The argument was originally even more valid in the first year of the pandemic. Our thesis was win-win-win. The locations we preferred to fund folks to operate in won on 3 counts
* Cheaper
* Quality of Life (safety/healthcare/infrastructure/zero racial riots) compared to the US.
* Far less Covid numbers
The Delta variant has changed everything in the past few weeks. Some locations are better than others. The world is now split into two halves, those who have ample vaccine supply and hosptal beds (fortunately, the Netherlands fits the bill) even if Covid numbers have pushed some into Dark Red travel classifications and others like SE Asia and Australia where insufficient supply of vaccines and/or hospital beds are pulling them back into severe lockdowns. While some are "reopening" even as number spike, others are shutting down
We'd argue that the safest and luckiest folks right now are the ones that are able to be funded for at least a year, stay home and just work on their games and startups and this is a more important mission to achieve than ever. For both gamers and game developers this isn't a big deal :)
We've always recommended non-major cities and for now these are still relatively safe from Delta. Even as numbers rise, they are still far lower than typical tech metro countries for now. However we are backing teams and people first as opposed to whether they fit our arbitrage style of investing. We may have to raise a bigger fund to write bigger checks but ultimately end up doing less with it.
Perhaps by the time we start deploying this things will have improved. The old adage "be greedy when others are being fearful" have never been more true. If you have the luxury of being vaccinated first before travelling and you'll be focused on working once arriving, costs for things like long-term rental arrangments are even better and visas are still available.
Financially if this is the new normal until better quality vaccines and treatments become available, the bumper past year that gaming has had is only going to continue and may be a new normal for us all in the years to come.