Walking through Gamescom, the massive, eye‑catching booths are usually owned by household names—Capcom, Xbox, Sega, EA, Ubisoft, and the like. This year, however, a sizable portion of Halls 6 and 7 is dominated by a company most visitors will not recognize: 4Divinity.
"It's enormous by any standard," says Philip Doust, director of 4Divinity’s UK operation, describing the publisher’s Gamescom footprint. The company is presenting six titles in the closed‑door B2B area, five of which will appear in the associated trailer showcases, and four will be displayed on the public floor across two separate stands. The larger of those stands covers an impressive 800 square metres. Doust emphasizes that the ambition goes beyond sheer size; the company has hired one of Gamescom’s top booth builders and spared no expense on the design and construction.
One of the highlighted experiences is for the 1980s‑style pop‑culture RPG *Showa American Story*. The booth features a recreated Hollywood Hills set, renamed Neo Yokohama Hills to reflect the game’s alternate timeline where Japan rules the United States. "We have a seven‑metre‑high Golden Gate Bridge adorned with Japanese lanterns, a fully stocked diner that visitors can walk into and play the game," Doust explains.
The goal is to create an immersive, experiential environment that draws attendees into the narrative world. When pressed about the cost, Doust declines to give an exact number, calling it "crass," but confirms that the investment runs into the millions of dollars. He says the scale of the booth signals how seriously 4Divinity is taking the Western market—a commitment not all Chinese‑based publishers share or understand. The reason the company can afford such a spend is that 4Divinity is part of a larger conglomerate, Singapore‑based GCL Global Holdings, which also owns a faux‑diamond jewellery brand and a long‑standing physical‑distribution arm called Epicsoft.
Epicsoft has been moving physical game discs for almost two decades, a business that is now in decline as consoles shift to digital delivery. Doust acknowledges that while they will continue disc production as long as Sony permits it, the group recognises the need to pivot toward digital publishing.
4Divinity was launched in 2022 initially as a co‑publisher helping Western developers bring games to Southeast Asia. Doust cites the success of *Atomic Heart* in China and later *Stalker 2* as proof that a Western title can find a sizable audience in the Chinese market, but those successes were outliers. To achieve sustainable growth, GCL needed a global publishing model. Consequently, 4Divinity began acquiring Chinese‑developed games for worldwide release.
By the time Doust joined in late 2024, the company already had a few indie titles and the ambitious *Showa American Story* in its pipeline. Today the portfolio has expanded to eight games slated for release over the next two years.
All of the titles share common traits: they are primarily single‑player experiences lasting 15‑20 hours, priced in the mid‑tier range. This focus on the “squeezed middle” of the market mirrors a strategy pursued by other publishers such as the US‑based ProbablyMonsters. Doust believes this segment reflects current player preferences: most gamers lack the time for 200‑hour live‑service games, and while they may spend $80 on a blockbuster, they are willing to invest $40‑$50 in a well‑crafted single‑player adventure. Developing a game in this AA bracket typically costs between $5 million and $20 million.
Doust notes that breaking even often requires selling around one million copies—a challenging target given today’s discoverability hurdles. By targeting the AA space, 4Divinity hopes to balance production risk with realistic sales expectations.
Another differentiator is that every game shown at Gamescom is a brand‑new IP, both for Chinese and Western audiences. Larger studios are reluctant to gamble on untested IPs, especially after the rising costs of AAA development have turned many publishers into franchise‑centric businesses.
In contrast, 4Divinity is betting on fresh concepts, believing that the market appetite for novel experiences remains strong despite a drought of supply. The turning point for the company, according to Doust, was the distribution of *Black Myth: Wukong*. GCL handled the physical PS5 distribution worldwide and acted as the publisher in Taiwan, leveraging its Singapore base to bridge the gap for the Chinese developer Game Science.
The success of *Wukong*—which reportedly sold 30 million copies after a development budget of roughly ¥300 million (about $44.6 million)—demonstrated the commercial viability of Chinese‑made titles on a global stage. Since the lifting of China’s console ban in 2016, many Chinese developers who had been working abroad have returned home, establishing console and PC studios. Doust points out that development costs in China are considerably lower, and Chinese gamers are highly price‑sensitive, which shapes 4Divinity’s strategy of offering high‑quality, affordable experiences.
Doust’s overarching mission is to match Western demand for fresh, reasonably priced games with the supply of Chinese developers capable of delivering them efficiently. He describes his thesis as finding universal themes—loyalty, trust, defiance, revenge—that resonate across cultures, then tailoring marketing messages to each region while using the same core assets. The company also experiments with a “do‑nothing” approach: marketing primarily in China and allowing a ripple effect to generate sales in the West.
*Black Myth: Wukong* followed an 80/20 split—80 % of sales in China, 20 % elsewhere. Doust hopes to shift that balance to a 60/40 split through more coordinated cross‑border campaigns, which could dramatically increase total unit sales. To illustrate the two‑way flow, Doust cites the upcoming title *Guns Of Eschaton*, developed outside China by a Cyprus‑based studio founded by a former Wargaming employee. After announcing the game, 4Divinity immediately showcased it at Bilibili World in Shanghai, an early‑stage marketing move rarely seen from Western publishers.
The exposure propelled China to become the second‑largest wishlist market for the game, behind the United States, confirming the efficacy of the east‑to‑west strategy. The massive Gamescom presence is therefore a physical manifestation of this dual‑market approach. By launching the games in Cologne shortly after a showcase at ChinaJoy in Shanghai, 4Divinity aims to generate simultaneous buzz in both regions rather than waiting for one market to mature before entering the other. Doust acknowledges that Gamescom also serves as the company’s Western debut, allowing them to consolidate multiple game campaigns into a single, high‑impact event.
"If we are using Gamescom as a portfolio showcase to introduce our titles and ourselves to the West, why not go big?" he concludes.