MIGS 2017 keynote: (left to right) Jason Della Rocca, Chad Moldenhauer, Maja Moldenhauer, and Jared Moldenhauer.
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Cuphead developers bet everything on a 1930s-cartoon-style game

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

Studio MDHR has sold an estimated 1.5 million copies of Cuphead for the PC and Xbox One since the challenging run-and-gun game debuted on September 29. It’s a surprise hit of the fall, made by a family-run company whose leaders mortgaged their homes to finish it.

Chad, Jared, and Maja Moldenhauer of Studio MDHR talked about making Cuphead and the reaction to it in the opening fireside chat at the MIGS 2017 game event in Montreal. The talk was moderated by Jason Della Rocca, former head of the International Game Developers Association. The talk in front of a crowded room of game developers was like the end of a years-long fairy tale — and struggle — that the Cuphead developers journeyed through as they finished their 1930s-style-cartoon inspired platform video game.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.