Feargus Urquhart on Studio Acquisitions

Obsidian Entertainment’s CEO Feargus Urquhart recently took part in the GI Live: London event organized by GamesIndustry.biz, talking mainly about his experiences with publishers and what it’s like to be acquired by some big corporate entity. This resulted in a video interview running for about half an hour.

But if you’re not particularly keen on the idea of watching a lengthy video, you can now instead check out this article summarizing the whole thing. Here’s an excerpt to get you started:

The co-founder of the Californian studio behind The Outer Worlds spoke openly about some of his experiences with publishers and why Obsidian ultimately decided to join Microsoft’s in-house studio group at GI Live: London earlier this month.

“There has to be a cultural fit. And there has to be an understanding of why they’re purchasing you. There has to be absolute clarity in that,” said Urquhart.

He revealed that Obsidian was approached by another major publisher before signing with Microsoft in 2018. Urquhart was having lunch with one of the publisher’s key figures, who revealed it wasn’t truly interested in allowing the studio to continue with its own projects.

“They said: ‘Well, have you ever thought about being acquired?’ I said: ‘Yeah, of course’. And then ultimately what they then said is: ‘Well, yeah, I mean, we’re just having a real hard time hiring people right now, so it would be great to be able to just buy your studio, then we can take all your people and put them on our projects’.