Edward Valiente

Ed Valiente joined the industry straight from university in 1997, having wasted most of his Social & Political Sciences degree playing Mario Kart. His first role was as a certification tester at Sony QA in Liverpool where he subsequently became the first European Localisation Coordinator working. In 1999 he moved to Squaresoft to establish their European QA and Localisation department. He was Microsoft EMEA Game Evaluation Manager for the original Xbox launch and then moved in 2013 to Namco to become a Product Manager working on series such as Tekken, SoulCalibur, Ridge Racer, Ace Combat, Time Crisis, Tales of and Katamari. In 2006 he moved to Helsinki and worked at Rovio as Sales & Marketing Director in the pre-Angry Birds days but he didn’t enjoy mobile games so took a sabbatical and spent 18 months DJing and promoting clubs.

In 2010

he got the opportunity to join Nintendo of Europe’s Business Development and Account Management team in Germany where he spent 8 years working with everyone from AAA publishers to micro studios and was involved in developer outreach for the Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and Switch launches.

In 2018

he moved to Gothenburg to help set up Thunderful’s publishing arm and manage Rising Star Games after its acquisition, before going freelance in August 2020. He currently spends half his time working for Thunderful as a consultant scouting for new titles and handling developer and platform relations and is enjoying his afternoons off with his 1-year old daughter.