Thatgamecompany Marks 20 Years as Sky Passes 300 Million Downloads
The interview pairs the studio's 20th anniversary with its first narrative built around spoken and written language, a deliberate departure from the wordless games it has made for two decades.
Reporting from 1 source: 4Gamer.net.
thatgamecompany turned 20 in May 2026, and its live game Sky: Children of the Light has surpassed 300 million cumulative downloads as it enters its eighth year of operation. The studio launched a new in-game story, Dear Van Gogh, on July 17, based on real letters between Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo. Founder and CEO Jenova Chen discussed the milestone, the new content, and his views on AI in a recent interview.
thatgamecompany turned 20 in May, and its founder and CEO Jenova Chen sat for a wide-ranging interview that touched on the studio's founding goals, the new Dear Van Gogh content, and the threat he sees in AI. The interview is the first conducted with him online, after several in-person meetings dating back to Tokyo Game Show 2019.
Dear Van Gogh launched in Sky on July 17. It is a roughly 90-minute story in which players deliver letters between Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo, drawn from the real correspondence between the two. The studio, known for wordless games like flOw and Journey, is handling language head-on for the first time in this piece.
Chen also spoke about the dark side of human nature he has faced while operating a world of 300 million players, and his feeling that handmade games might become the future's Ghibli.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.