Former members of Gaijin Entertainment, Critical Reflex, and Nozomu Games have started their own publishing company
It's called Inner Pocket.
Artem Oleynik, who has worked at Gaijin Entertainment for over ten years, became the CEO of Inner Pocket. Besides him, the executive team includes:
- Head of Marketing Yaroslav Kadychev — who has held a similar position at Critical Reflex for the last four years and previously worked at HeroCraft and Stunlock Studios;
- Head of Publishing Ivan Bushmin — co-founder of indie studio Nozomu Games and senior software engineer at Magazino;
- Art Director Eva Manuilovich — co-founder of indie studio Nozomu Games, previously also working as a data analyst at Yandex, Ozon, and several other companies.
The new publisher decided to focus on supporting small indie games, particularly those "self-sufficient" titles that tell a complete story and are interesting to explore. At the same time, the genre is secondary for the company.
"Often, we call such games 'games for introverts.' These are calm projects requiring concentration that you can fully immerse yourself in alone, but after completing them, you want to discuss them, share impressions, or replay them with someone. Like a good book, they are usually discovered in solitude, but become even more valuable through subsequent conversations and reflections," states the website of Inner Pocket.
The terms of collaboration with Inner Pocket are not publicly disclosed. As the company explains, the services it offers will depend on the game itself, but in general, it is ready to assist studios with marketing, localization, trailer production, testing, and many other things, even setting up a Steam page. Additionally, Inner Pocket can provide funding to complete game development — according to the publisher's estimates, most suitable projects will require less than $75,000 for this.
Inner Pocket has already signed its first publishing contracts. Its debut games will be Burn With Me by Nozomu Games, Nonolith by justcamh, The Archives of Trevosa by jamwitch, and Outcast Tales by Hardlane Studio. It is expected that all of them will be released within half a year.