How to fund an indie game in 2026

The funding map#

There are seven common ways games get funded. They differ in what you give up, when the money arrives, and who carries the risk if the game underperforms.

Most funded indies combine two or three: a grant or small angel round for the prototype, a publisher or fund for production, and a platform deal or port funding to close the gap. The rest of this guide explains how to price each one and how they stack.

Publishing deals#

A publisher funds development and marketing in exchange for a share of revenue and the right to sell the game for a term. The money is usually recoupable: the publisher takes most or all receipts until it has its money back, then the long-term split applies. The details matter more than the headline split. We cover them clause by clause in deal terms explained and model them in the recoup waterfall.

The single most useful number for comparing offers is the revenue level $R^{\ast }$ where the deal stops beating self-publishing with the same budget $B$. With a studio share $a$ during recoup and $s$ after:

A deal with nothing during recoup has $R^{\ast }=B$. Once the game breaks even, you would have been better off alone, and you're paying the publisher purely for risk transfer and marketing. A 15% during-recoup share at 70/30 pushes $R^{\ast }$ to 1.5B. That's the clause to fight for.

When a publisher is the right call: you have a vertical slice, you need marketing, QA, localisation or console ports you can't do yourselves, and you'd rather give up revenue than equity.

Equity investors#

Venture capital and angels buy shares in your studio, not your game. That makes equity the most expensive money if you only ever make one game, and the cheapest if the studio becomes valuable. Price it like this: if you sell a fraction $d$ of the company, you give up $d$ of every future game, the tech and the exit.

Three rounds at 20% each leave founders with $0.8^3\approx 51\%$. Investors expect a path to a large outcome: a hit franchise, a platform, or tools other studios pay for. If you're building one premium narrative game, most VCs are the wrong partner. Many AI-native studios are building tech that outlives one title (character runtimes, tooling, live-ops systems), and equity fits them better.

Equity and publishing aren't exclusive. A common structure is a small equity round to build a vertical slice, then a publishing deal for production, which keeps dilution low because the expensive phase is funded with revenue share.

Game funds#

Game funds sit between publishers and investors. They finance a specific title in exchange for revenue share, without taking publishing rights or equity. Kowloon Nights, for example, describes itself as funding development while studios keep their IP and sequel rights, and staying hands-off on development. Funds suit experienced teams who don't need marketing help, or who will pair the fund's money with a separate distribution partner.

Fund terms often look like publishing terms without the services: recoup, then a split. Compare them with the same $R^{\ast }$ test, and remember to add the cost of the marketing you'll now buy yourself.

Platform deals#

Storefronts and subscription services pay for content they want. Deals take several forms: minimum guarantees for timed exclusivity, up-front payments for subscription inclusion, development funding for ports, or better revenue share. Epic Games Store's opt-in Epic First Run programme, for instance, offers 100% revenue share for the first six months in exchange for exclusivity on Epic's store. Epic also lets developers keep 100% of the first $1M of net revenue per product per year on payments it processes, then 88%.

Platform money is attractive because it's usually non-recoupable, or recouped against platform revenue only. The cost is reach: an exclusivity window removes other storefronts, and on PC that usually means fewer sales in the window. Model the deal as guaranteed money $G$ minus the expected revenue you lose during exclusivity:

Console platforms run pitch programmes. Microsoft's ID@Xbox has a public pitch process, for example. Specific terms are confidential, so talk to studios who've signed one.

Grants#

Grants are the cheapest money there is and the hardest to scale. Engine makers, national and regional film-and-games bodies, and cultural funds all offer them, usually for prototypes or projects with cultural or regional criteria. Amounts are small (tens of thousands, occasionally a couple of hundred thousand), timelines are slow, and applications reward clear writing over a flashy pitch.

Use grants to get a prototype to the point where a publisher or fund can see the core loop. That's where their value compounds: a $40k grant that turns a concept into a playable slice can change the terms of a $1.5M publishing deal more than any negotiation.

Crowdfunding and revenue-based financing#

Crowdfunding works when you already have an audience. It's marketing as much as money: a successful campaign is evidence of demand that publishers and platforms take seriously. Budget for fulfilment (physical rewards are where campaigns lose money), platform fees and the time it takes to run a campaign well, typically two months of a team member's full attention.

Revenue-based financing advances cash against future revenue and is repaid as a fixed multiple, often 1.1× to 1.5×, from a percentage of monthly receipts. It suits released games funding ports or updates, because it needs a revenue history. The effective cost depends on how fast you repay: with repayment multiple $M$ over $t$ years, the annualised cost is roughly $M^{1/t}-1$. A 1.3× repaid in one year is 30%; the same multiple over three years is about 9% a year.

Stacking sources: a worked example#

A five-person team building an AI-native mystery game needs $1.8M to reach launch. One plausible stack:

Order matters. The grant and angel money buy a vertical slice, which strengthens the publishing negotiation. Taking the publishing deal before the slice exists would have meant a bigger recoupable budget and worse terms. The port funding comes last, once the game has momentum a platform wants. A rule of thumb: fund each stage with the cheapest money that will accept that stage's risk.

What's different for AI-native games#

AI-native games carry a cost conventional games don't: runtime inference that scales with players. That changes funding conversations in three ways.

• Funders will ask for unit economics. Bring cost per player-hour and lifetime inference per player. Our inference cost guide and retention and LTV research show how.
• Inference should be negotiated separately from development. If it's recoupable, a popular game recoups more slowly. Ammighty covers it outside recoup for 24 months; whatever you sign, make it explicit.
• Tech is an asset. If you build a character runtime or tooling, keep the IP. It may be worth more than any one game, and it changes which investors are interested.

Frequently asked questions#

Sources#

1. Epic Games Store, "Epic Games Store updates revenue share: keep 100% of the first $1M per product per year". store.epicgames.com/news/epic-games-store-updates-revenue-share-keep-1
2. Kowloon Nights, "Meet Kowloon Nights, the group funding Fumito Ueda's next game" (Polygon, 2018). www.kowloonnights.com/polygon-sep-2018-press
3. Microsoft, ID@Xbox "Pitch your game". developer.microsoft.com/en-US/games/publish/pitch