Hero image: Summer Eternal key art. Image: Summer Eternal
Summer Eternal, the Zagreb studio working on the RPG Red Rooster, has opened the part of its ownership reserved for players. In a developer diary posted on 16 September, the studio says it is “giving away 5% of our studio to you, the Players”, through a new Players Non-Profit.
The way in is a purchase. Anyone who pre-ordered the Summer Eternal Anthology — currently the studio’s only product — can claim membership, and pre-orders close at 8pm CET on 25 September 2026. For Australian readers that deadline falls in the early hours of Saturday.
The 5% was promised in October 2024. Organiser Aleksandar Gavrilović’s Studio Architecture post splits the company, Summer Eternal d.d., four ways — 50% to a co-op of full-time creatives, 25% to a second co-op for other workers and freelancers, 20% to a company that holds investors, and the final 5% to a non-profit for “those who own our games”.
He is frank about the size of that last share. In his words, “Although 5% is a shy amount, it’s still powerful enough for the playerpool to summon a General Assembly to discuss a topic.”
According to the new post, members will be able to vote for representatives to the studio’s Annual Plenary, call a General Assembly, vote in polls on company and project strategy, and join an exclusive Discord channel with the core team. Over the longer term, the list adds previews of Red Rooster, shop discounts and a vote on how to spend 5% of the profits from its sales.
That last point is the unusual one. The players do not keep the money. Gavrilović writes that “the players do not extract profit for themselves, but they can choose where the organisation’s income is invested”, and the studio’s examples include independent passion projects, fan conferences and award ceremonies.
The model is FairShares, which Gavrilović says he has been “eyeing since 2022”, and the studio pitches the non-profit as “a step in the direction of mending the trust broken in this industry a thousand times over”. It is a very different answer to the question Double Fine’s Tim Schafer raised this week — when he said someone is being greedy somewhere in the industry.
What happens next is a test at scale. The system has so far been tested internally, and the studio says it will be “field tested with the thousands of people who pre-ordered” once the Anthology is out. Members sign up through the Players Non-Profit page.
Source: Summer Eternal – Launching the Players Non-Profit, Summer Eternal – Studio Architecture, Summer Eternal – Players Non-Profit