Technical approach was not clearly validated. Production planning was too high-level for the complexity of the product.
The timeline was also unrealistic: 14 months for a mid-core action RPG from pre-production to release left no room for team formation, technical risk, or production mistakes.
On top of that, the project depended on an IP holder / external stakeholder, while their involvement and production support were not strong enough to reduce the delivery risk.
The result: constant delays, a raw product in stores, and an investment that never turned into a viable launched game.

My role
I was on the fundraising side of the deal and helped secure the investment - despite having clear concerns about execution capacity and timeline realism at the time.

Core lesson
Experienced management does not guarantee execution capacity.
For a mid-core product, investors need to verify the actual team, production plan, pre-production quality, technical approach, IP-holder involvement, and timeline realism - not just the company logo and founder confidence.

Opportunity description
Anonymous mobile game studio funded through a publishing-related structure first, and later through a venture-style follow-on investment.
The studio was led by people with a strong prior track record. Over the funding period, the studio made several product attempts. One idle / tycoon-style project reached soft launch and generated around 2.5M installs, but it did not turn into a profitable scalable product.

Deal size
Initial funding was structured as burn-rate coverage through the publisher: approximately $720k for 2 years.
A follow-on investment of roughly $300k.
Total capital exposure exceeded $1M.

Why it looked investable
The case looked reasonable to the investor side because of the team story:

• experienced founders
• strong prior track record before the studio
• participation in several previous hits
• one project with visible traction and millions of installs
• belief that the team was close to finding the right product
• existing publisher relationship

From the outside, it could look like a team that simply needed one more attempt, one more iteration cycle, or one more funding push.

What went wrong
The core issue was not one failed game. The core issue was the studio’s inability to turn attempts into a scalable product within a reasonable time and cost frame.
The team made several attempts, but failed to reach a global-launch-quality product. The idle / arcade / tycoon-style project managed to create early retention and install volume, but the team could not build strong long-term retention, produce content fast enough, or iterate effectively.
With each later update, the product situation became worse rather than better.
The deeper risk was the team’s development model. The studio worked in a more entertainment-style production mode: slow updates, repeated delays, long bug-fixing cycles, balance issues, and a tendency to build “properly” instead of iterating quickly.
The follow-on should have been challenged before additional capital was committed. If an experienced team cannot bring small products to global launch after several attempts, and still shows weak iteration speed and unclear traction, the correct question is not “do they need more money?”
The correct question is: “What evidence proves that the next attempt will be different?”

My role
I joined the publishing executive team after the studio was already in the pipeline and repeatedly recommended stop-loss before most of the later capital was spent.

Core lesson
Prior founder experience and one install spike are not enough to justify follow-on. The question is never 'do they need more money?' - it's 'what evidence proves the next attempt will be different?'

Opportunity description
Anonymous survivor-like mobile project with a mid-core ambition.
The team was not building a lightweight hybrid-casual survivor-like. They were aiming for a deeper action RPG / survivor-style product with heavier progression, more systems, and stronger long-term monetization depth.

Deal size
Approximately $1M total:

• around $700k initial investment
• around $300k follow-on investment

The initial investment was supposed to take the team from prototype to soft-launch readiness.

Why it looked investable
The case looked investable on the surface:

• experienced founders and technical leadership
• background in heavier mid-core / enterprise-style production
• a survivor-like genre with strong market precedent
• a prototype that felt reasonably good for its stage
• some early metrics had already been collected

From the investor side, the deal could look like a bet on a strong team entering a proven genre with a more ambitious product layer.

What went wrong
Several issues were visible before the investment and became impossible to ignore after the first validation points.
The first problem was team structure and burn rate. The team expanded quickly toward roughly 30 people for a product that needed speed, focus, and tight iteration. For a survivor-like product, even with mid-core depth, this was too heavy too early.
The second problem was the P&L. The team’s business model assumed roughly $0.80 CPI, which was not realistic for a survivor-like in 2023 unless a very strong creative / visual / marketability hypothesis had already been proven. A more realistic starting CPI would likely have been several times higher, with scaling becoming even more expensive. Once CPI is wrong, the whole P&L breaks. The ARPPU assumptions were also too optimistic for the product and stage.
The third problem was execution speed. The team planned to reach technical launch much faster, but instead took around 8 months instead of roughly 3 months. By technical launch, most of the initial budget had already been consumed.
The technical launch itself should have been a clear stop point: weak D1 retention around 20%, weak playtime, and very high CPI. That combination meant the product had not proven the core investment case.
The follow-on investment should not have happened without a clear proof point. By the time the team came back for more money, they still did not have a soft-launch-ready product. The follow-on was also consumed without reaching the required validation milestone.

My role
I reviewed the opportunity as part of a publishing / portfolio decision and went deeper than the publishing fit, flagging the investment risk behind the team structure, P&L, and validation plan.

Core lesson
A good prototype and an experienced team do not fix broken economics. If CPI, burn rate, and team structure are wrong at the start, a follow-on without a clear proof point only deepens the loss.