Digital Bandidos formed last year as an indie game publishing company just as many publishers were going out of business.
Led by Steve Escalante and Lance James, the company has raised millions of dollars and is helping to fill the gap and provide funding for indie game developers. It’s not an easy task, considering 17,000 small games debut in a given year and game studios have been disappearing by the dozens.
But with decades of experience, Escalante said in an interview with GamesBeat that his company can provide expert guidance and serve as scrappy outlaws who can fight injustice on behalf of indie game developers — hence the name Digital Bandidos.
One of the company’s latest projects is Let Them Come: Onslaught, a survivors-like horror experience where everything from alien hordes to dynamic weather is out to get you. It is being developed by Denver, Colorado-based Tuatara Games. It is being unveiled at The Mix Kinda Funny Spring Showcase at GDC 2025. The game will be published by Digital Bandidos across PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC later this year.
Let Them Come: Onslaught strands players on an alien world overrun by horrors with only one
way out — nuke it from orbit! Every choice of weapon and upgrade impacts your chances of
survival. Fight against overwhelming odds until the timer hits zero and the nuke drops, leveling
the battlefield in spectacular fashion.
“It’s great to be partnered with the talented team at Digital Bandidos, who I’ve had the pleasure
of working with before on a previous title in the Let Them Come franchise,” said Klemen Lozar,
Game Director at Tuatara Games, in a statement. “We’re very excited to be bringing the game to a wide
audience by hitting all the major platforms: Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and the Switch.”
Tuatara Games is just one of the studios that has previously worked with the indie publishing
veterans at Digital Bandidos. The publisher is also re-engaging with other former studio partners, signifying the trust developers have in the team. More updates on this and many other titles from Digital Bandidos will be delivered in the coming weeks.
“You always hope that the teams you work with in the past would like to work with you again,”
said Escalante. “Relationships in this industry are critical; the lifeblood of my 25 years working in games. Having already signed a former team with Soulstone Survivors and adding Let Them Come: Onslaught to our slate supports two company goals. First, sign games that can cross-promote each other through a shared audience. And second, work with people you like, know they can deliver, and can create amazing game experiences. “Although Soulstone Survivors and Let Them Come: Onslaught both fit in the survivors-like/bullet heaven genre, each unleashes a uniquely electrifying spin on the formula. Fans of the
genre can expect explosive action and intense challenges, quickly discovering that each title’s distinct tone, style, and gameplay ensures two completely different—and equally thrilling—experiences.”
“Instead of wielding a rapier, bow, or blaster, we carry decades of game publishing knowledge and cutting-edge experience. We aim to arm independent developers to take on the ever-more competitive games marketplace—and win, the company’s web page says.
Escalante believes his company can help developers and understand them because they’ve been passionate gamers since childhood. Escalante wants to create a modern publisher that deals with the big challenges that developers are facing.
Unveiled in August 2024, Digital Bandidos was founded by former employees of Versus Evil, including founder and general manager Escalante. The company recently added CFO Richard Iwaniuk, marketing head Richard Iggo and communications manager James Batchelor.
Digital Bandidos is planning to take the mobile game Town of Salem 2, the sequel to a social deduction game, to current-generation PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch consoles later this year.
The company is also preparing updates on a number of other projects due to arrive in 2025 and beyond, including the latest on Soulstone Survivors and the unveiling of several new games in development.
Digital Bandidos is a full-service publisher currently looking for PC and console titles with development budgets of up to $3 million. It specializes in role-playing, strategy and action games, but is open to any genre on any platform.
Tough vibes in the industry
“Obviously, there’s a very different vibe and somber tone. With the turmoil and the stuff that happened after selling Versus Evil last year, we’ve been trying to figure out the problems of the industry,” Escalante said. “What are the industry’s needs? What’s exciting for me is getting back to talking about game pitches and things that can help indies.”
Escalante noted that triple-A games are still in a tough state, with the Warner Bros. and Ubisoft teams still having big layoffs in 2025, when things were supposed to get better. An estimated 35,000 game industry people have been laid off in the past three years.
“Indies are still not getting funded. Those things are still weighing pretty heavy on the industry right now,” Escalante said. “I’m talking with so many teams and many of them are running out of money.”
He noted it’s a big deal that game engine makers Unity and Epic Games won’t have much presence on the show floor at GDC this year.
“That’s a recurring them. The publishers are gone. The devs have their rights back,” he said.
Who needs a new publisher?
The encouraging thing is that new publishers like Digital Bandidos and more recently Acclaim Entertainment have been formed. Escalante believes the fundamental tasks of publishers don’t go away even during a downturn. Those tasks include providing funding, marketing, porting, development help and more.
“Bandidos is really focused on tools and things that we can do to help the industry, to help those guys that are doing that,” Escalante said. “We’re developing some of that right now. But I agree. The optimism of having the publishers with the idea of funding is a good sign, but, as I said, we are still seeing some of the fallout of those publishers either not making it or running out of money.”
As for the recent Matthew Ball slide deck, Escalante had strong opinions. He spent a lot of time in meetings in the past year talking about the challenges.
“What I really continue to see as the number one issue is the need for retention and post-launch support for games,” Escalante said. “Funding of course has to happen first. There are a lot of teams that will still get into the trenches and do it themselves. But the other issue is discovery, and not a lot of people are talking about that as much as I think that they should.”
Escalante said Digital Bandidos is hyper focused on that discovery, retention and post-launch support. That helps games sell more units, and that’s critical. He noted that Epic Games Store and Steam provide some support, but they are doing that for a fraction of the titles that are launching.
“I think community is going to be one of the strongest marketing tools out there for people, whether that’s leveraging Discord, whether that’s leveraging the more grassroots type places. How do I need to be building that guerrilla marketing strategy to essentially build out the approach in terms of how I get people excited about a game?”
Devs need to break down the journey that they’re on with players, and how they can get a flywheel of viral growth going if they plan a launch right. Getting a lot of wishlists are great for a game, but they’re not much good if they’re two years old.
“Triple-A companies just insert cash and do an announcement on a big stage. The indies are forced to punch through using guerrilla marketing,” Escalante said. “They’re they’re forced to announce two or three years out. A triple-A company can even shadow drop a game on the day of launch.”
He added, “It’s been an interesting journey for me as I’ve been questioning myself and how we deliver content for our partners. We’ll talk more about that in the future, but for indies, it’s been an uphill battle. How do we mitigate those risks.”
While there have been surprise indie hits like Balatro and Animal Well, it’s still hard to stand out among 19,000 games launched on Steam (2024 numbers).
Setting itself apart
Digital Bandidos has grown to seven people and it is looking to stay small and agile. One of its titles, Soulstone Survivors is already in the market and it has done over a million units sold on the PC. Digital Bandidos will handle the console launches. Town of Salem 2 is coming, as is a new title dubbed Let Them Come Onslaught.
With one of the titles, Digital Bandidos hopes to advance the developer money to get started on a new title while waiting for the first title to get off the ground. Most of the new games will be coming later this year and early next year, Escalante said.
While new launches like the upcoming Switch 2 could be enticing, Escalante is focused on the platforms that have a big installed base today, like PlayStation 5. Escalante also hopes to take some titles like Town of Salem to alternative platforms, like Telegram or Discord.
“I’ve never been one to shy away from a platform if it increases my revenues by 5%,” he said. “If it only costs me this much money to get to these platforms, let’s do it because of the long tail.”
Getting up in the morning
Escalante started in games about 25 years ago. He noted he recently lost his friend, Carter Lipscomb, who also spent decades in the industry. Lipscomb helped Escalante self-publish his first game. That started Escalante on the indie track. Some friends will be holding a wake for Lipscomb at the Game Developers Conference on Monday.
Escalante ran Versus Evil for about 10 years, and yet he still felt there was good work to be done. He had conversations with a 100 people, and they said they still needed publishers.
“So many of the developers we talked to said, ‘I’m so glad you are doing this. We would love to work with you,’” Escalante said. “It was nice validation by the right people. I enjoy geeking out with the development teams about their game, about how we can help them. I get up in the morning for it. I consider myself to be extremely lucky.”
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