Instead of merging teams or centralizing projects, the holding allows studios to retain full creative freedom while supporting each other across development and marketing. Studios can share specialized expertise and real production experience, reducing the need for outsourcing.
The initiative comes at a time when the global games industry is facing widespread layoffs, studio closures, and increasing consolidation among large publishers. By forming a developer-led holding, the studios behind Nova Assembly aim to build a more resilient model for independent teams navigating an increasingly volatile market, as outlined in the group’s open letter.
The combined development pipeline includes 10 games spanning several genres, generating more than 3 million wishlists across upcoming titles and over 10 million video views.
- Unfrozen is developing Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era, which has surpassed one million wishlists on Steam and is ranked among the Top 10 most anticipated games on the platform.
- Sad Cat Studios’ REPLACED has accumulated more than 850,000 wishlists and ranked among the Top 30 most anticipated games globally on Steam.
- VEA Games’ Nikoderiko: The Magical World received an 82 Metacritic score.
- Game Garden’s mobile titles have generated over 100 million downloads.
- Weappy’s This Is the Police series has sold more than 1.5 million copies.
Denis Fedorov, which will serve as CEO of Nova Assembly, said:
“The formation of a single holding structure bringing together five commercially successful and highly promising game studios will not only enable creators of ambitious gaming projects to share invaluable expertise accumulated over years of experience, but will also allow for more efficient and strategic use of shared resources.
And all that without compromising creative independence, which ultimately remains the key driver of competitiveness in today’s challenging market.”
Denis Fedorov, Founder of Unfrozen
“In a world where we increasingly give over control to algorithms, we’re uniting with like-minded people to reinforce the human element: to exchange human ideas, offer each other human support, and make human decisions together.”
Ilya Yanovich, co-founder of Weappy and incoming Creative Director of Nova Assembly.
The first release from Nova Assembly will be REPLACED, launching April 14.
