CD Projekt is Not For Sale, CEO Clarifies

Polish games developer CD Projekt is not for sale, its CEO reiterated on Monday, following weekend rumours that the maker of "Cyberpunk 2077" could be targeted by Sony. From a report: "Nothing has changed on our end. I can repeat what we've been saying throughout the years - CD Projekt is not for sale. We want to remain independent", Adam Kicinski said on a conference call following first-quarter results. "It's very exciting to follow our own path, so it's pure rumour."

OK

[zenlessyank]

So it is for sale.

Re: OK

[sirber]

Of course!

Hope not

[Excelcia]

So it is for sale.

I hope not. CD Projekt themselves is neutral to me one way or another, but seeing Sony own GoG would be a great loss. It's the only real 100% DRM-free game source there is, after Humble basically just became a front for Steam. You have to know that one of the first things Sony would do is slap their DRM all over everything on GoG.

Re:

[Darinbob]

Ya, I don't thnk Sony really cares much about Cyberpunk, but they'd love to get their hands of the top DRM-free game seller out there. Forget slapping DRM on the games, they'd put in the rootkits first.

Re:

[Joce640k]

He's just waiting for The Right Price.

Re:

[sd4f]

it's a publicly listed company in Poland, people can buy stonks.

Re:

[Darinbob]

Being public is a danger in this regard then. Ie, the CEO cannot stop the sale then if the stock holders want to sell.

Re:

[sd4f]

Yes, but then if Sony were wanting to buy it out, they'd either have to pay market rate, or do some offer to convince enough shareholders to take a haircut on market rate. As of today, it's sitting at $2.85 billion market capitalisation, so yea, that would be quite a buyout if Sony wanted to.

Why not?

[usedtobestine]

Add a couple of zeros to the price and see if they're stillinterested.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Very rarely are offers made that low ball by a couple of zeros. If those zeros aren't already in the original offer rejected (assuming there was an offer already with a monetary value attached) then they won't be added afterwards.

Bull pockey

[Sarusa]

Everything is for sale, especially at the corporate level. In corp terms, this is just public broadcasting that whoever's making an offer needs to cough up more money.

Now last time I looked they were worth about $8B (they're publicly traded), so you'd better have some real deep pockets.

And....

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Aaaaaannnnnd it's sold.

chokepoint capitalism

[dhammabum]

What is really going on here is Sony, like Microsoft buying to by Activision, wants to control gaming creators. They want to be the gateway between creators and gamers, with Sony collecting passive income from both sides. They can then manipulate the market - e.g. lower payment to creators and increase their profit. It is called monopsony, a monopoly on the supply side. See Corey Doctorow' and Dr Rebecca Gibney"s book [craphound.com] - he has a succinct description of the amazon takeover of twitch there - or see this synopsis [youtube.com].

This is why musicians get such poor royalties from Spotify and the record labels, and why the screen writers are striking. I hope CD Projekt can survive.

Re:

[sd4f]

While it's a tired trope that real communism has never been tried, I'd argue that real capitalism is also a bit of a theoretical fantasy. Companies eventually get so large, that the easiest way to protect their dominance and for directors to keep meeting their KPI's is to horizontally integrate, lobby legislators and essentially start operating outside the rules that everyone else gets, and ultimately do whatever it takes to prevent competition.

I think we're seeing a supply side constraint because that's pr

Re:

[SuperDre]

The main reason MS is buying a publisher like Activision is because of long term prospects. Dedicated consoles are going the way of the dodo, but game sales will continue, so being a big publisher is the way forward. Also in the long run it might be cheaper to just buy Activision then having to pay licenses to get those games onto their Gamepass service. Don't under estimate the costs of licensing.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

It is called monopsony, a monopoly on the supply side

Correction - a monopoly is a monopoly on the supply side. A monopsony is a monopoly on the *demand* side. (yes, it includes "sony").

Monopsonies are rare, but they do occur. The biggest one in anyone's memory would be Apple's iTunes store where to sell digital tracks on iTunes, all the record labels had to sell through Apple and Apple dictated the terms. The only way the record companies could break the monopsony was to do an end run around iPod DRM by of

If there are shares, it's for sale

[EmagGeek]

If the company is structured as a shareholder entity, then it is for sale. All Sony needs to do is locate enough shareholders willing to sell their shares to obtain a controlling interest. If you're Sony, you can do this with a company like CD Projekt with the money you find in your executive lounge sofa.

Public company right?

[Torp]

It's not the CEO's decision if it's for sale or not.

Re:

[alvinrod]

If there's less than a majority of stock being traded, then it's not possible to buy up the company. Suppose that 40% of shares have been issued and are being publicly traded (or otherwise eligible to be) and the remaining 60% are held by the company or a small number of private individuals who formed it. Buying up that 40% wouldn't give anyone the ability to dictate the remaining 60% be sold.

It can get more complicated than that as not all shares issued by a company hold voting rights and there may be p