How Outersloth is turning Among Us' success into funding for indies

gamesindustry.biz:

Outersloth has been a "really bad open secret" since 2022.

That's what Innersloth's communications director Victoria Tran tells us as we sit down to chat about the new indie fund from Among Us developer Innersloth. Unveiled this June, the initiative aims at providing funding to small studios, with a number of teams already supported including Outerloop Games, Strange Scaffold, and Visai Games.

But the first signs of Outersloth were seen when the new venture signed its very first title, Mars First Logistics from Australian studio Shape Shop.

"[As part of the announcement] we had the Outersloth logo, which is basically the Innersloth logo inverted, in that the sloth is on the outside and the person's on the inside. And we had some people message us really concerned being like, 'I think there's someone out there trying to steal your name!'," Tran laughs.

"I had to be like, 'We know about it, it's fine, don't worry!' And I couldn't say anything else because we wanted to wait until we really smoothed out the process and nailed down what we wanted to do. And also because I [thought] once we get a few more games, it would actually be a really nice big announcement that we could save for a showcase, which happened at Summer Game Fest."

But the idea for Outersloth precedes the Mars First Logistics deal by a few years, with Tran saying the fund had been in discussion at Innersloth since 2020.

"Forest Willard, our CEO, always wanted to do something like this," she recalls. "But pre-Among Us success days, it was not really a possibility. Once Among Us started popping off in 2020, it became pretty apparent to him that this was a thing that could happen. And it took a lot of setup."

Figuring out exactly what makes a good deal for an indie was at the core of the idea, as the original team at Innersloth had been approached in the past by publishers with some shady terms – a common occurrence for developers.

"I wouldn't use the word 'predatory' but just not worth the services," Tran sums