Raw Fury/Raw Fury buys a Kingdom

So… uhm… We kind of went ahead and bought ourselves a Kingdom. No really, hear us out. It‘s a cool story. And not in the “We’ve been threatening to do something fun with our investor money since the very beginning, like buying spatulas (which we totally did) way… but rather in the “this Raw Fury thing is actually working out!” way.

Okay! So here goes!

**What Happened again?**

We bought the Kingdom IP from the original creator, Thomas Van Den Berg, for a bunch of dollars that totaled a very nice and significant number. Yup. We just did that.

**What the hell?!?**

Yeah… well… see. Kingdom was the first game we signed and released as Raw Fury. We’ve been working with Thomas from our inception. In many ways, how we collaborate with developers in general was molded in partnership with Thomas.

The original game broke even within 24 hours after being released and the subsequent titles, Kingdom: New Lands and Kingdom Two Crowns have also done well and been warmly received by the Kingdom community. And there is a community. Which we absolutely love and want to continue to grow and support. So, it’s been good. Both the collaboration and what has come out of it, the Kingdom series.

But there is more to the story. Before releasing the original Kingdom, Gordon Van Dyke, who was the second Fury, had already stepped into helping with development tasks, on request from Thomas. He was integral to balancing and tuning the original game and developing the end goals.

And this part of the relationship started to develop further, with Gordon leaning more and more into the design and development for Kingdom: New Lands and essentially taking over the entire design for Kingdom Two Crowns, as Thomas leaned out and acted more like a “creative director” or “vision holder”.

So yeah… we’ve been heavily involved with not only the publishing part but also the development of the Kingdom series for many years now. Because Kingdom means a lot to us. Both personally and as a company. It is one of the cornerstones of our success and a testament to how we do things and that it works. Nice human beings that trust each other can make great things together.

**Yeah… cool and all but you know… What the hell?!?**

Yeah, ok! Getting to it. So…

Every developer we’ve ever worked with has essentially signed the same contract with us. The only variables are time and money, and some Quality of Life improvements that we’ve clarified over the years. A part of our agreement – or promise – is that we never go after the IP or push into the development process, unless specifically asked to do so. It’s in the contract.

Another promise is that we stick with our games long-term. We only sign games we already are in love with and this motivates us to want to work on them for a long time, way beyond the initial release.

But this isn’t always the case for the developers. We usually work with small teams that are highly creative and at some point, they want to explore new things. We always support this and try our utmost to find a good way to both move games and franchises forward, while making sure the developers have the freedom to explore new ideas and come up with some new magic, either in collaboration or independent of Raw Fury.

And again, here Kingdom stands as testament to this. Over the last 3 years Thomas has been able to gradually lean out while entrusting us with slowly leaning into his darling, Kingdom. And now he has handed us the keys, because he feels comfortable that we will take care of his Kingdom as it were still his. He trusts us, as we trust him. And for us this is the perfect closing of a circle.

We partner with a developer. We build a relationship on mutual trust and respect. That grows into close collaboration and friendships. Which then enables the developer to hand us more and more control until one day we make him a fair offer for his original IP, allowing him to part ways with it in profit and good faith that it is in good hands.

This – for us – is how a publisher and developer relationship should work. We’ll call it a win-win. Thomas does too.

**Yeah okay. Get it. But what now?**

Ah! Yeah. I mean, we’re doing this for a reason! Yup yup.

So, long story short, Gordon, who has been integral to the design and development since the release of the original Kingdom, and whom is already a familiar name to many of those who have played any of the games, will take on a role to completely take care of Kingdom and its future.

We have loads of plans and we want to both service and surprise the awesome community that has already gathered at the castle. We want to do more than ever before. There is already a roadmap in place, that consists of updates, expansions, new platforms and new games that will join the series. Stay tuned for a more detailed post from Gordon on the future plans for Kingdom.

**Neat!**

Yup. Agreed. What is even neater is that at this point the Kingdom series has exceeded 4 million units and the latest game in the series, Kingdom Two Crowns, has well over 300.000 players already. And they deserve that we keep growing this amazing world that they’ve stepped into with us. We intend to do just that.

But actions speak louder than words. And there will be action.

**Is Raw Fury changing?**

Nope. We’re just evolving and running further on the very same path we’ve been on from the very beginning.

Most Raw Fury will focus on what we have always focused on, with the intent to nurture and grow each team and each game, to the best of our abilities. To keep building these awesome relationships of respect, trust and magic.

And, you know, to ultimately keep walking the walk and making sure that the developers we work with become successful, stay independent and can keep making amazing art for all of us to enjoy for as long as we are around.

And hopefully the end result will be that we can move away from plastic and towards gold in the spatula department. Priorities!

Jonas Antonsson

**Originally published:**
30 May 2019, at
rawfury.com/raw-fury-buys-a-kingdom (ARCHIVED)

1. ↑ Original link on *Raw Fury's* post led to an archived email campaign