Red5 has been making some impressive additions to their development staff.
Regarding equity, I doubt most new hires would be getting substantial percentages, and it doesn't help that early employees at most game studios will never get rich from stock holdings. Some of this stems from the way the game business generally operates (milestone system) where developers often don't see royalties until their publishers cover their own costs. Not to mention that the MMO category is severely crowded and extremely high risk...web startups can put out a beta in 1-2 months and user test the heck out of it whereas MMO developers basically don't get any resolution until they sink $10-30 million upfront into a project. Additionally, unless Red5 develops some killer intellectual property, studio acquisitions usually happen at the 30-50 person headcount for $5-15 million.
However, it is interesting to note that Red5 is backed by Benchmark Capital. I'm guessing Bill Gurley as he seems to be partial to interactive entertainment.
Regarding equity, I doubt most new hires would be getting substantial percentages, and it doesn't help that early employees at most game studios will never get rich from stock holdings. Some of this stems from the way the game business generally operates (milestone system) where developers often don't see royalties until their publishers cover their own costs. Not to mention that the MMO category is severely crowded and extremely high risk...web startups can put out a beta in 1-2 months and user test the heck out of it whereas MMO developers basically don't get any resolution until they sink $10-30 million upfront into a project. Additionally, unless Red5 develops some killer intellectual property, studio acquisitions usually happen at the 30-50 person headcount for $5-15 million.
The Golden Ticket: http://www.red5studios.com/about/goldenticket