The World’s Smallest Violin – Rovio Says “Making Successful Games is Hard :(“

“Game makers buy into their own bulls***,” says Rovio CEO, Peter Vesterbacka, speaking at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle. “You think you can make hit after hit. We know how hard it is to do that, so we are betting everything on Angry Birds.” I wish I could say I was making this up as some sort of attempt to slander the Angry Birds devs, but alas, the company’s arrogance is really that strong. It wouldn’t be the first time Rovio issued a shockingly ignorant statement, so this level of asshattery on their part is really just par for the course at this point.

I do not hate Angry Birds, but I’ve made no secret of my disdain for Rovio’s practices and their philosophy in general, and this one just takes the cake. If every successful game developer said to themselves, “Well, we’ve got one hit, but it was so hard to make I don’t think we should bother trying to do it again” there would be no game industry at all. Instead of even attempting to make a sequel to Angry Birds, Rovio would rather milk the brand in other forms of media such as film. It’s only a matter of time until it all comes crashing down for them, though. The saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” was never so appropriate.