Devolver Digital is asking its shareholders for permission to pull its shares off London’s AIM market and go back to being a private company.
Nothing’s final yet. Investors vote on the plan at the company’s annual general meeting on September 8. If it passes, Devolver shares stop trading on September 16.
The publisher joined AIM in November 2021 with a valuation of £694.6m, around $950m at the time. Its share price has since fallen 96.27%. Market cap now sits near £34.64m, roughly $46.63m.
The board says the market simply isn’t pricing the company correctly. It also points to the cost and paperwork of staying listed (filings, advisors, investor relations, governance) none of which help ship games. Devolver estimates it saves about $1.6m a year by leaving.
A company spokesperson called the plan “simple and positive,” saying it lets the finance, legal, and executive teams focus on the long-term health of the business instead of public market demands that “have nothing to do with being a successful game publisher.”
The board argues the move is best for the company, its staff, its development partners, and shareholders as a whole.
This isn’t a buyout
Important detail: nobody’s buying Devolver. There’s no private equity firm, no rival publisher, and no founder takeover announced.
This is a delisting. Shareholders keep their shares, they just lose the public exchange to trade them on.
There’s a limited tender offer attached. Devolver would buy back roughly 23 million shares at 16 pence each, which covers less than 5% of the roughly 500 million shares outstanding. If more people want out than there’s money for, acceptances get scaled back pro-rata.
A second tender is reportedly planned for around a year later, again covering only a small slice, with the price set at that time.
From Fall Guys to fire sale prices
Devolver went public at the peak of gaming’s pandemic boom. Cheap money, record engagement, and Fall Guys fresh in everyone’s memory made an irreverent indie publisher look like a growth stock.
Then the industry cooled. Costs rose, delays piled up, and investors stopped paying big multiples for maybes.
The catalog is still strong, with titles like Hotline Miami, Enter the Gungeon, The Talos Principle, GRIS, Inscryption, Cult of the Lamb. The company has also picked up studios including Croteam, Nerial, Firefly Studios, and System Era along the way.
No layoffs, studio closures, or canceled games were announced alongside the delisting plan.
