Thatgamecompany has launched thatgamepublisher, a full-service indie game publishing arm built around emotionally ambitious games and funded by Sky profits.
Image: pocketgamer.biz
Thatgamecompany is becoming a publisher, but it has not named its first games yet
Thatgamecompany, the studio behind Flow, Flower, Journey, and Sky: Children of the Light, has launched thatgamepublisher, a new publishing arm aimed at supporting what the company describes as emotionally ambitious games. The strongest confirmed detail is also the source of the biggest question: co-founder Jenova Chen told GamesIndustry.biz that the label has already signed “a couple” of games, but those projects have not been announced, dated, priced, or tied to specific platforms.
That makes this a significant move with a deliberately soft outline. The Journey studio publisher is real, it has deals in place, and it is positioning itself around games that “move people through play,” as GamesIndustry.biz reported. But for players, developers, and the wider indie market, the useful reading starts in the gap between the announcement and the missing roster. Thatgamepublisher is not launching around a showcase trailer or a first slate. It is launching around a publishing philosophy.
That philosophy is unusually aligned with Thatgamecompany’s own identity. VGC identifies the studio by the same lineage that most players will recognize: Flow, Flower, Journey, and Sky: Children of the Light. Those games helped define a kind of indie prestige built on atmosphere, cooperation, wordless communication, and emotional pacing rather than genre spectacle. The new thatgamecompany publishing arm is now asking whether that sensibility can become a platform for other developers rather than a signature that belongs only to one studio.
Sky’s success changed the studio’s options
The business reason behind thatgamepublisher is unusually plain. Game Developer reported that profit from Sky: Children of the Light will support the initiative. GamesIndustry.biz added important context: Thatgamecompany was not in that position when Journey released in 2012. Chen previously told the outlet that making Journey almost bankrupted the studio and led to “everyone” being laid off.
That history changes the tone of the announcement. This is not a studio casually adding a label after one celebrated art game. It is a studio that has lived through the fragility of acclaimed indie development and is now using the success of Sky to invest outward. GamesIndustry.biz described Sky as “incredibly successful,” particularly in China, and noted that the game has also expanded into film.
Chen framed the move as part of a broader pattern among successful indie developers. “Successful indie games usually are on a shoestring, and if the game becomes very successful, suddenly you have an overflow of cash,” he told GamesIndustry.biz, in comments also cited by VGC and Game Developer. He added that a small team does not necessarily want to grow into a thousand-person company, so investing in other indie games becomes a natural use of money and expertise.
That is the financial logic underneath the warmer mission language. Sky created room for Thatgamecompany to do something other than scale itself up. Thatgamepublisher gives the studio a way to stay small, at least in development terms, while extending its taste, capital, and industry knowledge into other teams’ projects.
The label says genre, platform, and team size are not the gatekeepers
The most concrete guidance for developers comes from SJ Xue, who leads the publishing company. Xue told GamesIndustry.biz, as quoted by Game Developer, that “the typical genre or platform restrictions would not apply to us.” He said thatgamepublisher is open to teams of any size, projects at any stage, and even ideas that are still being prototyped.
That is a broad door, but it is not an empty one. Xue said the key question is whether a game “reaches for meaningful emotional territory and uses interactivity to take players there.” Game Developer also reported that the label is open to a range of scales and budgets, from solo developers with strong creative ideas to larger teams working with AA-level budgets. Deal terms will vary, according to Xue.
For a market crowded with survival crafting, cozy life sims, deckbuilders, horror, and extraction experiments, that wording is notable. Thatgamepublisher is not defining its taste by camera angle, combat model, budget bracket, or platform plan. It is defining taste through intent and craft. The practical test, based on Xue’s comments, is whether emotion is carried by play rather than attached as a theme after the mechanics are already fixed.
That matters for emotional narrative games because the category is often misunderstood as a purely writing-led space. The strongest games in this lane tend to make interaction carry the feeling: a repeated walk, a shared gesture, a missing jump, a cooperative ritual, a room arranged around memory. Thatgamecompany’s own catalog gives the label a clear reference point, but the public comments stop short of saying it only wants Journey-like games. The confirmed stance is wider: no stated genre or platform restrictions, with emotional interactivity as the filter.
This is a full-service publisher, not only an indie fund
Game Developer reported one distinction that could shape how thatgamepublisher functions in the indie game publishing market: it is described as a full-service publisher. According to the report, that includes funding as well as marketing, community, and strategy services.
That separates it from some of the other developer-led efforts that have appeared recently. Game Developer contrasted thatgamepublisher with Innersloth’s Outersloth and Landfall’s Evil Landfall, which it described as funds rather than publishers promising broader services. GamesIndustry.biz placed Thatgamecompany in the same larger trend as Innersloth, Phasmophobia developer Kinetic Games, Palworld maker Pocketpair, and Landfall Games, all of which have moved into publishing, funding, or related support after major indie success.
The service model is important because emotional narrative games often face a discovery problem as much as a funding problem. These projects can be harder to pitch in a single GIF than a physics gag, a flashy combat loop, or a high-pressure multiplayer clip. A publisher with marketing and community support can help translate the feel of a game without flattening it into a tagline. That is an interpretation of the model, not a confirmed promise of results, but it follows from the services Game Developer says the label will offer.
The open question is how selective and interventionist that support becomes. Full-service publishing can mean valuable production guidance, better launch planning, platform relationships, and community building. It can also mean more negotiation over scope, timing, positioning, and creative priorities. Xue’s statement that terms will vary is the only confirmed guidance on deal structure, so developers should treat the emotional mission as an invitation, not as a substitute for careful contract scrutiny.
Chen says players now control more of the distribution network
Chen’s explanation for why indie studios can become publishers is not only about cash. It is also about distribution. He told GamesIndustry.biz that when Journey released, the distribution network was owned by companies like PlayStation. Today, he argued, “the distribution network is owned by the players, who are influencers.” VGC also cited Chen’s point that audiences with specific tastes can become stronger distribution channels than traditional media or storefront visibility.
His example was bluntly contemporary: an audience that loves “friendslop games” may actively look for other games in that vein. The broader argument is that a successful indie can carry a community with enough reach to help other projects find their earliest audience. That is especially relevant for a studio like Thatgamecompany, whose reputation is tied to emotional resonance and social play rather than one easily cloned mechanic.
There is a tension here. Player-led discovery can be powerful, but it is uneven. Influencer attention often favors games that produce instant readable moments. Emotional games can spread through clips too, but many depend on duration, trust, and context. A Journey-like ascent, a quiet act of cooperation, or a slow shift in tone may not travel the same way as a chaotic multiplayer fail. Thatgamepublisher’s challenge will be to use modern community distribution without forcing delicate games into shapes built only for virality.
The label’s advantage is that Thatgamecompany understands the long-tail value of feeling. The studio’s best-known work has endured because players remember how it made them behave, not only what it showed them. If thatgamepublisher can identify projects with that kind of mechanical emotional core, its brand may help them reach players who already seek games outside the usual content grind.
For developers and players, the next useful details are still missing
For now, there are hard limits on what can be said. GamesIndustry.biz reported that a couple of games have been signed, but no names were shared. Game Developer said none of them have been released yet. The sources provide no launch windows, platforms, prices, storefront pages, trailers, ratings, or minimum requirements. There is also no public list of partner studios in the provided material.
For developers, the confirmed pitch is clear enough to evaluate initial fit. Thatgamepublisher is looking beyond fixed genre labels, team sizes, platforms, and project stages. It is open to prototypes and to budgets that range from solo-scale to AA-level, according to Xue’s comments to GamesIndustry.biz. It is offering full-service publishing, according to Game Developer, but deal terms will vary.
For players, the best approach is patience. The announcement signals that the studio behind Journey and Sky wants to back other creators working in emotional territory, but it does not yet identify the games that will carry that promise. Anyone hoping for a specific kind of project, such as a wordless adventure, a cooperative social game, a meditative platformer, or a narrative experiment, should wait for the first slate before assuming what the label’s taste will look like in practice.
The indie market already has several developer-led funding and publishing efforts, but thatgamepublisher enters with a sharper thematic center than most. Its test will be whether “emotionally ambitious” becomes a useful creative compass rather than a soft marketing phrase. The answer will come from the signed games themselves: how they play, how they ask players to connect, and whether Thatgamecompany can help small teams make fragile ideas easier to find without sanding away the qualities that made them worth publishing.