OTK launches Mad Mushroom, an indie publisher that wants to make the next Among Us

Another content organization is getting into the business of putting new games in the hands of players. This time it’s OTK, as the gaming and media collective today announced the establishment of Mad Mushroom, a new game publishing company.

The announcement came at OTK’s 2023 Games Expo, conspicuously situated in the midst of Summer Game Fest. According to OTK, Mad Mushroom hopes to “deliver a diverse portfolio of high-quality indie games across genres by offering gamers a direct, authentic pipeline to small studio releases.”

Unlike projects undertaken by the likes of 100 Thieves or Dr Disrespect, Mad Mushroom isn’t seeking to create the next great AAA game. Instead, the focus of the publishing company will be smaller, hoping to produce indie titles that will blossom into cult hits and streaming sensations in the vein of Among Us and Dark and Darker.

OTK’s press release takes at least partial credit for the success of the aforementioned titles, and the group wants to continue to “leverage” the popularity of their combined streaming network—as well as the larger roster represented by Mythic Talent—to help small studio games reach massive audiences quickly and efficiently.

Related: Summer Game Fest 2023 showcase: the biggest announcements, reveals, and trailers as they happened

“Mad Mushroom is a natural next step for us at OTK,” says OTK CEO Tips Out. “We can showcase these games and studios to millions of gamers from a single stream, giving them immediate exposure and hopefully long-term success.”

In this way, Mad Mushroom seems far less like development projects run by content creators or esports organizations and more like Bigmode, the indie publishing company established by YouTuber Dunkey.

The new publishing company is a natural extension of the OTK Games Expo, another avenue in which the streaming collective has sought to showcase small studio games they believe in. But their next venture will be more hands-on, as the success of both the games that Mad Mushroom publishes and OTK’s respective content avenues will heavily depend upon how much fun those games are to stream and how many potential players OTK can drive to Mad Mushroom’s games by showcasing them live.

It’s an interesting twist on the “content creator turned video game maker” formula that’s been established over the last year or two and one that could substantially shift the streaming landscape in the near future as well.