Part 1: Should You Pursue a Publisher Partnership?

This article is part 1 of our 6-part series on publisher readiness for game developers and studios.

Two of our clients with similar puzzle games faced the same crossroads last year.

Marcus spent two years perfecting his spatial reasoning game—testing extensively and polishing every detail. As he approached completion, he started researching publisher partnerships and ultimately spent eight months in negotiations and collaboration. The result matched his goals perfectly: coordinated marketing across multiple platforms, prominent featuring in digital stores, and ten times more players than he could have reached on his own.

Meanwhile, Lisa was refining her equally compelling puzzle game. Her consideration led her to a different conclusion: independent publishing aligned better with her vision. She built direct relationships with her audience through social media and early access, launched with a focused campaign she designed herself, and achieved exactly what she aimed for—a sustainable business that funded her next project while preserving full creative control and unfiltered player feedback.

Both succeeded because they made decisions based on their specific situations, not assumptions about what they "should" do.

In this article, we’ll help you determine whether a publisher partnership is right for you by breaking down what each path involves, evaluating your unique circumstances, and helping you assess whether partnership aligns with your goals and definition of success.

Understanding Your Options

Publisher partnerships bring development funding, marketing expertise, industry connections, and platform relationships that can dramatically expand your game’s reach. In return, publishers expect to be true partners—you share creative decisions, work within their timelines, split revenue, and collaborate throughout development.

This path shines when you’re building something that needs serious market education, entering a crowded space where marketing muscle matters, or developing platform-specific titles like console or VR games where industry relationships can make or break your launch.

Independent publishing means your vision stays entirely in your hands. Your audience relationships are direct, you keep all revenue (minus platform cuts), and you can pivot quickly without consulting partners. You also handle all marketing, business operations, and financial risks—and you’ll need to get creative when you hit your limits.

This approach works best for niche titles where you can directly reach your target audience, experimental or deeply personal projects, or when someone on your team already has marketing experience and the resources to support both development and a meaningful launch.

Three Questions That Matter Most

In our experience helping developers navigate this decision, the choice almost always comes down to three critical factors:

1. Can you realistically fund both completion and marketing? This isn’t just about having enough money—it’s about having the right money at the right time. Publishers provide funding, but often extend development timelines as they integrate feedback and coordinate releases. Independent publishing gets you to market faster but requires a substantial upfront marketing investment for a strong launch. Be honest about whether you can fund both development and marketing without compromising either.

2. Where do you want to spend your energy? Marketing takes time—leading up to launch and long after. From community management to business ops, it’s a constant effort. If that excites you, independence might be a great fit. If it sounds like a distraction that could hurt your game’s quality, a publisher partnership may let you focus more on development while experts handle the rest.

3. How accessible is your audience? If you’re building something for a niche group that gathers in specific communities, an independent approach gives you direct access. But if you’re entering a broader or more saturated market, a publisher’s reach—especially with press, influencers, and platform holders—can be the difference between being overlooked and being discovered.

Your Decision Path Forward

Many developers already have a gut feeling about which path feels right after working through these questions. But making a confident decision often takes deeper evaluation.

That’s why we created our free Publishing Path Assessment. This guided tool walks you through the same key questions we use when helping clients weigh their options. It evaluates your current capabilities, resources, goals, and game context to give you clear, personalized guidance—plus action steps to move forward. Whether your results confirm that a partnership fits your goals or reveal that independence is a better match, you’ll walk away with greater clarity and direction.

If a publisher partnership does feel like the right path, knowing that is only the beginning. In the next five articles, we’ll walk you through what publisher readiness looks like at every stage—from preparing your initial submission materials to navigating evaluation to building strong long-term partnerships. Each article includes a specific checklist or assessment to help you evaluate your readiness for that phase. By the end of the series, you’ll have a full toolkit for approaching publishers with strategy and confidence.

Full disclosure: This series is focused on partnership readiness. If you’re leaning toward independent publishing, stay tuned—we have a dedicated series for that coming soon!