The award-winning Journey cost millions of dollars to develop, according to Thatgamecompany co-founder Jenova Chen. Because of that, Chen knew that it would take a while for his company to receive any royalties.
“When the game makes money, the money first goes back to pay back the money they’ve invested. So, that’s going to take a while – Journey cost multiple millions of dollars to make. Once that money is recouped, then we will get royalties,” he said. “But for almost a year, we are not going to be relying on the money from Journey to keep the company going.”
To help with the money situation, Thatgamecompany secured $5.6 million from venture capital firm Benchmark Company immediately after Journey released. “We were at a spot where, if we couldn’t figure out the next game, or find the next deal, then at the end of Journey we’d run out of money,” Chen said. “When we switched to a venture capital, we raised the money because we pitched the project; we sold them on the vision. They believe it, they want to support us to make that happen. So, creatively I’ve never gotten any input from the venture capital. It’s actually very similar, we are always ourselves, and no one is really messing around with us. With Sony, it was the same thing.”
Source: Joystiq