Founder and CEO of Rovio Games Mikael Hed told The Wall Street Journal that if it wasn’t for his grandparents, the world would know nothing about uber-popular Angry Birds.
That’s because the game was finding no success at all, and just when the company was about to go bankrupt, his father came up to him and said he was thinking of mortgaging his parents home to save the company. Hed didn’t want to be the ones to put his grandparents on the street, but his father pressed on nonetheless, and the rest is history.
“He told me that he wanted to mortgage my grandparents’ flat so he could put some more money in the company to keep it afloat,” said Hed. “That was pretty tough. I certainly did not want to be the person responsible for putting my grandparents on the street.”
“Just looking at the odds, we shouldn’t take that kind of a risk,” Hed recalls thinking, but his father pressed ahead.
“Now I am glad he did, but it was a big gamble.”
nice to see things working out.
especially in a economy where were seeing these types of things putting people out on the street, not vice versa.
scary to think the best selling mobile game in history almost did not happen!
i guess it just goes to prove you dont have to have a massive budget to release a popular game.
actually, if anything it proves the opposite.
so many times big budgets have only gotten in the way.
cough LA Noire, GT5, the last guardian.
“scary to think the best selling mobile game in history almost did not happen!” Just proves the importance of persistence and believing in what you have!