Journey maker thatgamecompany announces thatgamepublisher

Nicole Carpenter,Columnist,Game Developer

August 25, 2026

2 Min ReadVia thatgamecompany

Sky: Children of the Light and Journey developer thatgamecompany announced Tuesday it's getting into publishing. The new publishing department, called thatgamepublisher, is investing profit from Sky: Children of Light into publishing "emotionally ambitious games," according to a report from GamesIndustry.biz.

Thatgamecompany co-founder Jenova Chen told GamesIndustry.biz that the publishing arm has signed "a couple" games so far. None of them have been released just yet.

"The typical genre or platform restrictions would not apply to us," SJ Xue, who leads the publishing company, told GamesIndustry.biz. "We are open to teams of any size, projects at any stage, and ideas still being prototyped. What matters is not the label, genre, scale, or format, but whether the game reaches for meaningful emotional territory and uses interactivity to take players there."

Xue added thatgamepublisher is open to games of varying scales and budgets—"everyone from solo developers with immense creativity to larger teams with AA-level budgets." Terms of the deals made will vary, he told GamesIndustry.biz. Thatgamepublisher is a "full-service publisher," according to the report, including funding as well as marketing, community, and strategy services. That's in contrast to several other indie-led publishing funds, like Among Us maker Innersloth's Outersloth fund and Peak developer Landfall's Evil Landfall, which both operate strictly as funds, with no promises made for other services.

Thatgamecompany is the latest in a wave of indie developers who are spreading the wealth; over the past several years, makers of mega-popular games like Among Us, Peak, and Palworld, and others have started different funding initiatives to invest the profits from their games into other indie studios and makers.

"This is a very common pattern because number one, successful indie games usually are on a shoestring, and if the game becomes very successful, suddenly you have an overflow of cash," Chen told GamesIndustry.biz. "But then, you are a small team [making] games, you don't want to suddenly become a thousands of people company, right? And then you can't really spend the money, so with additional money, where can you invest? You want to invest in something you understand, something you really are familiar with. So investing into other indie games is a natural choice for everyone, and that's why many indie companies are doing that."

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About the Author

Nicole Carpenter

Columnist, Game Developer

Nicole Carpenter is a veteran reporter who has been covering the video game industry for over a decade.

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