Asmongold, Emiru & Co. form indie publisher Mad Mushroom

Streaming stars from OTK dip their toes into the publishing business

Marco Wutz | Jun 10, 2023

Asmongold, Emiru & Co. form indie publisher Mad Mushroom /

Streamers from Twitch and YouTube trying their hands at developing or publishing video games has been a bit of an industry trend in the last couple of months with more and more examples entering the scene. OTK, the company co-owned by popular gaming broadcasters such as Mizkif, Asmongold, and Sodapoppin, is the latest to announce a venture in this direction.

Taking the stage at 2023 Games Expo in Los Angeles, California, OTK announced that it has founded Mad Mushroom, a games publisher that will focus on working with indie games. OTK reaches an audience of more than 38 million people every month through all of its channels and hopes to leverage this wide reach for its titles.

Mad Mushroom wants to use OTK’s creators to “deliver the best publishing experience for developers by focusing on game visibility, marketing, and distribution.” They will participate in playtesting and scouting as well to find promising titles and further refine their gameplay.

Aside from OTK’s CEO Tips Out and the company’s streamers Asmongold, Emiru, Esfand, Extra Emily, NMPLOL, Mizkif, Sodapoppin, Cyr, and Tectone, Mad Mushroom’s key personnel consists of Mike Silbowitz as industry advisor as well as the talent roster of Mythic, which is another management company owned by OTK and boasts an impressive roster of influencers. Silbowitz has previously worked at Activision Blizzard, Square Enix, NCSOFT, and KRAFTON among other big industry names.

“Gaming is at the core of what we do,” Tips Out, OTK CEO and co-owner, said in a press release. “Mad Mushroom is a natural next step for us at OTK, and allows us to utilize our combined knowledge of the games industry to help develop and support games that we know our creators and audiences will love. We can showcase these games and studios to millions of gamers from a single stream, giving them immediate exposure and hopefully long-term success.”

You can learn more on Mad Mushroom’s website.

Published Jun 10, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg