naiwa 2026-05-20

Developers are massively creating similar projects.

Krafton's Director of Investments in Europe, Victor Lee, stated that the video game market is oversaturated with roguelike-style projects featuring deck-building elements.Speaking at the Digital Dragons conference, he noted that over the past year he has been presented with about 250 such games, many of which resemble Balatro and differ only in details.In his opinion, industry trends are changing increasingly faster, and developers strive to copy successful ideas, which complicates the selection of projects for investment.Lee also emphasized that the term "roguelike"cannot be considered a full-fledged genre, as it unites too many different game formats.He advised studios to release projects faster, focusing on current tags on Steam, otherwise interest in them may disappear by the time of release.At the same time, he noted that he prefers to work with teams genuinely passionate about their genre, even if it is not at the peak of popularity.As an example of successful cooperation, he mentioned Subnautica 2, published by Krafton: the game reached two million sales just 12 hours after its early access release.
Subnautica 2 sold one million copies within an hour after release — naiwa | UniversumThe game set a series record for concurrent players on Steam — 460,000 players. universum.ink