Devolver Digital Wants Off the Stock Market
Devolver Digital plans to leave the stock market on September 16, arguing indie publishing does not fit quarterly reporting. What it means for its games.
Devolver Digital, the publisher behind Hotline Miami, Enter the Gungeon, Cult of the Lamb, and last year's Baby Steps, has filed to take itself off the stock market. In an announcement on August 6, the company asked shareholders to approve cancelling its listing on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market, with trading expected to stop on September 16. The reason it gave is one that will sound familiar to anyone who has ever waited on a small team's game: making games does not run on a quarterly schedule.
What Devolver actually said
The company's case is that the market never priced it correctly. Devolver says the stock market "has not rewarded the company for its successive and substantive operational improvements over the last six consecutive halves through to the end of 2025," and points to a "valuation disconnect" it blames on volatility across the whole games business, including widespread layoffs, platform rationalization, and substantial write-downs on underperforming titles.
Underneath that is a structural argument. Public markets reward predictable growth and near-term guidance. Indie publishing produces neither, because development timelines slip and a single release can land the wrong side of a reporting period. "Being private will allow the Devolver Digital team, especially the finance, legal, and executive team, to singularly focus on the long term health of the company," the company said, "and less on satisfying the requirements of the public market." It expects to save roughly $1.6 million a year in listing costs alone.
The numbers behind the decision are stark. Devolver floated in November 2021 at a valuation near $950 million. It now sits somewhere around $45 million, a drop of about 95% in under five years, even though the company reported improved revenue, gross margins, and adjusted EBITDA in 2025 over 2024, and a June trading update with revenue up more than 60% year over year. Shareholders did not take the news well: the share price fell roughly 59% on the day, to about 7 pence.
What this does not change
Nothing about your library, your wishlist, or the games in production. Delisting is a change in who owns the shares and how often the company has to explain itself to them. Devolver keeps its studios, which include Croteam (Serious Sam, The Talos Principle), Firefly Studios (Stronghold), System Era Softworks (Astroneer), Nerial (Reigns), Dodge Roll (Enter the Gungeon), and Doinksoft (Gunbrella), and it keeps publishing for the independent teams it does not own.
It is also not a sale. Nobody is buying Devolver here. The company is proposing a tender offer to return up to $5 million to shareholders, buying back as many as 23,320,896 shares, about 4.71% of its issued capital, at 16 pence each. Everyone else keeps stock in a company whose shares will be much harder to sell. That is the part the market repriced.
The part worth watching
We think the argument Devolver is making is basically true, and it is one small studios have been making for years. A game is ready when it is ready. Baby Steps took as long as it took. Tying that to a reporting calendar puts a quiet pressure on every decision a publisher makes about when to ship, what to greenlight, and when to cut. Taking that pressure off is a reasonable thing to want.
The honest catch is what we lose. A listed company files results, and those filings are how we found out about the write-downs, the restructurings, and the cuts at Devolver-owned studios like Artificer and Nerial in 2024. Once the listing goes, so does the obligation to publish any of it. Devolver going private is probably good for Devolver's games. It also means the next hard year at one of its studios reaches you through a developer's own post, or not at all.
The dates that matter
Shareholder vote: September 8, 2026, needing 75% of votes cast
Expected end of trading: September 16, 2026
Tender offer: up to $5 million returned, at 16 pence per share
What it means for players: nothing immediate; no announced changes to any game or studio
If this story makes you want to do something, the useful move is not to watch a share price. It is to go buy something off the shelf Devolver built. Skate Story, Shotgun Cop Man, and Baby Steps are all on Devolver's Steam page, and the teams that made them are the reason any of this is worth reporting.