Sky and Journey maker Thatgamecompany’s new publishing label is looking to fund and publish mobile games that explore “meaningful emotional territory”.
Thatgamecompany’s VP of growth and corporate development SJ Xue told mobilegamer.biz that new label Thatgamepublisher covers funding, production planning, platform and launch strategy, marketing, community support and long-term IP development. There are no platform restrictions on what it will sign, he said.
The label isn’t looking for games that resemble Sky, he explained, and that genre, scale and platform aren’t the deciding factors. Instead, the studio’s criteria come down to whether “a game reach[es] for meaningful emotional territory, and does it use interactivity to get players there.”
Teams of any size are eligible, including projects still in prototype. Xue described Thatgamepublisher as “a separate initiative built to work with outside developers,” adding that “the label exists to bring other developers’ vision to players, not just our own.”
Asked whether Thatgamecompany’s past public stance against harder-edged mobile monetisation still applies, Xue said the approach “hasn’t changed over time” and is carrying over into Thatgamepublisher. Even as Sky has matured, Xue said, it’s “held up largely as designed,” pointing to seven years of live operation as evidence rather than describing any changes made along the way.
Asked what he’d tell a mobile studio skeptical that a long-lived game can survive without leaning on harder-edged monetisation, Xue pointed to Sky itself: seven years, 300m downloads – and still growing. “What’s kept people here that long isn’t a mechanic, it’s the sense that the game is theirs,” he said. “At Thatgamepublisher, that’s what we’d tell any studio thinking about longevity. It’s not about a single lever you pull. It’s about whether players feel enough ownership over the experience that they want to stay for years.”
On Sky’s own performance, Xue said mobile is the company’s largest player base, though the studio stopped short of providing an exact platform split. He did, however, stress that console and Steam versions remain “healthy and important parts of the ecosystem.”
The studio tells us Sky has passed 300m downloads across all platforms since its 2019 launch, with AppMagic estimating mobile revenue of around $183.8m. Xue said engagement has held up seven years on, pointing to the recent Dear Van Gogh season and a regular run of seasonal content, community events and live concerts.
Developers can pitch to thatgamepublisher here.
