American video game publisher
tinyBuild Inc. |
| Company type | Public |
|---|
| LSE: TBLD |
|---|
| ISIN | USU8884H1033 |
|---|
| Industry | Video games |
|---|
| Founded | 2011; 13 years ago (2011) in the Netherlands |
|---|
| Founders | - Alex Nichiporchik
- Tom Brien
|
|---|
| Headquarters | , US |
|---|
Area served | Worldwide |
|---|
Key people | Alex Nichiporchik (CEO) |
|---|
| Owner | Alex Nichiporchik (61%)
NetEase (14%) |
|---|
Number of employees | 150 (2020) |
|---|
| Website | tinybuild.com |
|---|
tinyBuild Inc. is an American publisher of indie games based in Bellevue, Washington.[1] The company was established by Alex Nichiporchik and Tom Brien in 2011 to expand Brien's game No Time to Explain into a commercial release. Building from the success of the game's Steam release in 2013, tinyBuild partnered with DoubleDutch Games for the development and release of SpeedRunners, which landed tinyBuild further publishing deals. Since March 2020, the company has been founding or acquiring new studios to expand. It became a public company on the Alternative Investment Market in March 2021.
History
tinyBuild was founded in 2011 by Alex Nichiporchik (Latvian: Aleksandrs Ņičiporčiks) and Tom Brien.[2][3] Nichiporchik came from Latvia and had been a professional Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos player in the early 2000s, which made him enough money to drop out of high school and pursue a career in video game journalism.[4] While an employee of Spil Games in the Netherlands in 2010, he became interested in Flash games. He came across Super Meat Boy, which led to him to want to get into the business. Nichiporchik discovered No Time to Explain, a Flash game by Tom Brien, which he thought could be as successful as Super Meat Boy. Nichiporchik and Brien established tinyBuild in 2011 as a developer to expand No Time to Explain into a commercial release. The company headquarters were based in the Netherlands with Nichiporchik until both relocated to Seattle later on.[2]
tinyBuild launched a crowdfunding campaign for the game via Kickstarter and raised US$26,000 from a $7,000 target.[2] tinyBuild had agreed with the Russian publisher Buka Entertainment that the latter would publish retail versions of No Time to Explain in Russia, get the game released on Steam, and grant tinyBuild $24,500 in royalties in advance. However, Buka Entertainment failed to communicate with tinyBuild until stating that it was forced to cancel the project, withholding the royalties.[5][6] As No Time to Explain could not be launched via Steam, tinyBuild released it independently. The game recouped its development cost but did not turn a significant profit. tinyBuild went into hiatus for nearly a year thereafter until Steam introduced the Greenlight process for game approval. No Time to Explain became one of the first games to be greenlit for Steam in 2013 and had a successful release on the platform. Nichiporchik stated this experience burnt out tinyBuild, which was no longer interested in pursuing development but did not want to waste the newfound success. The company invested in, co-developed, and published the game SpeedRunners, which led to more developers pitching their games to tinyBuild, incrementally turning the company into a publisher.[2] To expand its publishing operations, it hired the video game journalist Mike Rose in December 2014.[7]
tinyBuild obtained $3.75 million in seed funding from Makers Fund in April 2018, followed by $15 million in series A funding from an undisclosed investor in February 2019.[8] The company established its first internal studio, HakJak Studios, with Guts and Glory developer Jed "HakJak" Steen in Boise, Idaho, in March 2020.[9] Nichiporchik believed that indie game publishers like tinyBuild would have to move away from "transactional relationships"—wherein the developer and publisher would work on one game and then move on—and instead build long-term relationships with the developers.[10] At this time, tinyBuild had 150 employees.[11] tinyBuild acquired the development team behind Hello Neighbor from Dynamic Pixels in July 2020 for an undisclosed sum to establish the studio Eerie Guest Studios in Hilversum. The company invested more than US$15 million into the Hello Neighbor franchise.[12] tinyBuild invested US$3 million into Hologryph in November 2020, assigned the studio to the Hello Neighbor spinoff Secret Neighbor.[13] In February 2021, tinyBuild acquired three studios it had previously worked with: We're Five Games, Hungry Couch, and Moon Moose.[14]
tinyBuild announced in February 2021 that it was to pursue an initial public offering on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol "TBLD". At the time, Nichiporchik owned 61.1% of the company, while the Chinese company NetEase owned 14.3%.[3] The company's shares began trading on March 9, 2021, with an initial market capitalization of £340 million.[15]
tinyBuild acquired the studio Animal in August 2021 for $10.2 million; Animal had been working on publishing their upcoming game Rawmen through tinyBuild.[16]
tinyBuild acquired Versus Evil and Red Cerberus in November 2021.[17]
The company acquired the intellectual property rights to the bulk of Bossa Studios' games including Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, for US$3 million in August 2022.[18]
