Publishing deal panel, left to right: Walter Driver, Mark Stanley, David Jaffe, and Ophir Lupu.
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Veterans show how to do a game publishing deal

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 16 min

Publishing deals are often viewed as the end game for small game studios. But how do you do a game publishing deal right?

It’s different for console, mobile, and PC games. There’s no school for this, and the new rules of digital gaming have changed the relationship between developers and publishers. We assembled an expert panel to talk about the subject at our GamesBeat 2016 event in Los Angeles last week. Their advice? Finding a publisher is like dating.

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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.