Microsoft is “less hands-on than I thought they’d be” after Compulsion acquisition

Microsoft is one of the biggest gaming publishers on the planet – if not the biggest at this point – and that’s in part to its acquisition strategy over the past decade or so. The company has scooped up dozens of studios throughout the years, from tiny indies like Double Fine to massive international publishers like Activision Blizzard. One of its more interesting acquisitions, though, was of Compulsion Games, the developer behind games like Contrast, We Happy Few, and most recently, South of Midnight. 

At Gamescom Latam in Sao Paulo, Brazil, I had the opportunity to sit down with Compulsion Games founder and studio head Guillaume Provost, who spoke at length about the acquisition process. Provost was the solo founder of Compulsion back in 2009, and grew it to a little under 40 people by the time Microsoft took notice. 

Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty was the one who made the push for Microsoft to acquire the studio, Provost says, and was also the one who tried the hardest to keep Compulsion insulated from the rest of the company until they were ready to integrate more fully. Microsoft was and still is “less [hands-on] than I thought they’d be,” he says, in part because Booty wanted to make sure the studio’s culture was kept intact.

“[Matt] was the person who acquired us and recognized that game culture and the studio cultures that make those games is very precious,” Provost tells me. “His and Phil’s pitch to me when we were talking about the acquisition was just like, ‘You’re a really small plant right now, so we’re just going to put a big bubble over you and we’re going to keep you insulated as you grow.’ And that’s largely how they’ve worked at it.” 

Provost says that there was a person at Microsoft whose job it was to shield the studio from the other employees of Microsoft for the first two years post-acquisition, so that it could grow more naturally without rushing into being another cog in a very large machine before it was ready. At the time, Compulsion didn’t have a finance person, an HR person, or any in-house legal representative, so there was a lot of growth that still needed to happen before it was integrated into Microsoft’s corporate world. 

“There was a level of patience and a level of encapsulating the studio in a way that we could keep the type of culture and make the type of games that we wanted to make,” Provost recalls. “And as we grew, we slowly developed those capabilities of engaging with our wonderful PR people and being able to start using all the different facets of Microsoft. But people were not in a rush to make that happen.” 

That’s not to say the culture has changed, though. When Compulsion was acquired by Microsoft, it was a team of just 38 employees, and now it’s grown to 92, a process that Provost says is like shifting from a large family to a small village. That comes with a lot of responsibility – nobody wants to waste Microsoft’s money – but Microsoft’s hands-off approach has meant that creatives at the studio have largely been able to pursue games that they want to pursue. That’s led to a very high level of staff retention — as Provost says, “teams don’t make good games unless they’re passionate about them.” 

With dozens of studios now under the Microsoft umbrella, there’s certainly a sense that it’s had a lot of experience integrating new teams into the company. Some of those transitions have been less successful than others – you only have to look at the layoffs at the company and its studios over the past few years to see that – but for Compulsion, at least, it seems like relatively smooth sailing for now. 

“I think, without wanting to go into the details,” Provost says, seemingly choosing his words quite carefully, “Microsoft feels like it’s not the first time that they had acquired game companies and then learned a lot of lessons about how to do that right over the years.”

Disclosure: Oliver Brandt attended Gamescom Latam as a guest of Abragames, with flights and accommodation provided by the organization.