How 3 indie gaming studios are bringing in cash despite a VC downturn

Maryland’s indie game developers are quietly shifting how they fund their studios. 

With fewer viable paths to venture capital, many are pivoting back toward bootstrapping, alternative financing — or entirely new strategies to survive.

Back in 2021, the VC boom gave founders like Rockville-based Heather Cerlan the confidence to branch out. After years of working at large publishers, Cerlan left her role at Bethesda Game Studios to start NEARStudios.

“I was seeing all these venture capital firms giving out money to studios across the board,” Cerlan said. “It seemed like anybody that raised their hand would get money.”

After nine months of unsuccessful fundraising, Cerlan’s team decided to switch strategies to stay afloat.

The team released a gameplay trailer for Hawthorn, a role-playing game inspired by Victorian fairy tales, hoping it would catch on online. The trailer quickly gained traction, earning coverage from major outlets and racking up more than 200,000 wishlist adds within weeks on PC gaming marketplace Steam.

That surge of attention helped Cerlan attract interest from angel investors and build a sizable fanbase eager to back the project on Kickstarter.

“It was wild,” Cerlan said. “It also felt very scary because we didn’t have money — the bank account was literally negative.”

Virality worked. But it’s an extremely difficult system to game, betting on algorithms and organic engagement to take off. 

The lesson for other studios is that not landing VC funding doesn’t have to be a dealbreaker. It can be the nudge to try something different — and, in some cases, a path for indie developers to keep more control over their work.

Outside funding changes the goalposts 

Historically, many indie developers relied on bootstrapping, crowdfunding or publisher partnerships rather than venture capital. The pandemic boom briefly changed that dynamic, with gaming investment peaking in 2021 as investors chased growth.

Soon after NEARStudios’ founding in 2022, the tide turned. Venture funding cooled alongside a broader pullback in capital, tightening the landscape for indie studios once again.

Bootstrapping became not only a necessity but also a way to maintain control. Despite a long history of game studios, Maryland teams lack the investor access enjoyed by West Coast companies, according to Cerlan. 

Plus, VCs can also influence decisions in game development, and indie workers are often seeking to break free from the creative constraints at larger studios.

“They don’t have actual control to tell you what to do with the product,” Cerlan said, “but they have a lot of influence in the sense that if you’re a startup founder and you’re relying on them for your next round of funding, you want to please them.”

Still, VC hasn’t entirely faded away, and for the right projects, it can make all the difference. 

Landing VC still opens new opportunities

PitchBook data shows very few other local studios landing venture funding in the past few years, though it’s not impossible. 

Hunt Valley–based Midsummer Studios launched in 2024 after raising $6 million from investors to develop a new life simulation game.

The round was led by Transcend Fund, a San Francisco–based venture firm focused on gaming, but securing that backing wasn’t straightforward.

Shortly after the studio’s launch, CEO Jake Solomon told Bloomberg that Midsummer was fortunate to partner with Transcend in such a difficult funding landscape. The studio’s focus on the life-sim genre helped, he said, since there was relatively little competition at the time.

“Once you have a lead investor, then it’s easier to get people to pile on,” Solomon said, “but you have moments when you’re basically staring at the ceiling — what if this does not work out?”

Midsummer declined to comment for this story, but funding appears to be ongoing. The team raised close to $600,000 in November of last year, per a SEC filing. 

Dragon Snacks Games, which launched in April 2025 with a mix of Maryland-based and out-of-state developers, has raised $1 million from angel investors. It’s already seeing some VC interest for the next round, too, according to COO Lucien Parsons.

Still, the approach is cautious. Lessons from the past show that an influx of VC can lead to expanding too quickly, and cause a studio’s downfall, according to Parsons. 

His advice for how to make VC work? Be strategic, and don’t bring on more talent before working out the kinks of an existing team. 

“It’s just not a good recipe for making games,” Parsons said. “You have to have a team that knows how to work together before you get to that point.”