What the business is
A community-first game studio, founded by content creators, building the cross-platform hero-collector RPG Godforge.
Starting capital
$14M committed: $6M in the initial startup phase, with the community a major contributor, plus an $8M second round
How it started
Founded in 2023 by Simon 'HellHades' Lockerby and Dan 'Phixion' Francis (co-founders of HH Gaming) and Hisham 'Sham' Saleh (CEO of Skeleton Hand), evolving from content creation and guild leadership into a studio where players help shape the games.
What happened
The community helped raise $6M during the initial startup phase and was a major contributor to the second round. Godforge entered its Alpha phase with a custom gameplay mode, 'Caverns of Chaos', built to test core systems and retention, drawing on the active HH Gaming and HellHades communities.
What has to be true
Starting from a 2-million-strong audience removes the cold-start problem that kills most new game studios.
Community funding doubles as pre-market validation: contributors are the first retention cohort.
Alpha modes like Caverns of Chaos turn feedback into retention data before the marketing spend begins.
Fair monetisation is the differentiator in a hero-collector genre notorious for extractive design.
What can be applied
An audience is a balance sheet: a creator-turned-founder can convert trust into funding, testing and distribution before the product even ships.
Aftermath
As of 14 August 2025, Godforge was in Alpha with a full worldwide launch scheduled for Q1 2026. No revenue or player-count figures for the game itself have been reported yet.
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