Funny thing is this was the second time Stewart Butterfield tried to build a massively multiplayer game and pivoted the company. The first one was Flickr!
Reminds me of my brother, who wanted to have a little toy car consolation price at the christmas fair, but kept winning the main prices. Parents were chatting with another couple, he came asked for a buck to play, dumped the main price into my fathers arms, this went on six-times, he was almost crying by the point my father said "enough" the arm full of Dresden stollen. Sometimes your glorious victory is the defeat of others. Good times.
In fact the gaming company had already failed. They shut down the product and laid off employees, and offered to return the remaining money to their investors. The investors instead said keep it and try building something else.
It wasn't a random pivot either. Real-time multiplayer gaming and real-time group chat share a lot of the same characteristics. Discord has the exact same origin story.
This is what first came to mind for me - which is unfortunate because Glitch was fun and very chill. Too bad fun doesn't necessarily mean successful for MMOs.
Basically a tool they built in-house, the company were going bust and they realised that the "tool" had some value and out popped Slack
https://review.firstround.com/From-0-to-1B-Slacks-Founder-Sh...