Karthik (left) and Guha Bala started Velan Studios.
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The brothers who started Vicarious Visions have created a new game studio

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Game industry veterans Guha and Karthik Bala have formed a new independent game studio called Velan Studios in New York.

The Bala brothers are best known for starting Vicarious Visions, an Activision-owned game studio that grew to more than 150 employees. That company worked on more than 100 games, including big console releases like Guitar Hero, Skylanders Swap Force, and Skylanders Superchargers. The company’s games sold as many as 40 million or 50 million units and generated billions in sales.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.