$151M Deal Hands Balatro Publisher to Fandom's Owner

An 85% hit rate, over $100 million in Steam revenue, and a catalog headlined by one of the most awarded indie games in recent memory. That's what Playstack has built. And now it's being absorbed into the same private equity-backed media conglomerate that owns Fandom, GameSpot, and Curse.

TruFin, the UK investment group that holds an 84.5% stake in Playstack, announced the proposed sale on May 21, agreeing to sell its interest to VantageCo Limited, a newly established subsidiary of Integrated Media Company. The price: approximately £112.4 million, or around $151 million. IMC is itself wholly owned by TPG Inc., a private equity firm. The deal is still subject to a shareholder vote, though TruFin's board has recommended approval.

Playstack CEO Harvey Elliott framed the acquisition as continuity in a brief statement posted on the company's website. " this is a change in ownership rather than a change in who we are," Elliott said. "Our team, our strategy, and our commitment to publishing premium indie games remain exactly the same." That's the standard line in every acquisition announcement, and it's almost never true two years later.

What Playstack Is Worth

Playstack's catalog goes well beyond Balatro. The publisher is behind The Case of the Golden Idol, The Rise of the Golden Idol, Abiotic Factor, Ak-xolotl, Unbeatable, and About Fishing. Earlier this year, TruFin reported that more than 85% of Playstack's releases have generated a positive return on development costs, and the publisher pulled in £55.3 million in gross revenue during 2025, a 24% year-on-year increase. Balatro alone has sold over five million copies as of January 2025, and swept the 2024 Game Awards with wins for Best Independent Game, Best Debut Indie, and Best Mobile Game.

That track record is exactly why this deal makes me uneasy. Playstack has been one of the best indie publishers in the business precisely because it operates like one. Small teams, sharp taste, a willingness to bet on weird ideas like a roguelike poker game. Private equity firms don't buy companies to let them keep doing what they're doing. They buy companies to extract more value from them. IMC's own website says it "seeks to acquire attractive companies and partner with existing management teams to drive sustainable value creation," which is corporate speak for squeezing margins.

If you've watched what happened to Fandom's wiki platform over the past few years, you already know the playbook. Communities for Minecraft, RuneScape, Warcraft, and Monster Hunter have migrated away from Fandom hosting over frustrations with aggressive ad placements and SEO-chasing content. IMC's portfolio also includes GameSpot, which it acquired under the Fandom umbrella in 2022, along with Screen Junkies, TV Guide, and game key retailer Fanatical. Playstack would sit alongside all of that. The comparison to IGN's acquisition of Humble Bundle is hard to avoid. IGN restructured Humble Games in 2024, laid off 36 people, and the publishing arm hasn't released a game since.

None of this means Playstack is doomed. Elliott has been running the company since its founding, and if he retains meaningful control, the publisher's identity could survive the transition. But indie publishing lives and dies on trust between developers and their publisher, and developers paying attention to who signs their checks will notice that the money now flows back to TPG. Playstack made £55.3 million in revenue last year, representing 83.9% of TruFin's total revenue, so this isn't a struggling company being rescued. It's a profitable one being sold to the highest bidder.