IPOs are a death sentence for video game companies

I was reading today the news that Devolver wants to delist itself from the stock market, and it made me smile. For years I've been saying, when rambling about it with friends, that having an IPO was a death sentence because, yeah, you can get a large injection of cash to keep things going, but then a lot of "investors" that don't understand the market will start demanding things that make no sense just so "the line keeps going up". That's why we end up with decisions only a lunatic would make, like firing the team or closing a studio responsible for a hugely successful game that was just released and got incredibly positive reviews. Another thing — and it's a mistake I've seen some publications and YouTube critics making — is that share value doesn't represent the fiscal situation of a company. For the longest time, people have been cheering when Ubisoft's or EA's or whatever's shares drop abruptly, as if that was a signal that the company was close to bankruptcy, or as if it was…