Indie Developers Turn to Co-Owned Holding Group to Offset Market Pressures

Independent game developers are increasingly turning toward shared corporate structures to navigate turbulent market conditions across the interactive sector. Denis Fedorov, founder of game developer Unfrozen, is championing a cooperative holding model designed to insulate smaller studios from shifting commercial headwinds.

Fedorov, whose studio produced Iratus: Lord of the Dead and is handling Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era, leads Nova Assembly, according to an essay published by GamesIndustry.biz. The entity operates as a holding group jointly owned and run by five separate studios.

Under the arrangement, participating developers share back-end development capabilities and marketing resources. The structure is built to reduce operational costs and commercial exposure while allowing each team to retain full ownership over creative choices and project direction.

As Hollywood Tomorrow tracks the ongoing contraction across digital entertainment, mid-market developers face an increasingly challenging environment. Publisher retrenchment, higher user acquisition expenses, and widespread project cancellations have placed intense pressure on standalone independent outfits lacking deep balance sheets.

Alliances like Nova Assembly reflect an effort by gaming creators to achieve the operational scale of larger mid-tier publishers without surrendering their intellectual property or executive autonomy to external financiers.