Good Shepherd Entertainment (formerly Gambitious Digital Entertainment) is a Dutch

video game publisher A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer. They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer ( ...

based in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

. The company was founded in 2011 and opened its

equity crowdfunding Equity crowdfunding is the online offering of private company securities to a group of people for investment and therefore it is a part of the capital markets. Because equity crowdfunding involves investment into a commercial enterprise, it ...

platform in September 2012. Gambitious' publishing label was opened in 2014, offering publishing services. In August 2017, Gambitious Digital Entertainment was rebranded Good Shepherd Entertainment whereas they ceased their crowdfunding activities and fully transitioned into being a publisher. Having been a consultant to the company prior, Brian Grigsby now became the CEO of the company.

History

Foundation (2011–2012)

Gambitious Digital Entertainment was established in 2011 by

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Paul Hanraets. Founding partners include Mike Wilson and Harry Miller of

Devolver Digital Devolver Digital, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Austin, Texas, specializing in the publishing of indie games. The company was founded in June 2009 by Nigel Lowrie, Harry Miller, Graeme Struthers, Rick Stults, and Mike Wilso ...

, Sjoerd Geurts, and Andy Payne. Additional funding was provided by business funding platform

Symbid Symbid (also known as The Funding Network) is an online funding platform providing access to traditional and alternative finance for small and medium-sized enterprises. Headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Symbid was founded in April 2011 b ...

. The company and its

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...

platform, also called Gambitious, were formally announced in February 2012. By June 2012, the company was headquartered in

, Netherlands, with another office in

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...

, United States. The shareholdings of Miller and Wilson, while independent from Devolver Digital, made for a

controlling interest A controlling interest is an ownership interest in a corporation with enough voting stock shares to prevail in any stockholders' motion. A majority of voting shares (over 50%) is always a controlling interest. When a party holds less than the majo ...

Crowdfunding (2012–2013)

Gambitious' crowdfunding platform was opened on 25 September 2012. The platform was described as a hybrid crowd-finance platform and indie publishing label. The first product featured on Gambitious' platform was to be a sequel to ''

Mushroom Men The ''Mushroom Men'' video games were developed for Nintendo DS and Wii systems. Both games were developed by American company Red Fly Studio and published by Gamecock Media Group. The story revolves around a civil war between Mushroom Men in a ...

''. The first game featured became

Train Fever ''Train Fever'' is a business simulation game by Swiss developer Urban Games, funded via the crowdfunding platform Gambitious on 20 March 2012 for a total budget of €300,000 and therefore published digitally by Gambitious Digital Entertainme ...

instead. According to Wilson, the idea behind the company was to create "a platform that brings investors and developers together to create great games to their mutual benefit". In March 2013, Gambitious successfully closed their first equity-based crowdfunding campaign for ''

'', which raised €250,000 from 640 international investors. Gambitious also experimented by offering pledging as a funding option on their platform. This resulted in a successful funding for charity

SpecialEffect SpecialEffect is a charity based in the United Kingdom founded in 2007. It specialises in helping physically disabled people, specifically children, play video games. The organisation works with developers to create specialised game control d ...

, which raised 113% of it target aimed towards purchasing specialised computers for severely disabled gamers that can be controlled using eye movement.

Changes to crowdfunding (2015–2017)

Due to international regulatory differences on the topic of equity-based crowdfunding, Gambitious was forced to restructure their model several times, leading to the eventual decision to officially separate from Symbid in February 2015 and transition into an independent game publisher. Between 2015 and 2017 Gambitious utilises an evolving set of crowd finance tools and techniques in order to fund their games. Whereby they rely on a private network of investors who invest alongside them under the same exact terms and conditions. In January 2016, Gambitious opened their network to new United States accredited and European investors. On 16 August 2017, Gambitious was rebranded as Good Shepherd Entertainment. and transitioned from a crowdfunding platform to a publisher collaborating with a private network of accredited investors upon request. The company also received a new investment by Advance/Newhouse, through which they opened new full-time positions. At this time, the company had 12 employees.

Indie game publishing (2013–present)

Every game that Gambitious has signed on has been funded and released, with four of the first six titles delivering profits to investors in the first month following release. Gambitious had a core group of 30 investors. In 2019, Good Shepherd Entertainment partnered with Lionsgate Games and announced John Wick Hex. Paul Hanraets stated that Good Shepherd intends to focus on triple-I games and similar licence-holder collaborations. According to Hanraets, the company has access to popular pop-culture IPs like John Wick, which it will pair with experienced indie developers. In April 2019, Good Shepherd Entertainment acquired a majority stake in Artificer, a Warsaw based game development studio founded by the core team responsible for Hard West and Phantom Doctrine. Artificer consists of over 30 team-members who have previously worked on numerous titles including the Call of Juarez and the Dead Island series.

bought Good Shepherd on 7 January 2021.

Games

Games published

Games re-released

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://goodshepherd.games/ Companies based in Amsterdam Video game companies established in 2011 Dutch companies established in 2011 Video game companies of the Netherlands Video game publishers 2021 mergers and acquisitions