Coldwild Games: 9 Years An An Indie Developer

Hi! My name is Vladimir, I'm the owner of Coldwild Games studio. I went indie in 2016, started working as two people studio with self-made and self-published games, grew to seven people in 2021, then scaled everything down. Here's my summary of 2024:

The summary

26th of Jan marked nine years as an indie developer. As of now, things have changed. I did not close the studio entirely, but having seven people was definitely unsustainable. Six months before release (November 2023), I cut my salary by 80% and got a contracting job. Two people were let go after Stories from the Outbreak release. The game did alright by typical indie game standards with around 5000 copies sold on Steam up to this day, but the budget was overblown as I went all-out: making a game with a seven person team for two years was not sustainable. We had 30000 wishlists (some of them after next fest, some of them after early access launch), but they did not convert well on full release, as opposed to other of our previous games.

The steam keys

By mid summer of 2024 it was clear that we weren’t going bankrupt and we had a chance to make something different, so I started looking for a way to bring someone who still has the drive and the vision to do things, leaving me and the studio manager in charge of production / work for hire / legal / accounting processes. I also thought that maybe I can keep the 5 person team and I needed an extra money infusion for that.I’ve reached Humble choice and in general they were ready to consider Stories from the Outbreak, but everything depended on Valve giving the Steam keys. The policy changed in 2023.

I’m not cynical about it, but I understand what it is: it’s a purely transactional relationship. Still, Coldwild Games made more than $1 mil revenue on Steam over the time of its existence. I thought maybe it would be beneficial if they could give us the keys like they did for humble games before and we would try our hand at making something that we were good at. I was wrong and I accept it. Heed it more as a warning: for some of the developers, extra income from Humble was a valid revenue source. This is not going to be the case right now unless your game is already very successful.

Screenshot from the support ticket. Take it as you will.

Taking a step back

• Coldwild games currently have 4 part-time employees. We’re helping publish some local games that we like, but not working on the projects of our own.
• I am still considering whether I want to give it a go with one more studio project, sell it altogether or just take a step back: the passive income is around a couple thousand per month, which is good. The IP of Merchant of the Skies and Luna’s Fishing Garden (100k+ and 30k+ copies sold) also opens up some space for further success, as long as one has the vision. The artists, which is the strongest side of the studio, are still with us. I’m also very confident in my accountant / legal person and he does things really responsibly.

My own life

In September 2024, I got a different job. I’m back to software development. I can honestly say that I enjoy it and five months in, there hasn’t been a day when I wanted to skip work or not go to the office. I have a choice to work from home, I just choose to not work remotely. I love going on a morning tram and reading a book, visiting a public swimming pool before walking to the office for 20 min and starting my workday. I enjoy my routine. I love my newfound stability which I lacked for some time.

Almost four years later, I don’t consider scaling the studio up a mistake, but more like a valuable lesson to understand my limits and where I am in life. I enjoyed making smaller games that brought me a level of success to sustain myself. I always wanted to make something on a larger scale, so scaling up was the right step in the mindset I had at that moment. Looking back now, upping the ante is not the best idea unless you treat it as a business and can see exponential value increase. In the end, it put me under a lot of pressure to maintain the stability of other people and diverted from the process itself. Losing the drive to make games also does not help: had I been doing this with 1 or 2 other people, parting ways would be easier. But when a group of people depends on your business, the stakes go higher and I did not feel like I could just quit, even if I considered it a year or two ago.

There are good sides of this too: I’m glad we are able to help some local devs to find courage to publish their games. It does give a studio more of an “indie bookstore” vibe. I’m still pretty selective of developers I want to support, and it makes me happy that we’re able to find such people here, in Latvia.

I am still inspired by good games and I’ve been enjoying well-produced games like V Rising or playing Hunt:Showdown with my colleagues. I am not writing off game making entirely. I’m just staying calm and seeing where my journey will take me next.

Let’s see what I’ll have to say in a year. AMA if you want.