No More Robots on Indie Publishing & Platform Strategy

Introduction 

No More Robots has built a strong reputation in the indie publishing space. Can you take us back to the beginning? What led you to start the company, and what gap in the market were you trying to fill when you launched?

Mike Rose, founder of No More Robots: I had previously worked at a couple of other publishing labels, including tinyBuild and Ripstone, and finally decided, “Hey, I bet I could do this myself!” That’s when the RageSquid devs showed me an early version of Descenders, and I knew that would be our first game. I knew that a large number of publishers were quite predatory, so I realized that building a publisher around actually caring about the developers we worked with set us apart quite a bit.

Publishing Approach

80.lv: When you're evaluating potential projects, what does the “perfect game” look like for No More Robots? Are there specific genres, aesthetics, or design philosophies that align particularly well with your publishing approach?

My favourite type of game is one that I’ve never seen before. When I’m pitched games that follow genres and are copycats of other games, I’m not really interested. I want to sign games that jump out at me as something new and exciting, because new concepts are always the most exciting.

80.lv: Walk us through your selection process: how do you decide which titles to take on? What are the green flags that make you want to work with a developer, and conversely, what are the red flags that make you pass?

Obviously, a great concept is what attracts me first, but the second biggest thing is that the developer is pleasant and seems like they’d be great to work with. I’ve turned down games before where the concept was fantastic, but the developer seemed like they might be problematic. I want to have fun publishing your game – I don’t want to have to deal with issues around your personality.

80.lv: At what stage of development do you typically get involved with projects? Are you looking for nearly finished games that need marketing muscle, or are you willing to come in earlier and help shape the development process?

We mainly sign games that are just concepts or have some form of “vertical slice” I can play. We rarely sign games that are close to finished – I think maybe we’ve done that just a couple of times.

80.lv: The publisher-developer relationship often hinges on the business terms. Without getting into specifics, can you explain your general approach to deals and what developers should be mindful of when partnering with a publisher? What makes for a fair deal?

For any developer doing a deal with a publisher, the main things to be wary of are: what will happen to you once the game launches and the funding finishes? Will you be making any money? Will you end up in a bad position if the game doesn’t sell? If the answer is yes, you need to work out how to make that not happen. That could mean taking additional money so that you have a pool of funds when development ends, and/or making sure you are taking money during the recoup, and it isn’t going 100% to the publisher.

80.lv: Looking at your recent catalog, which projects have been the biggest successes in terms of both commercial performance and critical reception? What made those games break through?

In recent years, some of our biggest successes include Little Rocket Lab, Descenders Next, and Spirittea. With Little Rocket Lab and Spirittea, there are huge audiences for the cozy life sim genre, and I think both of those games brought fresh ideas to it. Descenders Next was always going to be huge, given it was a sequel to one of the biggest games on Xbox Game Pass, so I don’t think we had many surprises there.

Publishing Strategy

80.lv: The indie game market feels increasingly crowded and competitive. What’s your read on the current landscape? What’s working, what’s not?

Oh yeah, it’s terrible. The last year or so has been the worst I’ve ever seen in my 15 years working in video games. There are a huge number of reasons for this, but realistically, one of the biggest ones is that the global economy is just so awful right now. People don’t have money, and games are a luxury purchase. Gamers are choosing to buy a small number of big-ticket games that they plan to put many, many hours into, which means that smaller, more art-focused titles or shorter games are really getting hit hard.

80.lv: How are you thinking about platform strategy in 2026, given Steam’s dominance and competition from other platforms and services?

I would love to see more competitors to Steam – having one big monopoly on PC is obviously not fantastic. Unfortunately, I don’t really see anyone stepping up in any meaningful way, so Steam continues to be the one place for PC titles where it makes sense to release your games.

80.lv: Discoverability is the perennial challenge for indie games. What marketing tactics or channels are actually working for you right now?

Demos are really starting to come into their own. Since no one has money, more and more people are playing free demos and using them to decide whether it’s worth buying a full game. We’ve had huge success recently with demos for our games, allowing people to essentially try before they buy.

Future of Indie Publishing

80.lv: Looking ahead through 2026 and beyond, what’s your outlook for indie game publishing?

Pretty pessimistic. We had a good 2025, but I think we got lucky. A huge number of publishers and developers had very hard times in 2025, and there’s nothing to suggest it’ll get any better this year. Pretty bleak answer, I know! But honestly, there’s not really a single thing happening in 2026 that isn’t just “2025 all over again.” I suspect we will continue to see bad times for the industry, at least for a few more years to come.

Mike Rose, Founder of No More Robots

Interview conducted by Kirill Tokarev