I thought this was common knowledge. I swear I've seen this topic come up on multiple forums. Sven owns 62% of the company. His wife owns 8%, and then Tencent owns 30%.
IIRC, him and his wife used to own 100% and funded his company via loans, but after that almost bankrupted Larian during the making of DOS (since they require constant repayment) I think he probably thought Equity funding was the way to go. For the majority of "companies" that have staff and need a steady cashflow, you're either funding yourself via Equity (i.e. Venture Capital or a stake like this from Tencent), or you're taking on loans. Both ways have cost.
I never thought it was a huge deal myself. Owning 51% of a company is essentially the same as owning 100% from a control standpoint. The unfortunate truth is most of the funding/capital available comes from pretty sketch sources. Even loans come from banks who are basically sketchy AF (especially if you think about who's money they tend to manage).
It's exceeding rare for a proper indie gaming "studios" (i.e. with staff and salaries that you have to pay) to be 100% owned. That really only works when you're 1 person with savings, working from home. Once you have a staff before you've even sold one game, the money's gotta come from somewhere.
For example, Owlcat is an "indie studio", but it's also a full subsidiary (i.e. owner has less than 50%) - previously it belonged to My.Games / VK.com (Russian social media megacorp). Now it is a subsidiary to GEM Capital a private equity / venture capital based in Cyprus.
This misses the point some of us are making. I'm totally fine with everything you say here. I understand how business works, and am completely fine with companies bringing in investors. In fact, that's exactly how they ought to operate.
The issue here is not that some outside investor owns 30% of Larian. The issue here is that investor is Tencent. It is specifically Tencent with whom I have a grave problem.
