Factorio has Silicon Valley tycoons like Elon Musk under its spell, and one $7 billion CEO is letting employees expense the game

Tobias Lutke, founder and chief executive officer of Shopify Inc., at the Hope Global Forums annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2023. The meeting includes over 5,200 delegates representing 40 countries aiming to reimagine the global economy so the benefits and opportunities of free enterprise are extended to everyone. — (Image credit: Dustin Chambers/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The bourgeoisie is an eternal mystery. What do they get up to up there, in their shiny high-rise towers with their millions and billions of dollars? What schemes do they hatch? What frontiers do they plot to plunder? What proud, arrogant conspiracies swirl in the penthouses and the boardrooms?

Oh, they're just playing Factorio.

So says the Financial Times, which is exactly who you'd expect to know these things, in today's article about the stranglehold the factory management sim has over Silicon Valley and its execs. Among the names dropped are OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, Elon Musk, and Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobias Lütke, who might be the most ardent fan of the entire California upper crust.

Lütke reckons the game makes valuable training of Shopify workers. So much so that he apparently lets them expense their copies of the game. "Not all video games are created equal," Lütke told the Invest Like The Best podcast a few years back, but "Factorio is one of those where I straight up say, it's the one video game that everyone at Shopify can expense because it's just bound to be good for Shopify if people play Factorio for a little while.

"Because part of Shopify is building warehouses and fulfilling products for our customers," said Lütke. "We are building global supply chains, which is six networks. And Factorio is kind of something that makes a game out of that kind of thinking."

Per Lütke, games like Factorio give you a chance to practise skills—logistics, optimisation, escaping planet Earth—that only come up "rarely" in your actual real-life. "Doing that will change your mind, and your brain, and help you be prepared for situations you could never predict ahead of time." Which sounds like a great excuse to get the boss to fork over $35 for Space Age. A bit later on in the episode he also shouts at StarCraft as a good teaching tool for tech workers, for those instances where your company has to acquire more minerals.

I'll be honest, I can't really point to any particular instance in my life where videogame experience has tangibly aided me in real life, but I think it's also fair to say that I've grown up so immersed in them that I don't really have the frame of reference necessary to notice when a talent I developed through play is giving me a boost. I do know, however, that I think more employers should expense your game purchases. So next time you see your boss, mention that the guy worth $7 billion is doing it.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.