Devolver Digital

Submission 4,016

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About

Devolver Digital is an American indie video game development company known for publishing titles including Hotline Miami, Enter the Gungeon, Serious Sam, and the upcoming Metal Wolf Chaos rerelease. They have also regularly garnered attention at E3 e3 with over-the-top presentations.

History

Devolver Digital was founded on June 25th, 2009 by Mike Wilson, Harry Miller, Rick Stults, Nigel Lowrie, and Graeme Struthers.^[1] They envisioned a publishing model where they would handle all the aspects of publishing while the developers could focus solely on the game.^[2] Their first game was Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, a re-release of the 2001 game of the same name. In the promotion of that game, they introduced "Fork Parker," a fictional character who they've called their Chief Financial Officer (shown below).

Their breakout hit was 2012's Hotline Miami, which was a critical and financial success. Since then, they've gone on to release several other irreverent indie hit games, including Broforce, Enter the Gungeon, Hatoful Boyfriend, The Messenger, Katana Zero_, and "_My Friend Pedro":/memes/subcultures/my-friend-pedro. They are also publishing the rerelease of FromSoftware's Metal Wolf Chaos.

E3 Conferences

Devolver Digital turned heads at E3 2017 with an over-the-top, pre-filmed satirical presentation hosted by the fictional "Chief Synergy Officer" of the company, Nina Struthers, played by actress Mahria Zook.^[3] The presentation poked fun at gaming conventions such as microtransactions and Early Access (shown below, left). They held a similarly over-the-top conference the following year, with joked parodying Loot Boxes and Bitcoin (shown below, middle). Their 2019 presentation was equally over-the-top and bloody^[4] (shown below, right).

Online Presence

Devolver Digital has generated a strong online presence due to their irreverent attitude. They have over 172,000 subscribers on Twitter,^[5] 98,000 likes on Facebook,^[6] and a small subreddit with over 900 subscribers.^[7] They have been favorably compared in the press to successful indie record labels like Sub Pop^[8] and Death Row records.^[1] This is due in part to what journalists have praised as the personality of its titles.