Steve Allison believes the future is bright for video games.
Allison, who joined Saber Interactive as the company’s new chief business officer this week, has reason to feel optimistic. Since regaining its independence from Embracer in 2024, Saber Interactive appears to be in one of the strongest financial positions in the company’s history thanks to an influx of investor cash from private equity firms like Aleph Capital and Crestview Partners. The company’s current projects include widely recognizable properties like Jurassic Park, Hellraiser, and John Wick.
Before joining Saber Interactive on July 14, Allison spent eight years at Epic Games, most recently as a vice president and general manager in charge of the Epic Games Store and Epic’s third-party publishing business. His career spans across over 30 years of experience at companies like Telltale, Midway, and Atari. In an interview with GamesBeat today, July 16, Allison acknowledged the challenging and layoff-heavy position the gaming industry finds itself in at the current moment, but said he believes the industry’s best days are still ahead.
“Obviously, it’s really important to pay attention to the things that we’re going through right now,” Allison said. “I think we’re going to be in a position, if we’re successful, to show that there’s a path to health whether you do paid games or live service — and I believe it’s really rooted in the costs to build games and how much we spend on marketing.”
GamesBeat spoke with Allison to learn more about his plans for his new role at Saber Interactive. Below is a transcript of that conversation, lightly edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.
What made you decide to make the jump over to Saber Interactive at this particular moment?
It’s not really any of the headwinds that Epic may or may not have faced; this has been a really long journey. We had a great year, our best year in eight years, and there were three or four really interesting opportunities that surfaced at the beginning of the year, including this one. After spending time with [Saber Interactive chief executive officer] Matt [Karch] and [Saber Interactive chief operating officer] Andrey [Iones], it was like, ‘this is the time. This lineup’s amazing, and if I’m going to come here, it’s going to have to be now.’
What are the responsibilities of your role as chief business officer?
We’re going to get a little bit more organized. It seems like everybody’s really enthusiastic about that. Part of my day-to-day right now is just like, ‘hey, what’s the best way to do that here at Saber, that the team is energized about, and that we can use to improve our throughput and the quality of people’s lives and still do amazing work?’ On the leadership side, I will work with Matt, Andrey, and [Saber Interactive chief technology officer] Anton [Krupkin] on everything from exploring external publishing deals to just organizing, marketing, publishing, and getting the team together as we plan for our own self-published titles over the next four years.
You mentioned getting more organized. Will there be any restructuring of Saber Interactive’s business department under your leadership?
Of the way it’s organized, but certainly there’s no desire to change the headcount or the composition of people. It’s more about what’s the best way to bring the team together and have the right amount of touchpoints, but not too many — a lot of boring shit, frankly. Because it’s not all interconnected like you would think, but it’s all still working really effectively, we think the company can become incredibly effective together. We’re coordinating with our studios, we’re coordinating with each other, and we’re coordinating with leadership.
What lessons from the past eight years at Epic Games do you feel are most relevant to your new role?
What I’ve learned with every successful launch and, frankly, every failed launch that I’ve had, is that it’s usually all about product-market fit, and did we reach the right players. I’ve been here three days, and I’m getting buried in our Telegram account — which is what we use instead of Slack — and everybody, even if they don’t know it, is talking about product-market fit, and how this game finds the right audience. Those are all the right conversations to be having, and they are super rigorous about that, which is very exciting and encouraging.
Thanks for your time, and congratulations on the new role. It’s great to meet another member of the Midway Mafia.
One of the things that struck me about Saber is that the culture here is a lot like the culture there when I came in as CMO [of Midway Games] 20 years ago. Actually, that’s a really big part of the appeal for me. This place is crazy in a lot of ways. It might be off-putting to a traditional executive, but for me, it’s an awesome culture of people who are passionate about these games in the same way we were at Midway.