Heart Machine is experimenting with using the Patreon as a source of revenue and to help build community.
Heart Machine is experimenting with using the Patreon as a source of revenue and to help build community.
Apr 3, 2025, 3:00 PM UTC
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Jay Peters
Jay Peters is a news editor covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
Heart Machine, the studio behind games like Hyper Light Drifter, Solar Ash, and the upcoming platformer Possessor(s), launched a Patreon last December. Like many other developers, it has dealt with its share of struggles, including layoffs late last year. With the many challenges in the gaming industry right now, the studio is experimenting with using Patreon as a source of revenue and to help build community.
“The Patreon’s there, really, to open up to the community and talk about certain things when it comes to game development,” Heart Machine founder Alx Preston told The Verge at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last month. “I think there’s still a lot of distance between developers traditionally and the audience that consumes what they make — what we make — so finding ways to dig back in and have a conversation there is important.”
It could help on the money front, too. “Industry dynamics have changed a lot, so money is tough to come by in a lot of ways,” Preston said. “Whatever we can do to support ourselves and stay alive longer term is an important thing to turn to, as well.”
The indie games space has run into a fair share of challenges lately, including Annapurna Interactive’s team resigning and Take-Two selling its Private Division indie label last year. While there have been some bright spots — including that the former Annapurna team has taken over Private Division’s discarded games — indie games still face some difficulties getting funding and succeeding in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Even former lifelines like Netflix have pulled back on indie investing.
While it’s not a replacement for proper funding — Possessor(s) is being published by Devolver Digital — the subscription is meant to be a potential way to augment the studio’s earnings. Patreon isn’t “our biggest portion of revenue or anything,” Preston said. (Heart Machine’s About page on Patreon shows it has around 230 paid members out of about 700 total members.)
But the idea is to grow it over time. “If you keep engaging and keep doing more stuff there, it’s a different model than going to publishers for money all the time,” he said, adding that it’s “the experimental phase of figuring out what the fuck works these days.”
Heart Machine isn’t the only developer to utilize Patreon – Caves of Qud developer Freehold Games is another notable example — but it’s one of the most prominent that’s experimenting with the platform. “Since the old models are not enough, we have to adapt,” Preston said in Heart Machine’s announcement about the Patreon. “So we’re asking for support to help us continue to not just survive, but adapt and thrive.”
“We’ve always been big on talking directly to our audience,” he said. “We think this Patreon is an opportunity for us to do more on this front while also benefiting.”
Possessor(s) is set to launch this year. The studio launched Hyper Light Breaker in early access in January.
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