Based in 2004, Virtuos has grown into a giant firm relating to the manufacturing of video games. As an exterior developer, Virtuos‘ group has crossed 4,200 skilled recreation devs who can complement the groups at recreation studios and publishers as they end their video games.
The Singapore-based firm can end smaller video games with a giant shot of staffing on the finish or have interaction in long-term co-development with recreation publishers as they begin the video games. Virtuos has a giant presence in Asia, and it has labored with almost the entire high 25 leisure firms on the planet, with both work on video or recreation content material.
I’ve caught up with Virtuos CEO Gilles Langourieux a number of occasions in recent times — 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 an internet dialog this week. As soon as once more, we talked about all the pieces 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 properly over 1,000 initiatives for the highest digital leisure firms the world over.
Lately, the corporate labored on DLC for Cyberpunk 2077, Steel Gear Stable Delta: Snake Eater, and extra. He’s excited to see video games coming like Marvel 1943, Judas, Gears of Conflict, 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 recreation engines like Unreal vs proprietary engines, the necessity to rejuvenate older IPs,
Right here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
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. Often I spend extra time at DICE on the ground and listening. For some motive 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 a number of again to again conferences. I ran out of time to only go discover individuals and say whats up.
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’d have preferred to attend in individual.
GamesBeat: It was attention-grabbing, the mature manner that they had of trying on the conflict between enterprise and creativity. You may create eternally and iterate over and over, however lastly, when somebody offers you a schedule, that’s when it’s important to ship.
Langourieux: When you apply that to what’s occurring on the extra international enterprise stage, the identical might be true. With extra finances constraints, we would find yourself with renewed creativity. Identical to the deadlines are forcing Neil’s group to give you one of the best that they’ve, tighter budgets may also arrive at an identical end result.
We’ve made this large transfer to spend money on three growth studios within the west. We felt this was mandatory on two fronts. First, to reveal clearly to the business that we’re recreation builders. Now we have full recreation growth capabilities. Second, to make it simpler for our groups to have interaction with shoppers throughout pre-production. If you wish to do co-dev proper, you’ll want to begin early. To begin early, you’ll want to construct belief throughout pre-production. It’s simpler to construct belief throughout pre-production if 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 carry 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 shoppers early. We carry the power to scale. They’ve possibly had extra limitations there.
Greater than ever, we imagine in our mannequin of bringing flexibility to recreation growth studios. We expect studios face, with finances constraints–they need to depend on leaner, extra agile inside groups. Our a part of the business is to carry that flexibility to them by making it straightforward. Previously, in our historical past, we began in China. Our groups have been far-off, offshore groups, totally different cultures, totally different time zones. We’ve been profitable with that mannequin, but it surely was time for us to get nearer to our shoppers, 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 attention-grabbing distinction taking place. I wouldn’t ask you to touch upon them particularly, however Netease appears to be going the wrong way. They’ve appeared on the high quality of the triple-A content material like Black Fantasy: Wukong and determined that the groups in China are able to do a variety 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 take 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 totally different. It’s essential for us to have international groups working with shoppers 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, now we have to be international. This has nothing to do with the technique of this writer or that writer. Now we have to be international.
The purpose we are able to agree on is that sure, there may be nice growth expertise in each area, together with China. Black Fantasy: Wukong has demonstrated that in a stellar manner. We’re attempting to have studios in each expertise pool that issues and take one of the best of that expertise pool and make them work collectively. What’s distinctive in regards to the Virtuos setup is that each one our studios are good at working collectively. Relying on the wants of this recreation or that consumer, we are able to discover the precise expertise in the precise 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 assume 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 shouldn’t be a roll-up technique. We’re not attempting to accumulate many studios. What’s vital 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 attempting to finish the puzzle in order that we cowl all of the vital geographies the place video games are made. We cowl all of the vital expertise swimming pools and we cowl all of the vital platforms. However as soon as now we have a studio like Pipeworks, we don’t plan so as to add two or three rivals to Pipeworks in the identical space. We simply plan to assist them develop as a lot as they’re in a position and prepared to develop.
Black Shamrock was a studio we acquired in Eire in 2017. There have been 15 individuals on the time. At this time 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 might have 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 totally different workplaces. I need to insist once more, these are all studios engaged on the identical platform, to allow them to all work collectively and type options collectively to serve the manufacturing wants of our shoppers.
GamesBeat: How does among the outlook break down for you in 2025 and past?
Langourieux: There’s good and unhealthy. On the plus aspect, we’re very joyful to start out the yr with the discharge of DLC 2.2 for Cyberpunk, which illustrates how we might help a consumer develop their IP whereas persevering with to develop different video games. They’ll fulfill an present 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 Steel Gear Stable get a launch date. That’s going to be an amazing showcase of our high-end Unreal 5 co-development capabilities. We’re excited to see the Swap 2 get introduced. We had an amazing run on the primary Swap with greater than 10 titles developed for the platform. We expect the subsequent one goes to be very attention-grabbing.
That’s all of the optimistic. On the similar time, the surroundings remains 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 word, I like to match it to 2008, once we noticed the disappearance of Halfway and THQ nearly in the identical yr. That left some unpaid invoices for fairly a couple of builders. I’m not seeing that proper now. I’m not saying that received’t occur, but it surely doesn’t appear to be any of the most important publishers, no less than, 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 properly? 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 finished in proprietary engines. At this time I feel it’s the opposite manner round. Greater than 60% of the work we do is completed in middleware engines like Unreal and Unity. We do extra work on larger video games, and larger video games are usually made extra with Unreal. If you hear Epic declare greater than 50% market share, it’s in keeping with what we’re seeing on our finish.
There’s a optimistic ingredient to that. Talent units switch extra simply than earlier than from one mission to a different. For instance, when now we have a big cancellation taking place, it’s simpler for us to reorganize and have groups work on different initiatives. Their Unreal expertise are helpful on different Unreal initiatives. Previously, once we had a giant 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 group to do co-development work in a distinct pipeline.
GamesBeat: I requested Tim Sweeney about this as soon as. One consequence of getting a variety of shifts towards Unreal could be that a variety of video games begin trying the identical. He mentioned that may have been true across the Unreal 2 or 3 stage, however now there’s rather more customization attainable inside the engine.
Langourieux: I utterly agree. In truth, we began one thing we name the Virtuos Labs, that are small studios purely centered on engineering. One of many bigger labs now we have now could be Abstraction Video games. They’ve 100 individuals, an engineering studio. A number of the work they do is precisely that. They customise pipelines based mostly 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.
GamesBeat: Do you see a transparent calculation on–if an organization adjustments to a extra normal recreation engine as a substitute of a proprietary one, does that save a specific amount of manufacturing prices?
Langourieux: What I’ve seen and heard essentially the most is across the ease of discovering and coaching expertise. You probably have 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 likewise, in a manner, a barrier to inception of co-development companions. One dimension doesn’t match all. We’ll proceed to wish proprietary engines and work with them, as a result of in lots of situations 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 components trying any totally different right this moment than six months in the past? We nonetheless have inflation in america. We’re not seeing a giant 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 might 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 recreation 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 motive for employment to not take off once more. It might be differently, with extra reliance on freelancing and exterior growth than earlier than. Leaner inside studios as properly. However there’s no motive 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 large bets on large video games as a service. Now there’s a renewed urge for food for trying again on older IPs that might make for smaller, extra artistic titles.
GamesBeat: I’m beginning to see extra formation of latest publishers. That’s totally different from the development I noticed round a lot of them closing within the final couple of years. Our job market counter, Amir Satvat, thinks we had an attention-grabbing 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 information in your aspect suggesting that the layoff wave could be balancing out with extra hiring?
Langourieux: I don’t have information 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 totally different international markets, that are working at barely totally different rhythms. When one market is dealing with a cancellation, we glance to a different market to compensate.
GamesBeat: What else do you discover in regards to the construction of the exterior growth business? I’m interested in what it’s prefer to function in a market the place there’s one firm that’s a lot larger than you, no less than 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 couple of upcoming titles. Marvel 1943, Judas, Gears of Conflict, Mafia, DOOM. There’s a lot occurring. If you’re working in an organization at our scale, you’ll be able to deal with the positives and be sure you affiliate your groups with the most certainly winners of tomorrow.
There are nonetheless a variety of winners. You go to DICE and also you meet individuals. Not everyone seems to be sad about cancellations and layoffs. You might have a smaller variety of firms which can be delivering profitable titles. They’re joyful and optimistic in regards to the future. We attempt to deal with serving to these firms. Our individuals get to work on these sorts of promising video games. We additionally attempt to dodge the bullets. I feel that’s a good manner of describing what it’s prefer to function at our dimension.
GamesBeat: What’s your course of for locating these companions and initiatives like? You get out to a variety of occasions.
Langourieux: I do. It’s an attention-grabbing a part of my job. Now we have, I suppose, two parallel methods. Our studios have present relationships with different studios that they keep. A number of the relationships now we have are as outdated as the corporate. A number of the preliminary shoppers we began working with once we fashioned the corporate are nonetheless shoppers right this moment. Our studio management maintains these relationships round IPs or manufacturers that we’re conversant in. One instance is the Remaining Fantasy model. We’ve been engaged on that nonstop for greater than 15 years.
Then now we have a world group round enterprise growth. They communicate to studios throughout occasions to reveal the great thing about co-development finished properly. There’s a real magnificence and luxury when you might have co-development partnerships established early on in your manufacturing cycles, which can be supplying you with extra choices and extra flexibility as you progress via the event of a recreation. Our groups are there to reveal how we assist shoppers design, develop, and ship. That third D, delivering, is commonly the crucial 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 seems like. They’re capable of clarify how vital it’s to start out early, how vital it’s to have the power to scale progressively, how vital it’s to place in place the identical techniques on either side that give transparency. Early, scalability, transparency. They present what beauty like for co-dev. That’s how we’re progressively including increasingly shoppers to our enterprise, via these evangelists.
I don’t know in the event you’ve met Lindsay Gupton, the pinnacle 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 shoppers how it may be finished even higher right this moment with the addition of Pipeworks.
GamesBeat: Are you operating into working with a number of co-development firms on the similar time?
Langourieux: I don’t advocate to our shoppers that they put all their eggs in a single basket. It’s completely doable to have a number of co-development studios aspect by aspect. I do advocate that they alter from the outdated mannequin of getting dozens of siloed smaller studios. It’s tough to coordinate them, to maintain them aligned on the identical imaginative and prescient. Fairly often it’s important to do the combination and polish your self in that older mannequin. We advocate 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 combination for you.
The mannequin the place you’re working with many alternative smaller exterior distributors doesn’t scale very properly. It results in a variety of closing points towards the top of manufacturing.
GamesBeat: Unity had their issues round worth will increase. They introduced in a brand new CEO. It looks as if they’re in a extra secure scenario. Issues are a bit extra predictable. They’re not at conflict with their clients anymore. I think about that’s an excellent factor for firms like yours.
Langourieux: All I can say is that regardless that there was a variety of noise round this, we haven’t seen an entire change in who’s utilizing what engine. It’s tough to vary a pipeline. There might have been a few situations 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 feel it’s good for the business if they’ve a corporation and pricing construction that makes their shoppers happier. It’s good that they managed to appropriate course.
GamesBeat: I used to be going into an interview lately with AWS about cloud recreation growth. What do you consider the state of that proper now?
Langourieux: It’s essential. 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 resolution. The gamers in China are additionally very lively. Alibaba, Tencent, they’ve plenty of cloud initiatives. It was additionally attention-grabbing 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 joyful 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 considered one of many comparable 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 carry utterly new forms of gameplay.
GamesBeat: Have you ever seen AI instruments arriving but which can be residing as much as among the hype?
Langourieux: I wouldn’t level to a single software. I feel we should always level at a mix of instruments that when assembled collectively, one after the opposite, assist you to remodel a conventional workflow into one thing that strikes twice as quick. The primary wave of AI use appears to be extra structured this fashion, somewhat than a killer app. I haven’t seen unbelievable video games made via a single immediate but. Perhaps others have. However I’ve seen total workflows accelerated. I’ve seen new forms of gameplay turning into attainable due to the limitless potentialities that AI now provides.
GamesBeat: We nonetheless possibly have a variety of impression forward of us.
Langourieux: I’m satisfied of that, completely.
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 players, individuals who can’t purchase an costly platform, however are taking part in via both a lower-end cell gadget or lower-end PC. We’re capable of entry them via a mix of cloud infrastructure and adapting content material to swimsuit once they prefer to play, what they prefer to play, and what they’ll afford. When you take a look at the lower-income economies in Asia, in Africa, in South America, there are nonetheless a variety 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 can be robust in a single area attempting to develop their participant base in different areas, or attempting to develop to swimsuit new demographics. That’s most likely the place we see essentially the most motion. Apart from 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 centered on IP technology. They’d an attention-grabbing standpoint across the ordinary conduct of recreation studios. They iterated eternally on gameplay, with a recent construct on daily basis or each week, and examined that exhaustively. However one of many outcomes of that was that they usually thought in regards to 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 sort of robust IP that comes out of one thing like The Final of Us.
Langourieux: I grew up with that sort of strategy, the place you’re searching for a recreation design and expertise breakthrough earlier than you assemble the remainder of your recreation round it. I’m not sure that it’s a singular recipe. To paraphrase Neil from his DICE dialog, there isn’t any distinctive solution to arrive at a profitable recreation. Sure groups have this technique. Different groups choose to construct a universe first and work out the sport design down the highway. We see each.
One thing that’s newer in PC and console gaming, although, is what you could possibly name client publishing, the place you might have groups which can be centered on creating and aligning a group with a recreation on the similar time the sport is being constructed. Totally different groups have alternative ways of doing it, however the frequent theme there may be that you simply need to have players which can be robust representatives of the viewers related along with your growth from early on. Then progressively, as they assist you to nail down the content material of your recreation, you snowball them into one thing that’s going to be your group. When the sport is able to exit within the open, they rally the troops, the core players, across the recreation. This strategy to creating video games in co-creation with a group wasn’t mainstream for PC and console 5 or 10 years in the past. It’s turning 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 a number of time to play model new video games.
Langourieux: However is right this moment’s Name of Obligation Warzone the identical because it was a yr or two in the past? The work that goes into it–it retains altering. There’s a lot new content material. I don’t absolutely perceive that argument. Sure, it’s the identical title, however there may be a variety of work going into including, adjusting, increasing the content material. It turns into a brand new expertise month after month. In return, there may be extra income coming in from the gamers in several methods. I don’t assume that’s unhealthy in any respect. I don’t see the way it’s totally different from 20 years in the past, when individuals performed a recreation 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. Dwell service video games eat a variety of their time. They’ll check out a brand new recreation, however they received’t do it each month, maybe.
Langourieux: That’s completely true. You don’t have that time period the place you’ve completed a boxed product you really liked and also you’re ready for the subsequent field to ship. Discovery is tougher because of this.
