The days of the big deal are dead – hybrid funding stacks are the future | Opinion

Tim Browne is CPO and co-founder of the video game funding initiative Bright Gambit. Until 2024, he was a creative director at Avalanche Studios Group, and prior to that he held positions at King, Ubisoft, and Codemasters.

Game studios are told there’s more money in games than ever. At least this is what I hear at pretty much every conference, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Yet for many developers, especially indies, 2025’s funding landscape felt pretty barren. Grants are getting harder to secure, but publishers are far more selective. Platform deals are there, but the competition is even more fierce, and visibility on storefronts continues to shrink for anyone without an existing hit. The uncomfortable truth is that the industry’s old mental model of “land one big deal and you’re going to be safe” no longer holds.

What has changed is not just who holds the purse strings, but how fragile a studio becomes when it pins its survival on a single source of money. A solitary grant, a single generous publisher contract, or a splashy platform deal can absolutely transform a project’s prospects, but it rarely secures the long-term health of a company. In a market this volatile, betting the studio on one relationship is less a strategy and more a gamble, and developers should know better than most how those usually end.

No silver bullets

For years, the dominant fantasy for indie development looked simple and seductive. Sign a generous publishing contract, land a platform deal, or get a large grant, and your studio’s financial anxiety would disappear (or at the very least be postponed until the game gets delayed multiple times). That story was strengthened by real successes, projects whose lives were changed by a single big cheque. But that fantasy depended on a different world. In that one, it was a less crowded market, a time where good games had a reasonable shot at being found, and an environment that was keen to invest in games.

None of those conditions reliably exist anymore. On the grant side, platforms now face an avalanche of applications for prototype support and early stage funding schemes. Programmes such as Epic MegaGrants or developer acceleration initiatives on major consoles can still be transformative, but they have never been more highly competitive, with limited awards relative to demand. Governments and cultural bodies have stepped up support for games as cultural products, yet those funds often come wrapped in bureaucracy, rigid deadlines, long evaluation cycles, and geography-specific rules that exclude many teams.

Publisher partnerships, too, have changed character. The best publishers still offer what they always did – production support, marketing muscle, QA, localisation, and platform relationships – but for the past few years it’s been a buyer’s market, so they are more selective about where they risk their cash. Rising budgets and a hit-driven marketplace mean that many publishing teams increasingly look for proven track records, validated prototypes, or strong market evidence in the form of social media followers or wishlist numbers before committing serious money. The days of signing your first game on “a pitch deck and a dream” have not vanished entirely, but this has always been a slim chance, and that chance has only got slimmer.

Meanwhile, production costs have increased in part due to the previous bubble. This pushes more financial risk onto developers earlier in the lifecycle, often before real revenue can be generated. Even successfully funded games still face ever increasing visibility issues on storefronts, as more launches crowd the same digital shelves and algorithms tilt towards top performers. Money alone cannot guarantee discoverability in this environment, which makes single-shot funding models even more fragile.

The result is that the “silver bullet” mentality of “getting one big deal and then you can relax” has quietly died. Studios that still make decisions as though that world exists are putting themselves in unnecessary danger.

The funding funnel studios ignore

The root of the problem is strategic, not simply financial. Many studios still treat funding as a single event, a dramatic moment when the money arrives and they breathe a sigh of relief, rather than a funnel that runs alongside development from pitch to prototype to full development to post-launch and catalogue management. In reality, different stages of a project’s life require and attract different kinds of capital, as well as different appetites for risk and control.

At the pitch and prototype phases, the most desirable money is non-recoupable and non-dilutive. Platform grants and government or cultural programmes are powerful here, as they provide early validation, external legitimacy, and capital without touching equity or IP. A small award can be enough to build a convincing vertical slice, run player tests, or demonstrate a unique mechanic, all of which make a later publisher or investor conversation more realistic. However, these funds are slow, bureaucratic, and fiercely contested; cycles are often rigid, and teams must plan around long evaluation periods and reporting requirements.

As projects move into full production, the centre of gravity shifts towards recoupable project funding, traditional publisher advances or development funding, and platform licensing deals tied to launch windows. Publisher deals, whether with indie-focused labels or larger multi-title houses, can bring not only cash, but also production discipline, marketing strategies, and connections to platform holders. Platform licensing and subscription deals, such as catalogue entries in major subscription services, offer guaranteed revenue and often substantial marketing support. This can come at the cost of exclusivity, and as such has a more limited reach. It might also come with strict milestones and content obligations, and create a perceived cannibalisation of sales.

“The studios that survive upsets are not usually the ones that won a single grant or publishing deal”

Post launch, once a studio has a game under their belt, or better yet a small portfolio or ambitions to build multi-project pipelines, the opportunity widens further. Equity rounds, strategic investors, and dedicated project funding vehicles come into play. Debt instruments and loans backed by guarantees can smooth cashflow between milestones or platform payments. These tools serve different purposes. Some prioritise long-term capacity building, others short-term liquidity, others diversification of risk across multiple titles.

The studios that survive upsets are not usually the ones that won a single grant or publishing deal. They are the ones that mapped their financial runway consciously, aligning sources of capital with all the different phases, and building in redundancy where possible so that one missed opportunity or hiccup doesn’t cause the company to go belly up.

Stop looking for the one deal

If there is a defining trait of resilient studios in this era, it is their comfort with hybrid funding stacks. Instead of anchoring the entire company to a single publisher agreement or equity round, they deliberately blend several sources of capital that complement or at the very least don’t interfere with one another.

Let’s be clear, publisher partnerships still occupy a central place in this mix, especially for mid-scope projects that need global marketing, QA, localisation, and sophisticated go-to-market plans. For teams that “just want to make games”, publishers can handle business development, platform negotiations, and release management across multiple storefronts. However, studios now have more options than simply accepting the first full-scope publishing contract they are offered.

Project funding vehicles – specialised funds that invest against future royalties in specific titles – can supply the right amount of production capital while leaving company equity untouched. They are often more flexible on creative control and scope than traditional publishers, because their exposure is constrained to one game rather than the whole studio. On the other side of the coin are equity investors, hoping for success in the studio’s long-term capacity to ship multiple projects. They usually require ownership stakes and often apply significantly more attention to strategy and growth beyond any single release.

Crowdfunding campaigns, whether for the whole development, finishing funds or somewhere in between, do more than raise money. If successful, they validate demand, help improve positioning, and often build a core community before launch. Ongoing support via patronage platforms or “support the devs” tiers can create a small but vital baseline of predictable income for costs like tooling, events, and small marketing beats. Competition-based prizes, accelerator programmes, conference awards, festival funds, and themed accelerators bring non-recoupable cash, industry recognition, and access to networks that might otherwise be inaccessible.

Even less glamorous approaches shouldn’t be snubbed when money is tight. Work for hire, outsourcing, and co-dev agreements can provide steady revenue and at the same time help with skill development and platform experience. Granted, this does mean that less time and energy can be spent on the game the developer wants to make and release, but many successful indie devs have done this in the past, at least to make ends meet when starting out or when games got delayed. If you have a back catalogue of games, bundling older titles into discount platforms or curated bundles can help generate short spikes of revenue, as well as renewing the games’ visibility and potentially expanding the player base and community.

This approach of looking for multiple stacks of revenue rather than one perfect deal is indeed time consuming and will require more planning and drive. But it is far more robust when things go belly up, like when a milestone is delayed, a grant application fails, a platform feature falls through, or a launch underperforms.

Ownership, risk, and time

Every funding decision is ultimately a negotiation over three things: ownership, risk, and time. Bootstrapping and founder capital sit at one extreme of the scale. They maximise creative control and equity retention, letting teams build exactly what they want without external meddling. Unfortunately, they also force large financial pressure onto individuals, constrain runway, and increase the personal cost of failure. Many loved indie games owe their existence to this kind of sacrifice. Sadly, many more never fully recover from the instability and stresses it produces.

Outsourcing and work-for-hire float around the middle of the scale. They mostly offer predictable revenue, opportunities to learn from larger productions, and can foster valuable relationships. The cost is dividing the devs’ focus away from their own IP and, of course, increased development time.

Debt financing, short-term loans, credit facilities, or guaranteed instruments from banks and specialised lenders provide a different kind of trade. Debt preserves 100% ownership and can be obtained relatively quickly, especially for studios with a revenue history and signed contracts that lenders can evaluate. This is super handy for bridging gaps between publisher milestone payments and unexpected overspending. The flip side is pretty tough. You’re required to repay whether the game succeeds or not, interest and fees compound over time, and often the founders have personal risk against their own assets outside of the company.

Lastly, equity investment sits at the other extreme. Selling shares in the company can fund entire projects and then some, as well as give studios the space to think beyond the next launch. Equity investors (the right ones) often bring strategic guidance, board-level support, and open doors in certain networks to partnerships and platforms. All this sounds fantastic, but dilution is permanent. Investors are focused on growth and returns across a portfolio, and their expectations can mean that a more aggressive approach is expected in generating value within the studio. This can be a hard pill to swallow for some.

To be clear, there is no universal “right” answer between these options. The question for studio founders is not “Which path is best?”, but “Which combination of paths will deliver the best outcome for our studio?”.

Hybrid stacks, not Hail Marys

In a world where the quest for funding never ends, studios need to treat financing as a continuous design space, rather than a one-off emergency measure. That means mapping their funding funnel as rigorously as they plan their production roadmap. It means identifying which mix of grants, platform programmes, publisher deals, project funds, loans, and community capital aligns with each stage, prototype, production, launch, and scale. It means building hybrid stacks intentionally, so that if one deal falls through, others can be brought forward or expanded, rather than leaving the team frantically looking for a new source of capital.

“Some cling to romantic ideas of pure bootstrapping long past the point where it puts people and projects at risk”

Too many teams still stumble into problematic deals because they don’t understand recoup terms, milestone clauses, or the long-term implications of equity terms. Others mistime their grant applications, aiming for early stage funds with projects that are already too far along, or they pin their hopes on single-shot programmes without backup plans. Some cling to romantic ideas of pure bootstrapping long past the point where it puts people and projects at risk, treating external money as a sort of indication of failure rather than a tool.

The most important lesson is that the market will always be unpredictable. Things like delays, algorithm changes, and bad luck are going to happen. A good funding strategy doesn’t make everything perfectly safe, that’s impossible. Instead, it ensures you don’t put all your eggs in one basket, so that one bad event doesn’t destroy the whole project.

If studios accept that success now depends on utilising hybrid stacks rather than a silver bullet, the conversation about money can shift from desperation to design. That shift will not guarantee a happy ending for every project, but it will save the teams behind them.