Josef Fares vows to never take Hazelight public

Josef Fares, the CEO and founder of developer Hazelight, has said that he will never take his company public.

Speaking to The Games Business, the development veteran said that he did not want to have to consider metrics such as a stock price when making games.

“I will never put Hazelight on the [stock] market,” he tells us. “Because you have to make stupid decisions to make the financials [go up]. That I don’t like. That doesn’t make sense. Then we lean too much on the business side.”

Fares cites the Friend Pass – which allowed two people to play Hazelight’s games online if only one of them owns the title – as a good example of the creative and commercial aspects

of game development working hand-in-hand.

“I felt that if you are playing together on a couch, you shouldn’t pay extra if you’re playing online with someone,” he said.

“That didn’t make sense. So, we came up with the Friends Pass, and that in itself became good for business. It started from a creative decision and then became a business thing.”

“Every decision, every single decision, taken by Hazelight will be based on what we feel is great for the game. We’re not going through data thinking what will sell or not sell. That’s not how we do it. I’m not saying that the business is not important. It’s important to combine them together. If you lean in too much on either side, either too much on creativity or too much on business, it’s going to be bad for the game.”

Fares also expressed his concern that major publishers will look at the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and decide that mid-tier titles are the future of the industry.

“You do hear, after the success of things like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, that the AA games are taking over. But I would not be able to live without a AAA title,” he said.

“I really want to play the blockbuster games. You can’t do GTA for $10 million. We need both. It’s important not to get stuck in ideas, like AA is a new thing, or indie is a new thing, or ‘blah, blah, blah’ is a new thing. We need the diversity. I hope that publishers don’t just look at a game like Expedition, which has been super successful, and think, ‘oh, AA is a new thing. Let’s only do that.’ I don’t believe in that. You had a huge amount of AA games that came this year, which nobody cared about. Let’s remember that.”

Hazelight released the co-op romp Split Fiction in March 2025; within 48 hours, the game had sold one million copies before hitting two million units in its first week.