Will Harbin, CEO of Kixeye
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Game publisher tells developers why they don’t need publishers

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

SAN FRANCISCO — Publishing is becoming “obsolete.”

So says Will Harbin, the chief executive of Kixeye, one of the most successful new game publishers in the era of digital gaming with titles such as Battle Pirates on platforms such as Facebook. And his advice to younger developers is to bypass publishers and move directly to publishing games on their own on the app stores.

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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.