Games Radar caught up with Vampire Survivors studio Poncle which was originally just one designer, Luca Galante, who has now gone into publishing with Poncle Presents. Galante made no qualms about speaking his mind about some video game publishers who he said fully exploit their user base. He said that he created Poncle Presents as a way for him to give back to the industry which doted on his game. Galante also hopes that with his new publishing arm he can help get more successful indie games made and published.
"I see a lot of publishers I don't like," he begins, "and I think that's my way to define what a good publisher should be, probably. I see a lot of publishers that try to exploit the platforms just to make money, basically, because the video game industry is very obviously an industry that makes a lot of money. There is a lot of money to make. I see that these publishers will try and just exploit platforms for money. Put out games that are incomplete or in early access that actually never get completed, games that are put out there and left to die, basically. Does not make money, left in a broken state, and so on.
"So my point of view for what a publisher should do is, first of all, make genuine games, genuine products, something that has some real value, and then understand that not everything can be a breakout hit. For me, it's very important that we keep supporting games post-launch, regardless of how the game would go, just because once you put the game out there, you have an audience, and as big or small as it is that audience deserves to be treated fairly. So post-launch support is definitely a big thing from my point of view that publishers should be able to offer."
"Basically, we got very lucky with Vampire Survivors," Galante says. "The game has been so successful that – we definitely made some mistakes when it comes to putting the game out there, but we learned a lot, and wanted to try to sort of share what we learned with other indies. It was a way to try and give something back to the indie community, share the luck."
