It should come as no surprise that Rockstar Games has some money laying around. This will be the third time it’s been said on this site, but they made one billion dollars in three days. Between their billion dollars in that time, nearly 110 million sales of Grand Theft Auto V total, and the microtransactions for the same game, and they have some money. None of which includes the 24 million units sold of Red Dead Redemption 2.

With that said, a large stake of their income will go back into making their blockbuster hits. According to some analysts, Red Dead Redemption cost a small 80-100 million dollars back in 2010, and Grand Theft Auto V cost a small fortune in at 265 million dollars. One site, Vulture Beast, has tried to add up the cost of everything for Red Dead 2 alone and has come up with a more than questionable 944 million dollar total. With a conservative estimate on a complete guess and the word of analysts’ previous estimates, I would hazard a guess of the total being more akin to 600 million dollars (development and Marketing).

Nevertheless, the point still stands: They have the money to throw around. A few days ago, they may have done just that with 7.9 million dollars, all in the name of keeping another company alive. For about a week now, the Swedish developer, Starbreeze has been open about their next year and how it looks (or looked) dire. Claiming they would find the next 12 month a struggle to keep the doors open, they needed help and fast. This is where Rockstar come in, buying Starbreeze’s majority share of an Indian art production studio, Dhruva Interactive for the nearly 8 million dollar stake.

Starbreeze is known for their major releases of the last few years, including Overkill’s The Walking Dead, Dead By Daylight, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, John Wick Chronicles, and Payday 2. They are also set to release Psychonauts 2 sometime this year. One could assume Rockstar are saving Starbreeze from the cliff’s edge, though there is more to their financial report of Q1 than a couple of million dollars and the deadly bottom of that cliff. The overall loss, as stated in the report, is a rough 167.3 million Swedish Krona, or 174 million dollars (assuming my conversion is correct).

At this moment no one can say if Starbreeze will see the end of these next 12 months. One would once again have to assume that the company will have to begin liquidation of some assets sooner rather than later if they want to save the company in the short term. However, their long term goal, according to acting CEO Mikael Nermark, is to secure financial support to see the end of the year and further. Nonetheless, this entire situation was a result of some costly business ventures and some mismanagement that Starbreeze will have to attempt to come back from.

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