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A game veteran’s hard lesson on the humane way to shut a startup

Disclosure: The organizers of the Videogame Economics Forum paid my way to France, where I participated in a couple of conference sessions. Our coverage remains objective.

Alain Tascan built a great reputation in gaming as the founder of two major development studios for two of the top game publishers: Ubisoft Montreal and later EA Montreal. But he should also be remembered for the humane way in which he closed his most recent company, Sava Transmedia. He told that story last week at the Videogame Economics Forum in France.

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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.