Abylight Studios is on a quest to become a publishing powerhouse | Stories About Indie Devs
(Story originally published on September 14, 2021)
For decades, video game publishing was something only the largest of video game companies could do. Indie developers were all but required to sign a contract with one of many publishers to even get their game onto a video game console, sometimes sacrificing monetary gain or the IP rights to their product.
Within the last 10–15 years, however, video game publishing has opened to the masses, allowing independent developers to self-publish their own games, and thus keep 100% of the games profit, or even publish the games of other indie developers.
One of the few studios that has been at the forefront of indie video game publishing for over a decade is Abylight Studios, based out of Barcelona, Spain.
In video game development, there are generally two halves to releasing a game. On the development side, a studio will do the coding and actual crafting of the game from beginning to end. On the publishing side, another company will handle the marketing, social media outreach, localization, quality assurance, and so much more. Often, there is a contract signed between both parties that specifies monetary payouts, IP rights, and so on. Up until the late 2000’s, it was almost always necessary for a developer to partner up with a publisher in order to release a video game.
Abylight got its start as a development studio in 2003 by developing mobile phone games unofficially before becoming a legal entity in 2004. From 2005–2007, Abylight remained strictly a development studio. Many of their early games were sports IPs for mobile phones published by Gaelco Moviles (a now defunct Spanish studio), Electronic Arts Mobile, and Namco Bandai.
It was around this time that Eva Gaspar joined Abylight as a temporary business consultant. Four years earlier, she had tried being one of the founding members of the studio, but was rejected.
In the early days, Gaspar said the company had no business plan or structure. The studio would just do the behind-the-scenes work making game after game. Gaspar suggested to the then CEO that Abylight should look into publishing games, but her idea was shot down.
“The first time I said that to the CEO, he told me that I was crazy,” Gaspar said in an interview with Stories About Indie Devs. “What in the world would we do as publishers, it was not our place, what would we do, and so on.”
The launch of Nintendo’s WiiWare service in 2008 changed everything. Nintendo suddenly loosened the requirements for companies wishing to publish a game on their platform. All a company needed was a secured office (a home office wouldn’t work), an established track record in the games industry and with the company, and a policy (described by Gaspar as “juicy”) to cover all parties in case of a lawsuit.
Nintendo had sold around 24 million Wii units through fiscal year 2008 according to Statista.com. Hypothetically, a game released on WiiWare could reach the homes of each of those 24 million players, and Nintendo had just dramatically lowered the barrier of entry for anyone who wanted to publish a game onto their console.
With the gates to publishing a game to Nintendo’s flagship console open, it was a mad dash to be one of the first studios to be featured on the brand-new storefront. Abylight wanted in.
“We thought, ‘This is going to be huge!’” Gaspar said. “You do all your planning and crunch all the numbers and it looks impossible not to make money.”
Abylight put all of their hopes, dreams, and savings into self-publishing their first video game on the WiiWare service, Fish ’em All, an arcade-style fishing game. The game released in 2009 and needed to sell only around 300 copies to make a profit.
Fish ’em All did not make a profit
“It was crushing for us,” Gaspar said. “The team thought it was our fault, that we did something wrong. It was supposed to be impossible not to make money on the service. What we didn’t take into account was how many Wii systems were actually connected to the internet. So, we tried again.”
After months of tumultuous development due to disagreements with an investment group that didn’t specialize in video games, Stop Stress: a day of Fury, a game about destroying objects with the Wii’s motion controls, released in December 2009 in America and January 2010 in Europe. Once again, the game failed to reach its sale goal.
It was at this point in time that Gaspar’s temporary job became permanent as she joined Abylight full time as a business consultant.
The company took a stab at publishing for third parties with NEVES Plus: Pantheon of Tangrams, developed by BeeWorks and published by Yuke’s in Japan, in 2010. Gaspar described the game as beautiful, but the release as a disaster financially.
“Assuming is the worst,” Gaspar said. “That’s the first lesson that we learned. You can’t assume that just because a console has sold a lot, [you’ll be successful]. Being the first can be super beneficial, however it is ok to wait and be second. You need the data. If you don’t have the data, just wait for it. Plus, Nintendo is notoriously opaque when it comes to sharing or allowing sharing of any data”
The company persevered though, shifting its focus to developing and self-publishing games on Nintendo’s DSiWare service, similar to Nintendo’s WiiWare service, but for the company’s portable console. Between June of 2010 and July of 2011, Abylight released 10 DSiWare games, eight of which were a part of the Music On set of games that featured simulated instruments such as piano, drums, and guitar.
Also in 2011, Gaspar took over as CEO of the company, a position which she has held to this day.
“It was very tough for me as the CEO,” she said. “I knew how to get the company out of the gutter, but once you’re out of there, where do you go? There was absolutely no one in Spain to go to for guidance.”
Being one of only a small handful of video game studios in Spain at the time was difficult for Abylight and Gaspar. She explained that the governments in Europe didn’t understand how to invest in IP or technology in the same way that American investors do in places like Silicon Valley. Video game studios were practically invisible to the government and potential investors.
Gaspar needed help from outside of Spain’s video game bubble to make the company become more successful. She travelled to the Nordics to learn how they transitioned from dominating the physical mobile market with Nokia, to dominating the digital mobile video game market. She travelled to America to make connections and learn more about video game publishing.
“If you’re in California and you get fired or leave a company, you can walk to the other side of the street to find a great company that will hire you,” Gaspar said. “There’s that sense of ‘this is an industry. This is some place where I can grow professionally.’ This is something that wasn’t here in Spain at the time.”
Throughout the next five years, Abylight helped out on development and publishing for various title on the 3DS, WiiU, and iOS.
In 2016, Abylight refocused once again and made publishing for multiple platforms the main focus of the company with developing as a secondary focus. Previously, the company had strictly published only to Nintendo devices, but moving forward, Abylight would publish to as many devices as possible.
So far, the refocus has been doing wonders for the company.
That year, they agreed to a publishing deal with developer Locomalito. Abylight published Locomalito’s Cursed Castilla on PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One in 2016 and on 3DS, Vita, Switch, and iOS in later years. In 2017, Locomalita’s Super Hydorah released on PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Vita, with releases on Switch and iOS the following year.
One of the biggest signings for Abylight as a publisher came in 2017 when the studio signed a deal with Heart Machine for the publishing rights to a special edition of Hyper Light Drifter on the Switch. The game had been nominated for multiple awards in 2016’s Golden Joystick Awards and Game Awards and won the Excellence in Visual Art and Audience Awards in the 2016 Independent Games Festival.
“As publishers, we sign with very few developers because we get very committed,” Gaspar said. “It’s not just something we do in bulk. We invest a lot into the projects. It’s a long-term relationship.”
With Abylight’s development help, Hyper Light Drifter released on the Switch in September of 2018. Abylight then helped develop and bring the game to iOS in July of 2019. As a sign of their hard work and how far they’ve come as a studio, the iOS version of Hyper Light Drifter won iPad Game of the Year Award in the 2019 Apple Awards.
As for future publishing work, Gaspar wasn’t able to share any current publishing projects Abylight is doing, but said to expect announcements in October. On the development side, the studio is hard at work on a reboot to the Prison Tycoon franchise, titled Prison Tycoon: Under New Management, which was released in early access form in July of 2021.
Abylight’s goal going forward, according to Gaspar, is continuing the push to become a publishing powerhouse in the Spanish video game landscape.
“We’re not a one hit wonder, but we’re also not a spring flower,” Gaspar said. “I want us to become the most powerful [publisher], the biggest. It could take a minute, but it’s ok, we’re going to get there. We’re here to stay.”
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