Most gaming founders are pitching the wrong room. Here is why.
I have spent two decades opening doors for businesses raising capital. The pattern I see most often — across technology, entertainment, and property — is founders who have decided where the money should come from before they have understood where it actually is. In gaming and entertainment IP, that gap is costing founders months they cannot get back.
This is a commercial opinion, not regulated advice. What follows is what I have observed working with founders and investors across Europe.
The market has shifted. The playbook has not.
Seed-through-growth-stage investment in gaming companies fell 79% between 2022 and 2023, according to Crunchbase. Early-stage activity remained muted through 2024. The recovery since has been partial and selective — large rounds have returned, overwhelmingly for studios with proven metrics, established IP, and significant user bases.
Pre-revenue founders are competing in a market where institutional gaming VCs have become considerably more cautious. The bar for a first meeting has risen. The bar for a term sheet has risen further still.
This is not a reason to abandon gaming VCs entirely. It is a reason not to rely on them exclusively — and in 2026, many founders are still doing exactly that.
Where the money is actually going
The founders getting funded at pre-revenue stage are not all going through gaming VCs. A meaningful proportion are finding capital in three places that receive far less attention.
- Family offices. A family office with a consumer brand background or an entertainment portfolio thinks about IP very differently from a venture fund. They are not looking for daily active user metrics or retention curves. They are looking at the asset — the character, the franchise, the long-term licensing potential. They understand that the most commercially valuable entertainment properties in history were not built by optimising for engagement data. They were built by creating something people loved.
- Film and entertainment finance. The UK has a sophisticated entertainment finance market that is entirely comfortable with pre-revenue creative IP. These investors understand rights structures, licensing economics, and the compounding value of a well-positioned character. A gaming IP with genuine franchise potential speaks their language in a way that a pure gaming pitch does not.
- EIS and SEIS funds. The UK's Enterprise Investment Scheme and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme create a tax-advantaged structure that makes early-stage creative investment attractive to a wide pool of investors. Many EIS fund managers actively seek pre-revenue creative and technology businesses. The structure can work well for gaming and entertainment IP at exactly the stage where VC appetite is thinnest.
The capital structure question most founders skip
One of the first disciplines in corporate finance is matching your investor to your stage and structure. It sounds obvious. In practice, most founders skip it.
A gaming VC is structured to invest in businesses that can demonstrate traction — user numbers, retention data, revenue trajectory. Their fund mechanics require it. Approaching them pre-revenue is not wrong. Approaching them as your primary strategy, without having mapped the full investor landscape first, is where time gets lost.
Family offices have different mandates, different timelines, and different definitions of value. Entertainment finance investors price IP differently from technology investors. EIS fund managers are incentivised by structures that venture funds are not. Matching your raise to the right capital is not a detail. It is the raise.
The reframe that changes the conversation
The founders who access these rooms successfully are not pitching a game. They are pitching an IP.
There is a meaningful difference. A game pitch leads with product — mechanics, genre, platform, user acquisition strategy. An IP pitch leads with the asset — the character, the world, the emotional connection, and the downstream commercial value of merchandise, licensing, and brand partnerships.
The game is the catalyst. The IP is the asset.
The most commercially valuable entertainment franchises — across film, television, publishing, and gaming — derive the majority of their long-term value not from the original product, but from what that product makes possible. Merchandise, licensing agreements, brand collaborations. The original work creates the connection. Everything else monetises it.
If you cannot put it on a lunchbox or a hoodie, the conversation with a family office is a short one.
Family offices understand this. Film finance investors understand this. The gaming VC focused on retention metrics may not be the first person who needs to hear it.
What these investors need from you
Pitching to family offices and entertainment finance requires different preparation than pitching to a gaming VC.
They will not ask about your DAU trajectory or your cost per install. They will ask about the asset — what makes the IP defensible, what the licensing landscape looks like, where the character sits in the cultural conversation, and whether the founders have the conviction to build something that lasts.
They will also ask the questions every investor asks regardless of category: where is every pound going, in what order, to what end. Clarity on use of funds is not a nice-to-have. It is the threshold question. Ambiguity ends conversations before they begin.
The founders who get a second meeting are not always those with the most polished deck. They are the ones who understood which room they were walking into — and prepared accordingly.
If you want a plain read of where your business stands before you approach investors, a Financial Reality Session is where that conversation starts.
The observation worth sitting with
The total addressable investor pool for gaming and entertainment IP is larger than the gaming VC circuit. In 2026, the founders who know that are raising. The ones who do not are still waiting for callbacks.
Which matters more to you right now — finding the right investor, or refining the pitch for the wrong one?
This article represents a commercial opinion based on market observation. It does not constitute regulated financial advice. Prestige & Co is a commercial consultancy, not a regulated firm. Where regulated advice is required, we refer to appropriately authorised partners. Solomon Prestige Group Ltd · Company No. 17189399 · 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ.