Evil Empire details scaling to 50 contractors through Ubisoft and Konami co-development deals

Evil Empire scaled from four Dead Cells co-founders to 50 permanent contractors. The studio now runs parallel co-development lines with Ubisoft and Konami. Its Triple-i Initiative generated roughly 3 million wishlists in one week in April. Valve's one-featuring-per-year Steam policy and an unresolved early access doctrine mark its limits.

Evil Empire began as a four-person team continuing Dead Cells support for Motion Twin.
Headcount grew to 15 full-time staff on Dead Cells before reaching 50 permanent contractors.
The studio now runs several titles in parallel, per Pfeiffer.
Its live ops unit also supports external projects, including Blobfish Games' Brotato.

Evil Empire created Triple-i after finding no showcase fit for Rogue Prince of Persia's reveal.
The April 2026 edition produced about 3 million wishlists across participating games in one week.
That averaged roughly 65,000 wishlists per game, with some titles reaching six figures.
Laulan expects the October edition to under-perform April's, citing Steam's one-featuring-per-year limit already used.
"The last event in April was extremely successful... We made something like three million wishlists." - Ben Laulan, Head of Business

Ubisoft's Rogue Prince of Persia and Konami's Castlevania deals mark that scale-up's biggest tests.
"It comes with a cost." - Thomas Pfeiffer, CEO
Security and IT compliance requirements must be cleared before contracts proceed.
Time zone gaps and language differences add friction once production starts.
Pfeiffer still recommends the model to other indie studios despite that overhead.

Dead Cells and The Rogue Prince of Persia both launched through early access.
Castlevania: Belmont's Curse skipped early access entirely.
Laulan says the studio has not settled on an approach for its other projects.
"We haven't figured out yet what makes the most sense for us." - Ben Laulan, Head of Business
Rising player expectations, which Laulan credits partly to Hades, make early access harder to justify.

Evil Empire does not use AI-generated code or assets in production, according to Pfeiffer.
Pfeiffer ties the decision to preserving a shared creative struggle, independent of output quality.
"If you are collaborating with a machine... The meaning of the product is very different." - Thomas Pfeiffer, CEO
He acknowledges AI coding may eventually outperform individual developers on technical merit.

For Publishers & Developers: Schedule indie reveals for spring showcases, when the annual storefront featuring slot remains unused.
For UA & Marketing: Reserve extra paid budget for autumn showcase launches to replace missing platform featuring lift.
For Service Vendors: Pitch IT-security compliance and localization packages to indies pursuing major-publisher co-development contracts.