Game investment
Scaffold x Xsolla: A powerful accelerator program for indie game studios
April 8, 2026•6 min
There's a moment most indie game studios hit sooner or later. The game is coming together. The creative vision is strong. And then the questions start: How do we get this in front of a publisher? What should a pitch deck even look like? How do we turn this thing we've built into a business that lasts?
For six Canadian studios, those questions got the needed answers in the Fall of 2025.
A program built around a real problem
Scaffold Institute, a Canadian non-profit supporting independent game studios across Western and Atlantic Canada, had been watching this pattern for years. Studios full of creative talent would pour everything into their games, only to stall out on the business side. Not because they lacked ambition, but because nobody had shown them how.
Xsolla had been building accelerator programs, structured courses, mentor networks, and publisher connections, and was looking for the right partner to put them to work. When Scaffold and Xsolla connected, the fit was obvious. Scaffold knew the studios, and Xsolla had the infrastructure. Together, they designed a 12-week program with a deliberately specific goal in mind: to take studios that already have games in development and get them publisher-ready.
Canada made sense as a starting point. Scaffold's existing relationships with its member studios meant faster feedback, more honest conversations, and a better chance of learning what actually worked.
12 weeks, from the inside
Each studio entered the program at a different stage and with different needs, but everyone started in the same place: Xsolla's "Pitching to Publishers" course module. It was the common foundation -the thing every studio needed regardless of where their game stood.
From there, each team charted its own path. Some focused on marketing strategy. Others dug into funding structures or production workflow. A few spent most of their time refining their demos. The flexibility was the point. A one-size-fits-all program wouldn't have served a husband-and-wife horror game studio and a full team building an open-world Western equally well. And because studios kept access to the full Xsolla course catalog for 12 months, the learning didn't stop once the scheduled program concluded.
Mentorship was where the program came alive. The program matched each studio with experienced professionals whose backgrounds aligned with the studio's specific challenges. These weren't one-off conversations. Mentors worked with studios across multiple sessions, setting exercises, establishing goals, and adjusting expectations as the weeks progressed. Xsolla's internal team ran weekly check-ins to keep things moving.
One element that studios repeatedly cited as unexpectedly valuable was the direct involvement of Xsolla's quality assurance team. QA reviewed demos and pitch materials with the same rigor they'd bring to any professional product — detailed notes, specific suggestions, honest assessments. For at least one studio, those notes completely changed the direction of their development entirely.
The program wrapped with a curated publisher showcase, which was not a generic networking event. At the showcase, Xsolla brought in publishers actively seeking games like those these studios had built. That curation mattered. Every conversation in the room had a reason to happen.
What happened after
All six studios walked away with polished demos and publisher pitch decks. That was the goal, and the program delivered on it. But the real story started after the showcase ended.
Below, we take a look at five of the participating studios and their stories.
KIB Games: a husband-and-wife team that entered with Gothic Hell: Survivors, a dark action-survival game steeped in Gothic horror, found that doors kept opening. Publishers who attended the showcase followed up. IGN and Famitsu ran features on them. They received a Calgary Arts Development grant. And then came the one that changed things: a prestigious Epic MegaGrant. For a two-person studio, that kind of recognition doesn't just validate the game; it also validates the entire path.
Second Fiddle Studio came in with Grey Wake, an atmospheric narrative exploration game, and a candid admission -they'd spent years getting good at making games and almost no time learning how to run a business. By the end of the 12 weeks, they were in a completely different position. They were fielding calls from publishers and actively negotiating contracts. As they put it, they went from being uncertain about how to sell their game to landing real conversations with real partners.
Will-o-Works showed up with something unexpected: Star Apprentice: Dazzling Danmaku Detective. This game fuses detective mystery mechanics with bullet-hell action in a vibrant pixel-art anime style. The mentorship helped them sharpen their demo, but what they valued most was the clarity it brought to their studio's direction heading into 2026.
Braveshell Studio worked on StormSphere, an adventure game with a painterly art style that immediately stood out. Their mentor relationship became so productive that after the program ended, they hired their Xsolla mentor to continue working together. They're still using the course platform for their ongoing studio development, and they've been leveraging their polished demo to pursue new programs and funding sources.
Neojac Entertainment surprised mentors and peers with how far they pushed Frontier Legends (an open-world Wild West adventure) during the program. What they found most valuable wasn't any single piece of advice. It was known in advance which publishers would be at the showcase so that they could tailor their presentations accordingly.
What comes next
The program proved how effective this opportunity can be for game creators. Studios with strong creative visions but limited business infrastructure can close that gap when they receive the right structure, seasoned mentors, and industry connections.
Scaffold Institute is now planning a larger version of the program, expanding the cohort and refining the approach with mentor matching, content delivery, and the publisher showcase format, based on what they learned from the first batch of studios.
As John Nguyen, Regional Vice President of Xsolla Canada, put it: when organizations collaborate to share knowledge, expertise, and networks, extraordinary opportunities follow.
"Six studios entered a 12-week program. All of them left better prepared. Several of them left with trajectories that had fundamentally changed. The program gave them structure, expertise, connections, and deadlines. What they did with all of that was up to them."
That was always the idea.
Learn more about Scaffold and the Scaffold x Xsolla Game Program at scaffold-institute.com. Head to xsolla.com to discover all the things Xsolla develops to help game developers fund, launch, and scale successful businesses.
KIB Games: a husband-and-wife team that entered with Gothic Hell: Survivors, a dark action-survival game steeped in Gothic horror, found that doors kept opening. Publishers who attended the showcase followed up. IGN and Famitsu ran features on them. They received a Calgary Arts Development grant. And then came the one that changed things: a prestigious Epic MegaGrant. For a two-person studio, that kind of recognition doesn't just validate the game; it also validates the entire path.
Second Fiddle Studio came in with Grey Wake, an atmospheric narrative exploration game, and a candid admission -they'd spent years getting good at making games and almost no time learning how to run a business. By the end of the 12 weeks, they were in a completely different position. They were fielding calls from publishers and actively negotiating contracts. As they put it, they went from being uncertain about how to sell their game to landing real conversations with real partners.
Will-o-Works showed up with something unexpected: Star Apprentice: Dazzling Danmaku Detective. This game fuses detective mystery mechanics with bullet-hell action in a vibrant pixel-art anime style. The mentorship helped them sharpen their demo, but what they valued most was the clarity it brought to their studio's direction heading into 2026.
Braveshell Studio worked on StormSphere, an adventure game with a painterly art style that immediately stood out. Their mentor relationship became so productive that after the program ended, they hired their Xsolla mentor to continue working together. They're still using the course platform for their ongoing studio development, and they've been leveraging their polished demo to pursue new programs and funding sources.
Neojac Entertainment surprised mentors and peers with how far they pushed Frontier Legends (an open-world Wild West adventure) during the program. What they found most valuable wasn't any single piece of advice. It was known in advance which publishers would be at the showcase so that they could tailor their presentations accordingly.
What comes next
The program proved how effective this opportunity can be for game creators. Studios with strong creative visions but limited business infrastructure can close that gap when they receive the right structure, seasoned mentors, and industry connections.
Scaffold Institute is now planning a larger version of the program, expanding the cohort and refining the approach with mentor matching, content delivery, and the publisher showcase format, based on what they learned from the first batch of studios.
As John Nguyen, Regional Vice President of Xsolla Canada, put it: when organizations collaborate to share knowledge, expertise, and networks, extraordinary opportunities follow.
"Six studios entered a 12-week program. All of them left better prepared. Several of them left with trajectories that had fundamentally changed. The program gave them structure, expertise, connections, and deadlines. What they did with all of that was up to them."
That was always the idea.
Learn more about Scaffold and the Scaffold x Xsolla Game Program at scaffold-institute.com. Head to xsolla.com to discover all the things Xsolla develops to help game developers fund, launch, and scale successful businesses.Featured articles
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