Strategy developer and publisher Slitherine have launched a new indie label and fund, titled K-Project. The company hopes to use K-Project to seek out “riskier” new indie projects, as they stated in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
“We’ve learned a lot, but the market’s completely different [now],” said Slitherine marketing director Marco Minoli to GI.biz. “We feel like now it’s time to say, ‘What can we do to help others in the same situation we were 20 years ago to build their own dream?’ We were lucky. We’re still here [after] 20 years. So it’s time we take this opportunity to give something back. We feel like it’s the right time for us as directors of this company to take it a step further.”
From the games eventually published through the label, Slitherine has pledged 5 per cent of its earnings from those titles to add to a pool that will fund further projects, and has already set aside $100,000 to get started.
Additionally, developers who are chosen under the project will continue to own their IP.
“We’re not taking anything from them,” said Minoli. “We’re just helping them put the game on the market. That’s actually one thing that’s valid for all our contracts. We never ever, ever signed a game where we own the IP as a publisher. We’ve been a developer and we know what it’s like.”
Slitherine already has three K-Project games in the works, QED Games’ Tactical Troops: Anthracite Shift and two more unannounced titles. The developer and publisher is hoping to release four to five K-Project titles a year.