A team of industry veterans from Critical Reflex, Gaijin Entertainment, and Nozomu Games has established the indie label Inner Pocket Publishing.
Inner Pocket’s core team consists of four co-founders: CEO Artem Oleinik from Gaijin Entertainment; head of marketing Yaroslav Kadyshev, formerly of Critical Reflex; and Nozomu Games co-founders Ivan Bushmin and Eva Manuilovich, serving as head of publishing and art director, respectively.
Inner Pocket partnered with Nozomu Games to launch Burn With Me, an occult deck-burner where players sacrifice cards to gain powers, on PC. Other Inner Pocket titles include Hardlane Studio’s Outcast Tales, Justcamh’s Nonolith, and Jamwitch’s The Archives of Trevosa.
The company is working with several developers on early-stage projects and has planned its line-up for the next six months. It seeks smaller games or projects near completion that need little or no additional development funding.
Inner Pocket is self-funded by its four founders and can currently invest up to $75,000 per project. “We started lean and intend to stay that way, so we’re not planning to grow the team or sign too many games at once,” Kadyshev tells GamesIndustry.biz. “We’re a very small team with big ideas. Very indie.”
Distinct taste
Kadyshev believes the traditional generalist publisher model is less sustainable, so Inner Pocket is adopting a hybrid publisher-as-curator approach.
Inner Pocket is taking a page out of Pantaloon’s book, which transitioned from being a newsletter recommending indie titles to becoming a publisher last year. The two companies have exchanged ideas since Inner Pocket’s formation.
“What they’re building is very close to us,” says Kadyshev. “We do want to borrow some good practices, especially curation on Steam. I really like that Pantaloon reviews games it doesn’t publish and invites other publishers into its newsletter. That kind of cross-publisher collaboration beyond routine bundles fits our values. Personally, I’d like to see more of it across the board.”
While Pantaloon could be considered a direct competitor, Kadyshev disagrees. “I don’t think we have one direct competitor in that sense,” he says.
Kadyshev points to research from Synthetic Domain showing that there are roughly 500 active publishers on Steam, “once you exclude very small and new brands like us, as well as publishers that haven’t released anything since 2024. With 18,000 to 19,000 new games coming to Steam every year, 500 publishers doesn’t actually feel like a crowded field. If anything, the more publishers there are, the more each one is pushed to develop a distinct taste, niche, and way of working rather than compete head-on.”
Kadyshev explains that the publisher-as-curator concept developed during his time as head of marketing at Critical Reflex.
“Companies like Critical Reflex and Hooded Horse have a clear idea of the games they publish,” he says, unlike the “traditional generalist publisher model [which] is becoming harder to sustain.”
“Publishers often sign whatever they think will sell, so their catalogues end up spanning unrelated genres and audiences. For the marketing team, that means learning how to sell every new game from scratch. For players, the publisher’s name stops meaning much because it could be attached to anything.”
“[Critical Reflex and Hooded Horse] have a clear idea of the games they publish. That lets them refine the tools and workflows instead of rebuilding everything for each release. They deepen relationships with content creators, and become brands players recognise. Many people can’t tell you who published their favourite game, and we want to work with the same audience from day one, so they know who we are and what to expect from us.”
Kadyshev acknowledges that Inner Pocket is not the only publisher focused on curation, but notes they “may be among the first to state our niche clearly from day one.”
“Of course that’s a risk; it’s limiting your options to pivot later, which is why many publishers hesitate to do it.
Games for introverts
Inner Pocket aims to “curate and bring new, interesting games” to an audience that “enjoy exploring worlds, solving mysteries, and discovering stories through games.”
This approach goes beyond their own publishing slate. Inner Pocket’s curated collection features a “broader selection of games” the team appreciates and would publish themselves. “That also lets us place established titles alongside newcomers,” Kadyshev notes.
“Over time, [this kind of curation] can create its own gravity, giving like-minded players a reason to follow us and keep coming back. Same as any other publisher, we’ll be known first and foremost for the games we release ourselves. Those games are the icebreakers: they go ahead and clear a path for the community we want to build.”
“While friendslop rules the world, we’re building a quiet corner for people who love thoughtful single-player games”
“At the same time, we can grow that audience by pointing people toward other interesting projects worth their attention. This kind of filter is becoming more valuable as dozens of new games are released every day. We’re already in the middle of that process ourselves, looking through new curiosity game pitches and tracking which games are gaining traction in our niche.”
Kadyshev notes that the publisher-as-curator concept has received positive feedback from both developers and players. “I’m not entirely sure why it clicks so strongly, but I think part of it is that our philosophy and taste run against some of the current trends. While friendslop rules the world, we’re building a quiet corner for people who love thoughtful single-player games. That has its own pull.”
“We also have some practical know-how for turning that attention into newsletter sign-ups and Discord members, but those are execution details. The collection and the games themselves have to give people a reason to stay first.”
Steam curation
Inner Pocket plans to launch its curated library on Steam through its official Curator page.
Steam Curators have become associated with key scamming, where fraudsters seek game keys to resell. In 2017, Valve introduced a feature allowing developers to send games directly to selected curators via Steam, rather than email, to ensure keys reach the intended recipients.
“The feature has had a messy history, and people periodically say Valve may remove it as a failed experiment or rebuild it completely,” Kadyshev notes. “It is easy to see why: for a long time, having curator coverage or not having it barely seemed to affect anything.”
“But the experience changes once you follow a curator or publisher that is serious about what they are doing. Not long ago these recommendations started appearing across the Steam homepage. If the brand behind those recommendations is strong, I believe that can become a meaningful part of discovery in the Steam ecosystem.”
Kadyshev says Inner Pocket is an “experiment” combining the roles of publisher and curator, and Steam is the best place to test it.
“Publishers are already curators in practice. Steam itself is more curated than it may first appear. You’ve probably seen homepage recommendations explaining that they are there because you follow a particular curator or publisher (they look identical). Publishers also have a unique opportunity once a year to be featured on the homepage for several days and promote their catalogue. Meanwhile, getting comparable Steam features for third-party festivals and showcases seems to get harder every year.
“To be transparent, our goal is to build as many Steam followers as we can. Publishers usually do that by releasing games and asking players to follow them for the next one. We’re exploring whether curation can help us build that relationship faster. Some people may come to us through the games we publish, others through the games we recommend. As long as those two things reflect the same taste, each side can reinforce the other.”
Overall, Kadyshev feels that Inner Pocket, as a publisher-as-curator experiment, is “the start of a big adventure.”
“I don’t know whether it will work, because there isn’t an exact successful precedent that immediately comes to mind for what we’re trying to build. But I do know it will be interesting. The response from fellow developers has been encouraging so far, but ultimately we work for players, and we still have to find out whether the idea resonates with them.”