Walking through Gamescom, the massive, eye‑catching booths are usually anchored 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 brand most attendees will not recognize: 4Divinity. "It's enormous by any standard," says Philip Doust, director of 4Divinity’s UK arm, describing the publisher's Gamescom footprint.
The company is presenting six titles in the closed‑door B2B zone, five of which will feature in the accompanying trailer showcases, and four titles will appear on the public show floor across two separate stands. The larger of those stands spans roughly 800 square metres. Doust emphasizes that the scale is matched by spectacle: "We’re working with one of the top booth builders at Gamescom and haven’t held back on any expense." One of the highlighted experiences is the 80s‑style pop‑culture RPG "Showa American Story," which recreates a Hollywood‑Hills‑in‑Neo‑Yokohama setting where an alternate timeline sees Japan ruling the United States.
"We built a seven‑metre‑high Golden Gate Bridge draped with Japanese lanterns, and a diner you can walk into to start playing. It’s all very experiential," Doust adds. When pressed about the cost, Doust declines to give an exact number, calling it "crass" to do so, but confirms that the investment runs into the millions of dollars. He argues that the size of the footprint alone signals a serious commitment to the Western market – a commitment that many Chinese firms either lack or do not know how to execute.
The reason this publisher can afford such a lavish presence is that 4Divinity is part of a larger conglomerate, Singapore‑based GCL Global Holdings, which also owns a range of unrelated businesses, including a faux‑diamond jewellery line. GCL’s roots lie in a physical‑distribution operation called Epicsoft, a business that has been running for nearly two decades. While physical media remain a component of the group’s revenue – "as long as Sony continues to produce discs," Doust notes – the market is clearly in decline, prompting the need for a digital‑first strategy. 4Divinity was founded in 2022 initially as a co‑publisher helping Western developers bring games to Southeast Asia.
Doust recalls the difficulty of finding a Western title that could succeed in China, citing Atomic Heart as a rare success, followed by Stalker 2. Those titles were outliers, and the group realized that a purely regional approach would not deliver the growth required of a Nasdaq‑listed company.
"From a growth perspective, we needed to become a global publisher," he says. The pivot involved signing Chinese‑developed games for worldwide distribution.
By the time Doust joined in late 2024, the company already had a handful of titles, including a few indie projects and the ambitious "Showa American Story." The portfolio has since expanded to eight games slated for release over the next two years, marking a rapid growth phase. All of the announced 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 strategies employed by other independents such as ProbablyMonsters. Doust believes this segment captures what many players currently want: a complete, narrative‑driven experience without the time commitment of a live‑service game. He estimates that most of these games cost between $5 million and $20 million to develop, meaning a publisher needs to sell roughly a million copies just to break even – a challenging target given today’s discoverability hurdles.
4Divinity’s approach also diverges in its emphasis on brand‑new intellectual property. "Everything you’ll see at Gamescom is new IP, even in China.
In the West, it’s absolutely new," Doust explains. Larger studios are increasingly risk‑averse, preferring to iterate on existing franchises rather than gamble on fresh titles, especially as development costs soar.
The turning point for 4Divinity’s global ambition, according to Doust, was the handling of "Black Myth: Wukong." GCL managed the physical PS5 distribution worldwide and acted as the publisher in Taiwan. Because the developer, Game Science, is a Chinese studio, it lacked the infrastructure to coordinate global logistics, allowing GCL to step in from its Singapore base. Wukong’s triumph highlighted a broader opportunity.
After China lifted its console ban in 2016, many Chinese developers who had been working abroad returned home and formed console‑ready studios. Wukong, with a reported development budget of around 300 million yuan (approximately $44.6 million), sold 30 million copies, delivering a massive profit margin. Doust points out that production costs in China are considerably lower and that Chinese gamers are highly price‑sensitive, shaping 4Divinity’s strategy to offer affordable, high‑quality experiences.
Doust’s mission is to bridge Western demand for fresh, reasonably priced games with the supply of Chinese developers capable of delivering them at lower cost. 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 assets.
The company’s current model is what Doust calls a "do‑nothing" business in the West: they market primarily in China, which creates a ripple effect abroad, typically resulting in an 80/20 sales split (80 % in China, 20 % elsewhere). Wukong followed that pattern, selling about 20 million copies in China and 3‑4 million internationally.
Doust hopes to shift the balance toward a 60/40 split by strengthening cross‑border promotion, a modest but meaningful improvement that could dramatically increase total unit sales. To illustrate the two‑way flow, Doust cites the only non‑Chinese title in the portfolio, "Guns Of Eschaton," developed by Eschatology Entertainment, a new studio based in Cyprus by a former Wargaming employee. After announcing the game, 4Divinity immediately showcased it at Bilibili World, Shanghai’s massive anime and pop‑culture expo – a move rarely seen from Western publishers at such an early stage.
The exposure propelled China to become the second‑largest wishlist market for the game, behind the United States, confirming the viability of a bidirectional marketing strategy. Thus, the colossal Gamescom presence is a physical manifestation of that strategy.
The company plans to roll out its games in Cologne shortly after debuting them at ChinaJoy in Shanghai, aiming to generate simultaneous buzz in both markets rather than waiting for Chinese traction to create a lagging Western push. Doust sees Gamescom as a "coming‑out party" for the publisher in the West, allowing them to consolidate multiple game campaigns into one high‑impact event. "If this is a 4Divinity portfolio play, where we want to introduce the games and ourselves to the West, why not go big?" he concludes.