Walking through Gamescom, the massive, eye‑catching booths you encounter are usually attached to 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 brand most visitors will not recognize: 4Divinity. "By any measure, it’s enormous," says Philip Doust, director of 4Divinity’s UK arm, describing the company’s Gamescom footprint. The publisher is fielding six titles in the closed‑door B2B zone, 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 roughly 800 square metres. But the scale isn’t limited to square footage; the spectacle is equally ambitious. "We’ve hired one of the top booth builders at Gamescom and spared no expense," Doust adds. One of the most striking installations is for the 80s‑style pop‑culture RPG *Showa American Story*.
The set recreates a Hollywood‑hillscape that, in the game’s alternate timeline, has been renamed Neo Yokohama Hills under a Japan‑ruled United States. "We built a seven‑metre‑tall Golden Gate Bridge festooned with Japanese lanterns, and a diner you can actually walk into to start playing," Doust explains.
The experience is deliberately immersive, designed to give visitors a taste of the game’s world. When pressed about the cost, Doust refuses to quote an exact number, calling it "crass," but confirms that the investment runs into the millions. "The size of our footprint alone shows we’re committing resources at that level.
It signals how seriously we’re taking the Western market—something not every Chinese‑owned company does or knows how to do." The reason this publisher can afford such a splash is that 4Divinity is part of a larger Singapore‑based conglomerate, GCL Global Holdings, which also owns an imitation‑diamond jewellery business among other ventures. GCL’s roots lie in physical game distribution through a company called Epicsoft, a business that has been operating for almost two decades. While physical distribution remains a component of the group’s revenue—"as long as Sony continues to produce discs, we’ll keep supporting it"—Doust acknowledges that the model is in decline and that the group needed a digital‑focused growth engine.
Enter 4Divinity, launched in 2022 as a co‑publisher helping Western developers bring titles to Southeast Asia. Doust notes that finding a Western game that resonates in China is a tall order.
The company succeeded with *Atomic Heart*, which performed strongly in the Chinese market, and later with *Stalker 2*. However, those successes were outliers rather than a sustainable growth path.
"For a Nasdaq‑listed company like GCL, we needed a strategy that could scale globally," Doust says. Consequently, 4Divinity began signing Chinese‑developed games for worldwide release. By the time Doust arrived in late 2024, the roster already included a few indie projects and the ambitious *Showa American Story*.
Since then, the portfolio has swelled to eight games slated for release over the next two years, marking a rapid expansion phase. All of the titles share common traits: they are primarily single‑player experiences, last roughly 15‑20 hours, and sit in the mid‑tier price range. This focus on the "squeezed middle" of the market mirrors a strategy pursued by other firms such as the US‑based ProbablyMonsters. Doust believes this segment captures what many gamers currently want: a complete, story‑driven adventure that doesn’t demand the massive time commitment of a live‑service title.
"People are willing to spend $40‑50 on a solid single‑player game, even if they won’t invest 200 hours in a service." Developing games in this AA tier typically costs between $5 million and $20 million. Whether produced in China or the West, that budget requires selling roughly a million copies just to break even—a challenging target given today’s discoverability hurdles. Doust points out that most large publishers shy away from new IP risk, preferring to lean on established franchises.
"AAA has become so risk‑averse it’s essentially a franchise business. Unless you already own a franchise, you’re rarely given a chance," he says, noting that a few emerging Chinese studios are exceptions. The real turning point for 4Divinity, according to Doust, was the distribution of *Black Myth: Wukong*.
GCL handled the game’s physical PS5 distribution worldwide and acted as publisher in Taiwan, leveraging its Singapore base to bridge the gap for the Chinese developer Game Science. The success of *Wukong* highlighted a broader opportunity: since China lifted its console ban in 2016, many Chinese developers who had been working abroad have returned home and started console/PC studios. These studios can produce high‑quality games at a fraction of Western development costs.
Tax filings suggest *Wukong* cost about 300 million yuan (approximately $44.6 million) to develop, yet it sold 30 million copies, delivering a substantial profit margin. Lower production costs and price‑sensitive Chinese gamers shape 4Divinity’s approach. Doust argues that while many major publishers have retreated from this niche due to financial risk, player appetite for affordable, story‑driven experiences remains strong—creating a "massive drought of supply." His mission is to match Western demand for fresh, reasonably priced experiences with the supply of Chinese developers who can deliver them efficiently. He describes his guiding principle as finding universal themes—loyalty, trust, defiance, revenge—that resonate across cultures.
By marketing the same game with slightly different messaging for each region, 4Divinity hopes to achieve a more balanced sales split. Historically, *Wukong* sold about 80 % of its units in China and 20 % elsewhere. Doust aims for a 60/40 split, which would dramatically increase overall unit sales and potentially elevate a title to best‑selling status relative to its modest development budget. The company is also experimenting with reverse promotion.
Its only non‑Chinese title at present, *Guns Of Eschaton*, was first showcased at Bilibili World in Shanghai—a move no Western publisher typically makes at such an early stage. The early exposure generated enough buzz that China became the second‑largest wishlist market for the game, trailing only the United States. Thus, the massive Gamescom presence mirrors this dual‑direction strategy.
4Divinity plans to roll out its games in Cologne shortly after debuting them at ChinaJoy in Shanghai, aiming to generate simultaneous momentum in both markets rather than chasing a Chinese hit after the fact. Gamescom serves as the Western “coming‑out party,” allowing the publisher to consolidate multiple campaigns into a single, high‑impact showcase. "If this is a portfolio play to introduce our games and ourselves to the West, why not go big?" Doust concludes.