New indie label is aiming for a highly curated, distinct catalogue rather than a generalist approach of signing "whatever they think will sell"
A team of industry veterans from Critical Reflex, Gaijin Entertainment, and Nozomu Games has established the indie label Inner Pocket Publishing.
Inner Pocket's core team consists of four co-founders: CEO Artem Oleinik from Gaijin Entertainment; head of marketing Yaroslav Kadyshev, formerly of Critical Reflex; and Nozomu Games co-founders Ivan Bushmin and Eva Manuilovich, serving as head of publishing and art director, respectively.
Inner Pocket partnered with Nozomu Games to launch Burn With Me, an occult deck-burner where players sacrifice cards to gain powers, on PC. Other Inner Pocket titles include Hardlane Studio's Outcast Tales, Justcamh's Nonolith, and Jamwitch's The Archives of Trevosa.
The company is working with several developers on early-stage projects and has planned its line-up for the next six months. It seeks smaller games or projects near completion that need little or no additional development funding.
Inner Pocket is self-funded by its four founders and can currently invest up to $75,000 per project. "We started lean and intend to stay that way, so we're not planning to grow the team or sign too many games at once," Kadyshev tells GamesIndustry.biz. "We're a very small team with big ideas. Very indie."
Kadyshev believes the traditional generalist publisher model is less sustainable, so Inner Pocket is adopting a hybrid publisher-as-curator approach.
Inner Pocket is taking a page out of Pantaloon's book, which transitioned from being a newsletter recommending indie titles to becoming a publisher last year. The two companies have exchanged ideas since Inner Pocket's formation.
"What they're building is very close to us," says Kadyshev. "We do want to borrow some good practices, especially curation on Steam. I really like that Pantaloon reviews games it doesn't publish and invites other publishers into its newsletter. That kind of cross-publisher collaboration beyond routine bundles fits our values. Personally, I'd like to see more of it across the board."
While Pantaloon could be considered a direct competitor, Kadyshev disagrees. "I don't think we have one direct competitor in that sense," he says.
Kadyshev points to research from Synthetic Domain showing that there are roughly 500 active publishers on Steam, "once you exclude very small and new brands like us, as well as publishers that haven't released anything since 2024. With 18,000 to 19,000 new games coming to Steam every year, 500 publishers doesn't actually feel like a crowded field. If anything, the more publishers there are, the more each one is pushed to develop a distinct taste, niche, and way of working rather than compete head-on."
Kadyshev explains that the publisher-as-curator concept developed during his time as head of marketing at Critical Reflex.
"Companies like Critical Reflex and Hooded Horse have a clear idea of the games they publish," he says, unlike the "traditional generalist publisher model [which] is becoming harder to sustain."
"Publishers often sign whatever they think will sell, so their catalogues end up spanning unrelated genres and audiences. For the marketing team, that means learning how to sell every new game from scratch. For players, the publisher's name stops meaning much because it could be attached to anything."
"[Critical Reflex and Hooded Horse] have a clear idea of the games they publish. That lets them refine the tools and workflows instead of rebuilding everything for each release. They deepen relationships with content creators, and become brands players recognise. Many people can't tell you who published their favourite game, and we want to work with the same audience from day one, so they know who we are and what to expect from us."
