Physical media in gaming has been quite a hot topic of late. Whether it's the game cards Nintendo is pushing for the Switch 2, Xbox's lack of support (including from Xbox themselves), or a host of other topics. Enter Lost In Cult.

For those unfamiliar Lost In Cult is a company that specializes in premium products within gaming, specifically art books. Or as they call them, Design Works. It's not just art books however and last month they announced a new venture, publishing physical video games.

Their new endeavour has been met with an overwhelmingly positive reception from those who still want discs. It's led many fans to ask what's next and wonder if their favourite game can be done next.

I was able to take some time to talk to one of the key figures of this new publishing arm of Lost In Cult, Ryan Brown, the Head of Publishing. Ryan and I spent awhile discussing the process and what comes next.

We also talked game preservation, what Nintendo is doing and why Xbox is having such a hard time getting support for physical media as well as whether they might get into the Xbox ring.

First off, how has it felt to announce that you guys were starting up a game publishing division? Take us through the process. How long had you been thinking of doing it, how long did it take from start to finish to get from concept to announce day? 

I think separately, I had been moving in that direction before joining Lost In Cult, and LIC had been wanting to grow into that space as a natural progression of everything we as a studio do. A lot of our audience had been asking for us to start producing physical games in our unique design-focused style, but actually, our game publishing division first began as an original, digital indie publisher!

We’ll still explore original games publishing very soon, but I’d say our physical games label started in late 2023, or more seriously in early 2024. We laid out our ethos first; what exactly we wanted to do, how we wanted to set ourselves apart. Knowing we wanted to focus on prestige, preservation, availability, all of those fundamentals were put in place at the start of 2024.

We signed our first four games before the first half of 2024, and partnered with both PM Studios and DoesItPlay? early that year too, so the core blocks were all here early on. We were in no great rush, so we spent a lot of time perfecting our offering, building a pipeline of titles, and making sure we were prepared to hit in the way we wanted. 

What made you decide on launching with Immortality, Thank Goodness You're Here and The Excavation Of Hob's Barrow? 

Genuinely, half of the reason is simply that they were our first signings – these three, and our next unannounced game, were among the first handful of games we finalized and signed over a year ago. We don’t want to leave developers hanging on with contracts too long, and I think these three titles specifically give a really fantastic look into the sorts of games you can expect from Lost In Cult and EDITIONS, which is otherwise a bit tricky to nail down a description of.

All three have distinctive art and gameplay styles, and are each in their own ways uniquely artistic and beautiful. There’s a few other considerations we have to make, both for our launch line-up and our monthly line-upm in general. As part of our preservation guarantee, we ensure games have all their content on the cart/disc, so that can sometimes dictate the pipeline a little if patches are needed or planned.

We also want to make sure we’re offering a very diverse range of titles, without anything too similar releasing too closely together, especially for those buying our tri-monthly bundle options. Finally, as we release one Switch game, and one PS5 game every month, and some titles we have signed for both platforms, others only being available on one or the other, that’s another element that can dictate the line-up timeline. It’s all a bit of an art form itself, juggling that timeline!

How many developers did you pitch the idea to and how has the reception been from those developers in general? 

I’d say we have either pitched to or continue having discussions with over 50 partners at the moment. The reception has been utterly exceptional. It doesn’t matter how proud you are of what you’re making, or how much you believe in it, unless outside forces align with that vision, and we were very grateful to have so many developers on board so early on.

Some of those early signings happened without us really having anything to show yet; just a pure alignment with our general vision, and faith in Lost In Cult’s prior quality output with our books and other items. That’s very humbling and heartwarming, and I don’t think we’ll ever forget that faith those developers had in us – which I think we have lived up to! 

So far, every game we’ve signed is one we directly reached out to; while we do receive pitches now, I imagine the majority of our releases will continue being those we have sought out, just due to our very specific curation process for EDITIONS. There’s been very few developers we have pitched to where we haven’t ended up signing, but even then the reception has been splendid, and were candidly due to us pitching very early on before we could visually show the amazing packages we’ve created.

The feedback from the community for the most part has been very good from what I've seen and that's clearly manifested with some of the editions selling out. The only occasional thing I've seen negative is price, which is naturally to be expected on a premium product. How have you felt the reception has been and what do you say to those who think the price is too high? 

That’s totally fair! I suppose it partially goes into why we’ve also launched a standard edition, mass retail copy on the same day we launch our EDITIONS versions. A lot of work has gone into EDITIONS, with exceptional quality materials, commissioned artwork and writing, a really prestigious package honouring the artistic achievements of each game; I reckon people are going to be very surprised and fall in love with them and the collection when they land in their hands soon.

We definitely believe what we’ve created there is reasonably priced and still significantly cheaper than most Collector’s Editions would be, especially given the quality offering. However, we’re not blind to the fact that EDITIONS just aren’t for everyone, and that’s okay! We have those people sorted too with our standard edition releases, ensuring our games aren’t locked away behind limited releases forever.

I always look at the logistics of some of these things. I recently went to buy the Clair Obscur set they released but it essentially cost me double just to ship it from overseas which was a dealbreaker for me sadly. What's been some of the biggest hurdles for you with this launch? 

This is an issue we tackled from the very beginning, by intentionally partnering with a US-based company for our physical games’ distribution. We’re based in the UK, and all of our EDITIONS items are printed in the UK with units then shipped to our US partner, so we have both Europe and the US covered for fairly easy, quick shipping.

Tariffs are always a hurdle, just because literally anything could happen at any point, but thankfully have not really been a major obstacle or impacted prices for us so far.

You've partnered with DoesItPlay? on this venture to ensure every game you ship is fully playable off the disc or cartridge. You, like your partner and others, talk about how important that is for preservation. What makes that so important in your eyes and what makes you stand out from other publishers in this regard? 

It’s really, really vital to us that our games can be taken off of a shelf in 50 years time, and work straight out of the box, without any internet connection or server access needed. All of our releases are checked and tested to make sure that’s the case, and we work very closely with developers to ensure our physicals have all of the content, patches, and updates on the cart/disc itself; in some cases, we’ll delay a game’s launch or shipping period to make sure a needed patch is printed on the actual release.

Nothing gets printed without testing and approval from DoesItPlay? first. Preservation is, of course, a larger topic than just physical releases, so I do want to be super transparent about that. Preservation is not just a buzzword to us. We also make sure several museums and archive groups have copies of our games, and where possible, other materials from the game like the build, concept art, and other in-development files.

We try to push relevant developers to implement sufficient end-of-life support. But, naturally, preservation is bigger than that still too, and we hope to do our bit to convince partners of that. We’re also big supporters of the Stop Killing Games campaign.

Speaking of everything being on a disc or cartridge, this has become a hot topic of late between the Nintendo Switch 2 game cards and Xbox barely putting anything on a disc, if they even have a disc. Let's start with Nintendo, what do you think of these cards, and will you be supporting the Nintendo Switch 2? 

It probably comes as no surprise that we’re not big fans of the Nintendo Switch 2 Game-Key Cards. We will be releasing physical Switch 2 games, and we will only ever be doing full on-the-cart releases. You’ll never see a Game-Key Card release or empty disc from us; at that point, it would feel like a bit of a waste of plastic.

I've gotta think these cards might be pretty expensive to produce as well compared to a disc. Between that and the max limit at the moment being 64gb do you fear more publishers will opt for the digital download rather than the full game? 

We unfortunately can’t talk about some of the production specifics, but I think we’re seeing more and more platform holders, and more and more publishers, want to push people towards digital even more. Subscription services are convenient and affordable – we’re not anti digital, but we are pro ownership, preservation, continued access, etc, and unfortunately those are completely at odds with the current digital media landscape.

Our worst nightmare is video games becoming fully Netflix-ified; just like how so many shows get delisted and disppear there if they don’t get enough viewing hour figures, that’s what we don’t want video gaming to devolve into. 

With that said, I’m in my 30s and grew up with physical media, and I think many people who are still buying physicals will always want to do so, and we’ll be around for a long time still. That demand for tangible games isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Switching over to Xbox, you didn't announce any games from your initial launch for Xbox. I know we talked a little bit when you announced this and you did so right around our report on Xbox changing their printing rules. Have you had anymore talks about publishing for Xbox, and can we expect future Xbox releases from Lost In Cult?

Nothing to announce yet, and candidly, nothing in the pipeline yet for Xbox. Definitely do want to support the platform still in the future, but nothing specific is planned yet. It’ll just depend on the right titles.

As someone who comes from the Xbox collecting community I've been a big advocate for it in the media. While that community may be smaller compared to the other systems they are very passionate and are willing to buy a lot. You've probably seen the recent outcry after they announced codes in a box for their upcoming games. 

Yeah, it’s a shame to see the Xbox physical collecting community get let down so often. I want to be super transparent with Xbox collectors – the reason many companies avoid it is because while there’s a super dedicated community, the demand is still smaller than it is for other platforms – just because stuff like titles already being effectively free on Game Pass makes it trickier.

It’s just a unique, different type of console, and there needs to be a certain level of demand for a physical release to be derisked. Physical games are still comparatively niche, especially for indie games, so it really just has to be the right type of game. 

As I say, it’s definitely not a “never” for us, and we’re exploring a few different titles for the future. That’s not yet to guarantee anything, we genuinely do not have anything signed at time of writing. I just want to be totally, 100% honest and upfront with the Xbox community. I’m sure to keep you all waiting for more cool physicals!

This might be more a pitch from me than a question, but it feels like there's a massive opportunity sitting there for someone like Lost in Cult to work with Xbox and doing Editions with each Xbox release. The community would probably eat it up. Would you consider working with such a big publisher in that capacity? 

Ohhh yes, definitely. They only need to email us.

In all seriousness, EDITIONS are not necessarily restricted to indie games. They’re more often than not indies, because indies tend to match our artful approach more often, but we have also internally definitely envisioned the sort of thing you’re suggesting.

We’d love to be the go-to for AAA companies to give their games a proper physical release, even if not on day 1 to ensure it has all the content for those invested in physicals. There’s still a lot of money on the table for AAA companies to do that, and I think as the world does get progressively digital focused, companies like ours giving big titles this kind of specialist physical treatment is going to become more and more important.