Indie Dev Says His €4M Hit Game Left Him Broke; Publisher Calls His Story "Misleading"
Alex Mochi, the mind behind the successful indie tycoon game Rise of Industry, dropped a bombshell of a video this week. The story is a classic cautionary tale. A game that grossed nearly €4 million and sold over 350,000 copies left its creator broke, sick, and forced to sell the IP back to the publisher for what he claims was a measly $5,000.
A Tale of Broken Dreams and Bad Math
According to Mochi, what started as a dream quickly devolved into a financial nightmare. After Steam took its 30% cut, another 10-15% vanished into refunds, and the rest was chipped away by regional pricing and key resellers, the real gut punch was what he calls "a bad publisher deal." He laid out a deal with Kalypso Media that seemed fair on paper: a $75,000 advance against a 60/40 revenue split in his favor, but claims that after being shifted to their sub-label, Kasedo Games, the marketing support vanished and the game’s profits were funneled into other projects. The result? By 2021, his studio was €140,000 in the red, forcing him to mortgage his house and eventually sell his "dream" just to keep the lights on.
Kasedo Games Presents: A Different Story
Of course, it didn't take long for Kasedo Games to fire back. In a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, the publisher painted Mochi's video as being riddled with "several inaccuracies." They argue that the $5,000 figure is "misleading," claiming the total compensation was ten times that when you include advanced royalties from projected sales.
Kasedo also disputes the narrative of being abandoned. They claim there was no "shift" from one publisher to another, just a simple rebranding of the same team that was clearly explained to Mochi at the time. They also poured cold water on the idea that
Rise of Industry's earnings were used to fund other titles, and provided their own math suggesting the developer's take-home was a much healthier €1.36 million. The publisher asserts their own 40% cut was justified by the hefty costs of localization, QA, marketing, and everything else that goes into launching a game. To add another layer to the drama, they claim Mochi was the one who repeatedly pushed to sell the IP, and that they even made him a fair offer to consult on the sequel, which he declined.
The Messy Reality of Making Games
So who's telling the truth? As always, it’s probably buried somewhere in the murky middle. In a follow-up comment, Mochi softened his tone, admitting to his "own misjudgments, poor planning, and unrealistic expectations" and stating the video wasn't meant to "point fingers or drag anyone through the mud."
It’s a classic tale of indie passion colliding with the brutal, unforgiving math of the games industry. A developer pours his soul into a project, it succeeds beyond his wildest dreams, but the complex web of contracts, revenue splits, and publisher expenses leaves him feeling screwed. Whether it was naivety, a genuinely predatory deal, or a bit of both, it serves as a stark fucking reminder to every aspiring developer out there: read your contracts, and for the love of God, hire a good lawyer.