The indie game Starlight ReVolver caused a stir even before its release but ultimately failed spectacularly on Steam. The background reveals what it was really about.
What kind of game was it? Starlight ReVolver started as a major hopeful on Steam. The isometric 3-player co-op roguelite was inspired by genre giants like Hades and immediately captivated many players with its colorful anime art style.
The title went viral on TikTok and gathered over 100,000 wishlists on Steam. The demo was also among the most played at the Steam Next Fest 2025. The developers, Pad Labs, also heavily invested in promotional campaigns and collaborations with content creators. Everything looked like a sure indie hit, but then things turned out differently, as the YouTube channel Akshon shows.
Here you can see the trailer:
Money not just for a game
What did the developers invest so much in? A post by founder Daniel Zho revealed that the studio had raised an incredible 17.5 million US dollars from so-called venture capitalists – absurdly high for an unknown indie team. The community became suspicious. It turned out that Zho had previously worked deeply in the crypto sector.
But the money did not only flow into the game. The powerful investors actually funneled the millions into another vision: A kind of “Anime-Roblox”. Pad Labs was secretly developing an AI-driven UGC platform (User Generated Content). Players were to receive tools to create their own anime games with AI. Starlight ReVolver was primarily intended as a showcase and proof-of-concept for this much larger technology platform.
What did the game really fail at? When Starlight ReVolver launched in early access in August 2025, player numbers were catastrophic: only 499 players logged in simultaneously at peak, according to SteamDB.
On one hand, the leaks about the crypto past and the AI platform caused a massive backlash. Many considered the project a crypto or NFT scam and boycotted it, making hardly anyone willing to spend money.
On the other hand, the game itself was in an extremely poor technical state at release. Characters glitched out of the world, in-game currency vanished from accounts, and the essential multiplayer system did not work for many, all for 20 euros.
Thus, interest completely dwindled. Three months after the release, Pad Labs laid off half the staff. In February 2026, the studio was completely shut down. Neither the game nor the much-publicized AI platform ever fully saw the light of day – and the 17 million dollars vanished into thin air.
Although the signs should have catapulted the title to one of the next indie hits, the developers of Starlight ReVolver ultimately stumbled over their own backers and were unable to convince players of their title. Another successful indie game, however, did manage to do that: Developers on Steam create a small game in 2 months, sell it for €3 and are now millionaires
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