Journey Studio Thatgamecompany Launches Publishing Arm, Thatgamepublisher

Thatgamecompany, the studio behind Journey, Flower, Flow and Sky: Children of the Light, has launched a publishing arm called Thatgamepublisher.

The announcement came on 25 August 2026. Co-founder and CEO Jenova Chen said a "couple" of games have already been signed, though no titles, studios or release windows were disclosed (VGC).

A publisher in games handles the business side of bringing a title to market — funding, marketing, distribution and platform relationships — so that a development studio can focus on making the game. Thatgamepublisher will look to do that for independent creators, with a particular interest in what Chen called games exploring "new emotional frontiers."

Chen's reasoning is practical. Successful indie games, he said, usually run on shoestring budgets. When a small team suddenly finds itself with extra cash it cannot easily spend, putting that money behind other indie developers becomes a natural move. It is a pattern the studio knows from the inside: Thatgamecompany has spent nearly two decades building a reputation for quiet, emotionally driven experiences, and Chen is scheduled to speak about that 20-year history at the GamesBeat Summit 2026 (GamesBeat).

Chen also pointed to a shift in how games reach players. The distribution network in today's industry, he said, is effectively owned by the players themselves — people who act as influencers, sharing and recommending games through their own communities rather than through traditional retail or marketing channels. For a publisher whose catalogue is built on word-of-mouth favourites like Journey and Sky, that idea is less a theory than a description of how those games found their audiences in the first place.

The move follows a similar path taken by Pocketpair, the studio behind the breakout hit Palworld. Pocketpair announced its own publishing arm in 2025 after Palworld reached more than 32 million players in its first year (VGC).

For players, the immediate question is what those signed games turn out to be. For the broader indie landscape, it adds one more experienced operator to the list of studios turning publisher — a sign that the line between making games and getting them into players' hands is continuing to blur.