As the Director of Product Development for P4 One and former CEO of Snowtrack, GDC 2025 felt like a full-circle moment, both professionally and personally.
Over the past two years, the Snowtrack team (now P4 One), navigated an acquisition, survived a project shutdown during the Hollywood strikes, and debuted a new version control client inside the Perforce portfolio. GDC was a chance to reflect on how far we’ve come and where we’re headed next.
P4 One's Story: From Startup to Perforce
Back in 2021, Sebastian Rath, a software engineer at Maxon (the company behind Cinema 4D, ZBrush, and other creative tools), moved on from his role to build something he felt was missing in the industry – an intuitive, local version control tool designed for artists and creators. A couple of blocks west, Daniel Lanner (Sebastian’s former Maxon colleague) was working on an in-game cinematic pipeline tool at Ubisoft's flagship studio in Montréal's Plateau. Daniel’s background in visual effects and intrigue for Sebastian's initial concept, compelled him to jump on board. Snowtrack was born.
I met Sebastian and Daniel in 2022 while working at a virtual production company where I was tasked with creating a similar tool. During my competitive analysis, I discovered that Snowtrack already did much of what we were trying to build. Sebastian and Daniel impressed me immediately, and after reaching out to learn more, I wanted to bring them onto our team.
What followed was several months of relationship building, technical evaluation, and negotiation that ultimately led to my former company’s acquisition of Snowtrack. With the acquisition complete we got to work on all the ideas we had been talking about during negotiations. But nine months later, the Hollywood actors' and writers' strikes affected the entire industry, and we had to adapt our approach and shift our resources with the changing market, which then led us to Perforce.
Finding A Place at Perforce
Perforce was on a mission to revolutionize their version control tools for creative teams. They'd been listening to their customers in the media and entertainment space and knew many game studios and VFX houses were struggling to get their art teams to adopt version control tools that were labeled either too complex or too simplified. Perforce saw an opportunity to bridge that gap.
Perforce not only shared our vision and saw the potential of our future direction, but they already had a secure, scalable version control system, and a strong customer base that we could deploy it from. With a shared background in media and entertainment, Sebastian, Daniel, and I knew firsthand how transformative version control could be for creative workflows. Without version control, we saw artists lose days of work to accidental overwrites and get accustomed to the manual and time-consuming tracking of file versions with confusing ad-hoc naming conventions. In the M&E space, or really any high-tech industry today, a single project often involves thousands of assets and dozens of collaborators.
Version control isn't just convenient—it's essential. It gives designers a sandbox for experimentation, without the worry of losing work. It lets teams collaborate across locations, and lets studios expand the reach of their IP. The clear history of every creative decision from pre- to post-production can not only enable a company to maintain its releases but also consider their re-use and re-distribution for projects ahead.
The conversations with the Perforce team clicked from day one. We weren't just pitching our technology – we were brainstorming what we could build together.
Joining Perforce completely changed and expanded what we can deliver to artists, developers, designers, creators, and beyond. What started as an intuitive tool built for individual artists and designers, has now expanded into a solution robust enough for entire studios.
Demoing P4 One at GDC: An Insider's Perspective
GDC has always been a major event for Perforce. Their roots and long history of supporting game development made it the perfect place to introduce what is now known as P4 One to the community.
More about the Rebrand > Re-Introducing P4: A Name Rooted in History and a Platform for the Future
I knew this moment wasn’t going to be just about showcasing what we developed. It was going to be a chance to engage directly with our prospective users and get some honest feedback.
The feedback and response was great. People were not only genuinely excited about our graphics-forward approach, they could see what it would let them accomplish in their workflow. Many commented that P4 One was easy enough for them to understand, eliminating the hassle of constantly switching between projects and workspaces just to get work done.
What's Next? The Future of Game Development
We're entering an era where game dev tools will become increasingly specialized while also becoming more interconnected. The days of one-size-fits-all solutions are far behind us. I believe the industry will move toward integrated ecosystems where tools will excel at specific tasks while sharing data across platforms. And I don’t see this evolution as merely a possibility. I think it is the inevitable direction of our industry.
Creating high-quality game content is expensive and time-consuming. Studios have a clear need to do more with existing assets. Studios need systems that allow them to leverage the brands and franchises they've already built, expanding their reach across platforms and media formats.
Teams no longer have the margin to struggle with assets scattered across different systems or locked in legacy formats. When everything lives in a centralized system like P4, it’s easier to bring characters from hit games into mobile spin-offs or repurpose environment assets for sequels. And with P4 One, we want to bring those assets to your local machine, for iterating and building upon in a modern and intuitive interface that speaks the language of the artist.
This potential to connect creative legacy with future innovation is what I’m particularly excited about with P4 and P4 One. And I can’t wait to start exploring and building it with you.
Get Started with P4
While you’re waiting for P4 One, get started learning more about P4.
- P4 Beginner’s Guide on YouTube
- Re-Introducing P4: A Name Rooted in History and a Platform for the Future
- Unlock Free Version Control