Thatgamecompany is getting into the publishing business.
The studio behind Journey and Sky: Children of the Light announced the launch of Thatgamepublisher (TGP), a new label aimed at backing what Thatgamecompany refers to as “emotionally ambitious” games, on Tuesday, Aug. 25.
The pitch for Thatgamepublisher is straightforward: full publisher resources — funding, production planning, platform and launch strategy, marketing, community support, and long-term IP development — aimed at developers using interactivity to explore what games can make players feel. The label draws on two decades of Thatgamecompany’s own experience building games around emotional impact rather than genre or mechanics first, and on lessons learned from operating Sky: Children of the Light as a live-service, cross-platform title for the past seven years, according to a press release.
“Those moments convinced us that games are capable of touching lives in profound ways,” said Thatgamecompany co-founder, chief executive officer, and creative director Jenova Chen in the release.
SJ Xue, Thatgamecompany’s vice president of growth and corporate development, is leading the company’s publishing initiative. In comments to GamesIndustry.biz, Xue framed the move as part of a broader pattern among successful indie studios: Once a hit game generates significant profit, that money often gets funneled into supporting other developers rather than sitting idle. Sky: Children of the Light, which has passed 300 million downloads since its 2019 launch and set a Guinness World Record for most users in a concert-themed virtual world, is providing the financial backing for TGP. Journey’s history is part of that story, too. The 2012 release nearly bankrupted the studio before finding a wide audience, and Thatgamecompany has pointed to that arc as informing how it thinks about risk in emotionally driven projects.
Chen has also argued that studios like his now have an advantage traditional publishers don’t: built-in audience reach. Successful indie games often carry their own distribution network through fan communities and influencers, meaning a publisher backed by one can offer developers exposure alongside capital.
Thatgamecompany says it’s already signed publishing deals with “a couple” of games, though it hasn’t named them or given a timeline for their release. The company is open working with teams of any size and projects at any stage of development, from solo developers to larger double-A-scale teams, with no restrictions on genre or platform.
The launch of Thatgamecompany’s publishing business places the company alongside a growing list of indie studios opening publishing or funding arms for other developers, including Among Us maker Innersloth’s Outersloth fund and Peak developer Landfall’s Evil Landfall. Unlike those funds, which operate primarily as capital with no additional services attached, Thatgamepublisher is positioning itself as a full-service publisher, promising hands-on support rather than just a check.
Thatgamecompany, founded in 2006 by Chen and Kellee Santiago, has built its reputation on a small but influential catalog — flOw, Flower, and Journey among them — with work now held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. TGP represents the studio’s first move into supporting games it didn’t make itself.