This week, we chat to Johnny Galvatron about Beethoven & Dinosaur's latest, the much-talked-about Mixtape. The director tells us about how the team set out to evoke nostalgia, treating its tracks like religious objects, and his vision for the studio's future.

Next, G2A founder Bartosz Skwarczek tells us why the digital marketplace has finally taken external investment and how its diversification is benefiting game publishers.

As per tradition, we round things off with social takes, further reading/playing, and a look at the latest issue of Edge.  

Beethoven & Dinosaur's Mixtape has been a hot topic this week, with talking points encompassing how it plays, its publisher Annapurna Interactive, and its specific approach to nostalgia. (Kahlief Adams gives a good overview of the discourse in his Spawn On Me podcast, summing it up: "The internet's ability to find conspiracy where there literally is none is astounding. [...] We used to measure things at the speed of sound; now we measure things at the speed of stupid.")

Talking to creative director Johnny Galvatron on launch day, we get the feeling he isn't fazed by any of the noise. Galvatron has an infectious exuberance, a cheery, unbothered attitude that may stem from his background in music as lead singer and guitarist of Australian band The Galvatrons. When we ask what success looks like for

\him, he simply says: "I want to go to the YouTube channel of 'That's Good' by Devo, and I want the top comment to say: 'Mixtape sent me here'." Mission accomplished.

The game follows teenager Stacy Rockford and her friends on her last day in the small town they grew up in. It's a coming-of-age story firmly rooted in US culture, inspired by the films of John Hughes and set to a lovingly curated soundtrack including Iggy Pop, Joy Division, The Cure and The Smashing Pumpkins.

Set during the 1990s and foregrounding music so prominently, nostalgia is a core component of the game's narrative. Centring on a specific point in time presents a challenge: how do you evoke feelings of nostalgia that are relatable even to players who might not have experienced the era?

"There is a nostalgia that is universal," Galvatron argues. "Which is: remember when you were a lost teen? Do you remember when you defined yourself by what you liked and you found your friends and community through the art you dug? That's good nostalgia. Going, 'Remember Tamagotchi?' That's bad nostalgia. There are maybe two or three jokes in the whole game that relate to being a different time. It's very minimal.

"It's about what the music invokes and those feelings of teenage freedom and betrayal – those things are universal. That's the nostalgia you aim for: the nostalgia of the heart, not of the era." 

Music is very much the true protagonist of Mixtape and where it shines. The whole project was built around the soundtrack. Music was the starting point for the gameplay and story, not the other way around.

"The Artful Escape [Beethoven & Dinosaur's previous release] was very much about being a creator and a musician, and the satellite aspects that revolve around your core medium. Mixtape is more about being a music fan, how music affects you on a day-to-day basis, and how these songs can become a huge part of your life. 

"The first thing we did was come at it from a listener's approach. I made a playlist with all my favourite songs throughout different eras, ending at around 1996. We started laying them out, of course, like a mixtape. It's an art of arrangement. Meaning changes depending on how you arrange it. You can have all these different [artists] from different eras and you can find this emotional throughline that connects them all together. We would rearrange it and it would tell us one thing, and then do a different arrangement and it would have a different narrative…

"Pacing was such a big part of The Artful Escape – because you run across left or right for five hours, so you have to pace it correctly. We learned everything about pacing from The Artful Escape, and then took it into how we did Mixtape. We made what we called a 'horizontal slice', which is a real shitty version of the entire game instead of a good version of a very small part of the game. We pitched that to Annapurna, and they were into it."

Building from there, every song needed something different: the game isn't just a mixtape of music, Galvatron says, but also a mixtape of mechanics and story moments. 

"Having an unhealthy love for the songs is what drives you," he says about the challenges of the approach. "Devo gives you 'That's Good', or Roxy Music gives you 'More Than This'; what a privilege to get handed this Fabergé egg. Then [you have to] add on top of the Fabergé… The pressure is there."

The music being the centerpiece of the project made it easier to actually secure song licences, Galvatron says. He doesn't share specific figures, but says the tracks were made available to the studio "very fairly."

"That's the only reason we got away with having 28 licensed songs on the game: all the bands and artists wanted to be part of it. That's the only way. We are privileged to get these religious objects handed down to us." 

When a story relies so heavily on its soundtrack, though, how do you address the challenge of keeping an audience engaged that might not already have a relationship with the music?

"We have this theory that the game will tell you what it means," he says. "If you have a team that can all hear the same thing coming from the game, you will know where things like pacing or mechanics are wrong. What you want is to convey the emotional state of the character into the medium, into the mechanics.

"There are so many fabulous games about overcoming hardship, but for us, it's: how do you show betrayal? How do you show teenage freedom? How do you convey the mental state of the protagonist into the medium of videogames? That's what's fun for us."

We loop back to Galvatron's vision for the studio, his definition of success. The Artful Escape was Beethoven & Dinosaur's first game; Galvatron says that maintaining institutional knowledge from project to project is crucial to how he envisions the studio. It grew to 12 people for Mixtape, and he sees it remaining at around that level.

"Every time I talk to people who are industry veterans, everyone always says 15 is the best amount of people. I've heard that from far and wide, and I think that's where I would like to stay – getting to, every three or four years, make a medium-sized game that can push the envelope in some way, and be interesting. Our goal would be for people to be: 'This feels like a Beethoven & Dinosaur game,' and just have a catalogue that, even though it is varied, has a voice… just like a mixtape.

"All I want is to be able to make another one and keep the band together. That's my goal. No one here cares about money. We just make games and make art. If we can have people give us enough money to do one more, I'll say that each time."

For 16 years, Bartosz Skwarczek built G2A without any external investment. The Warsaw-born founder grew the platform from a small online game store into, according to the company's PR, "the world's largest digital entertainment marketplace," with nearly $400 million in gross merchandise value and 35 million users across 180 countries, entirely on its own terms.

So when Skwarczek announced this month that G2A had taken its first outside investment, from Krzysztof Krawczyk, the former head of CVC Capital Partners' Warsaw office, the question of timing seems most obvious.

"We've been approached by private equity funds, growth funds, many times in the past," Skwarczek tells Knowledge.

"We never wanted to dilute too early. And we believe that being in control of the business is very important, because then you can control the direction, you can control what's most important: the approach to the clients, the buyers, the sellers, the partners."

The answer to 'why now', he says, is simple: "We believe G2A has got to the moment that we are ready to institutionalise the business."

That institutionalisation is being pursued carefully. Skwarczek is explicit about what he did not want. "Private equity at this stage most often requires to take over the majority of the business. That is something we would like to avoid, because we very much believe in G2A. We've been building it for 16 years, and we very much believe that the next 16 years is ahead of us [under our ownership]."

Krawczyk's minority stake is structured accordingly: not a fund investment with an exit horizon attached, but a personal commitment from a man Skwarczek has known since 2018.

The right human

Krawczyk's CV is formidable. He's spent nearly three decades in Central and Eastern European private equity, the past decade of it building CVC's Polish operation into one of the most active in the region. His portfolio included board roles across telecoms, media, logistics and healthcare. More recently, he oversaw the transformation of Żabka, a Polish convenience-store chain, into a technology-enabled retail platform that IPO'd at a $5 billion valuation.

None of which is digital marketplace experience, but Skwarczek smiles broadly when we note it. When evaluating a business partner, he says, professional credentials come second to something harder to measure.

"The first thing is: who is this person? Who are they as a human being? Values, understanding of culture – is he a good human being? This comes from the long-term game. I am always a fan of that. It has nothing in common with money, nothing in common with how much you can deliver. It is about who you really are."

He adds: "Even though Krzysztof hasn't built any marketplace, he is one of the most successful private-equity heads in this part of Europe. He knows not only the playbook of a top-five private equity firm, but he did it personally. For over 20 years he's been building companies, investing, getting inside and helping CEOs and executive boards properly get a company to the next level."

Crucially, Krawczyk's investment does not come with the typical PE clock attached.

"Most often, private equity aims for a four- or five-year investment horizon, and this is too short to really build the value of a company," Skwarczek says. "I wanted a partner that can join to build something very special within the next seven to ten years. Not somebody looking for a quick exit."

Something more

G2A is now targeting acquisitions, businesses valued between $5 million and $350 million, with a particular focus on Asia and non-gaming digital categories. G2A is no longer just about games.

In 2022, the company undertook a 12-week strategy evaluation with Bain & Company. The conclusion was blunt: abandon physical products entirely while expanding beyond games.

"Bain told us: look, you have to forget about physical – you have no rights to win. But in digital, you are a top-two, top-three company in the world. Stay focused on digital, but enlarge your portfolio."

G2A acted immediately. Today, games account for about 60 per cent of its business, with software, gift cards, subscriptions and educational content making up the remaining 40 per cent – and growing.

Asked whether this means G2A is becoming something different, Skwarczek answers: "Not something different. Something more."

G2A is a now a single platform through which users can access digital content in general – games, Netflix subscriptions, Spotify, software, elearning – without switching between services.

"Why go to so many different platforms if you have one which you already trust, which is already giving you a good experience, where you have a loyalty programme, where you can get something extra for every purchase?"

The diversification doesn't mean abandoning G2A's roots, however. For publishers and developers, Skwarczek frames the expansion as additive rather than competitive.

"Publishers want to sell games and create communities," he says. "G2A is bringing the clients. We are paying for the marketing, we are paying for acquiring users."

He describes a snowball effect. As G2A brings in users through non-gaming verticals, they become potential customers for gaming content: "We can bring more customers than publishers can get on their own." He points to partnerships with PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and others, which have approached G2A specifically to access its game-oriented userbase. "The more brands like this we have, the more clients and gamers we can bring to the gaming industry."

On AI, Skwarczek is committed but measured. G2A has operated an AI-powered anti-fraud system – internally named Shodan – since 2017, and uses machine learning across customer service, marketing, UX and compliance. Fully agentic AI, the kind where autonomous systems transact on behalf of users, is a future the company is preparing for rather than claiming.

"We're testing, but haven't yet implemented agents on the client front," he says. "We’re learning how to do it in the best way, because it must work perfectly. AI agents today are not perfect yet. We don't want to be too rash."

Some forecasts suggest agent-to-agent ecommerce could account for a quarter of all transactions by 2030. Skwarczek isn't betting the business on that timeline, but he isn't ignoring it either.

"We are on the forefront, but also being very cautious about not rushing too much."

Clearing the record

While G2A's position, growth and expansion are all exciting, any conversation with this company eventually arrives at its history. The platform has been an industry flashpoint at times, accused of enabling the resale of fraudulently obtained keys and abitrage, the act of profiteering by exploiting regional price differences. Skwarczek assures that much has been done to allay any current fears.

The shift, he says, began with a structural decision to move away completely from C2C: "We decided this would be a B2C marketplace only, where only business-verified sellers can sell.

"And when I say verified, I really mean it. We created probably the most strict process: 48 distinct checks before anybody can start selling on G2A, including verification of the ultimate beneficial owner of the company."

G2A now applies multi-layered AML screening, prohibited jurisdiction checks, and its own risk assessment framework. It has been audited by Deloitte for over a decade.

On the regional arbitrage question, Skwarczek argues the problem has been structurally resolved by the publishers themselves.

"Publishers now control every market, thanks to digitalisation. If they say a key is only for Germany, you will see it in red letters at our marketplace. If they say it's for the European Union, you cannot buy it in another country."

"Sometimes I see journalists or YouTube interviews referring to things that were valid ten years ago. And I'm saying, 'Oh my God, another person who doesn't understanding the whole shift that happened with digital."

The ambition now is a business that hits $1 billion in GMV within a few years, a heady aim powered by organic growth, new digital categories, an acquisition strategy backed by Krawczyk's institutional network, and what Skwarczek describes as strong appetite from banking partners who have watched G2A's decade of consistent, profitable growth.

"We're not doing 100 per cent growth in a year," he says, "but we are double digit, year after year, very consistently. This is what we do."

SOCIAL COMMENTARY

Highlights from industry chat channels

"We built this thing under the assumption that it would solve a lot of problems, and now we really need someone to solve a problem with it or we're going to look super-stupid."

'This thing' is generative AI, and by 'we', Dr Mike Cook, AI researcher at London's King's College, means the technology industry as a whole. What does the rise of machine-authored content mean for the future of videogame production? What might be the benefits of so-called 'synthetic creativity'? And how do we square such developments with ethical considerations?  

Edge 424, out now, is a special edition centred on artificial intelligence throughout the world of games in 2026. Alongside our cover story, AI also features as a key theme among several new and forthcoming releases discussed this month, such as Prove You're Human, D-topia, Saros, Pragmata and Replaced, while designer Jordan Thomas (BioShock 2, The Magic Circle) shares his views on gen-AI in our new Profile slot.  

Elsewhere, we tell the story behind the creation of Mewgenics, talk to Jenova Chen about games as art on the occasion of Thatgamecompany's 20th anniversary, and revisit GTA: Vice City in Time Extend. This month's Hype lineup features forthcoming releases such as Orbitals, Blighted and All Will Rise, while games including Mixtape, Vampire Crawlers and Tides Of Tomorrow arrive for review. 

In the magazine's iteration of Knowledge, we consider why so many videogames worship at the altar of Warhammer, and also talk to some of the people driving Scotland's new wave of game production. Finally, on a lighter note, Steven Poole takes a look at Eva Illouz's Emotional Technologies: How Techno-Capitalism Exploits Our Subjectivity.

Edge 424 is available to buy here, and right now you can also subscribe to the magazine for just £/$5 for your first three issues.

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