Fuse Games CEO details three-tier distributed model behind Star Wars: Galactic Racer

Fuse Games built Star Wars: Galactic Racer with a core team of 75. Webster says the core averaged far smaller through most of development. The PS5 version holds a Metacritic score of 88. Three tiers of external partners supplied the rest of the capacity. "What we wanted to do was keep that core small, smaller than perhaps you might have done in the past, and scale capacity and capability with what we call distributed development" - Matt Webster, CEO, Fuse Games

Webster frames the small core as a hedge against grow-and-shrink staffing cycles.
He ranks lost knowledge as the larger cost of downsizing.
"When you shrink, there's a personal impact to people, but you also lose an incredible amount of knowledge, which I think is probably way more expensive to retrieve." - Matt Webster, CEO, Fuse Games
Rockstar now has more than 4,700 staff.
That figure is the conventional in-house AAA benchmark.

Outsourcing is the outer tier, covering art assets from lower-cost locations.
Work in this tier runs on a brief-output-integrate cycle.
External development is the middle tier, for self-contained features.
An outside studio built the photo mode end to end.
Unreal let Fuse slot that module in with little integration friction.
Co-development is the inner tier, embedded in Fuse's stand-ups, Slack and codebase.
"They are, to all intents and purposes, an extension of our team. They just happen to work for another company" - Matt Webster, CEO, Fuse Games

All co-development partners were UK-based, including Expression Games.
Webster cites high-frequency communication as the reason for matching time zones.
He says UK vendors now seek co-dev work for variety on long projects.
In his account, they no longer take it only to keep the lights on.
Fuse also screened partners against its five company values.

Webster warns that studios cannot retrofit this structure.
"Every additional partner has a disproportionately higher load on you" - Matt Webster, CEO, Fuse Games
Each added partner raises the management overhead on the core team.
That overhead caps how far the model can scale.

MobyGames lists 1,109 people in the game's credits.
Credited vendors include Electric Square, Mindwalk and Original Force.
One critic argues the model shifts layoff exposure onto contractor studios.
The small-core claim describes Fuse's employment structure.
The total production headcount is far larger.

Fuse has patched the game four times since release.
Webster says audience feedback has already reordered the priority list.
The party size limit is set to double within weeks.
Webster expects post-launch content announcements in the coming weeks and months.
He calls it too early to judge sales against expectations.

For Investors & VC: Add total credited vendor headcount to diligence alongside core payroll when valuing lean AAA studios.
For Publishers & Developers: Budget dedicated producer headcount per external partner before greenlighting distributed AAA scopes.
For Service Vendors: Pitch embedded co-dev retainers to newly founded studios before their org design locks.