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Poncle Says Vampire Survivors Has Passed 27 Million Players
Vampire Survivors remains one of the clearest examples of a modern indie hit turning into a sustained business. Built around a brutally simple loop, it expanded through platforms, updates, and word of mouth rather than blockbuster production values. Now, poncle has shared that the game has surpassed 27 million players across all platforms, giving the studio both financial flexibility and a reason to think bigger than one title.
That player count also signals an important aspect of Vampire Survivors’ role in the market. It is not just a Steam success story. It is a multi-platform mainstay that has built an audience large enough to support multiple directions at once, which is exactly what poncle is now outlining.
15 Projects in Development and Two New Offices Planned
In an interview with The Game Business, Chief Strategy Officer Matteo Sapio said poncle currently has around 15 active projects in flight, with their latest project, Vampire Crawlers, available now. That slate includes DLC, new original work, and collaboration projects rather than a single “next game” pipeline.
To support that workload, poncle plans to open two new offices, one in Italy and one in Japan. The key qualifier is scale. Sapio says both locations will remain intentionally small, which suggests poncle is trying to expand capacity without turning itself into a slow-moving corporate machine.
The Japan office is particularly strategic. Beyond simply hiring in another market, it is positioned as a pathway to closer partnerships with Japanese IP holders, and potentially a more direct route into collaborations that make sense culturally and commercially.
Three Business Tracks: Iteration, Originals, and Collaborations
Sapio described poncle’s work as split across three core tracks. The first is experimenting with and extending the Vampire Survivors style loop into other genres, which is the “iterate on what works” lane.
The second track is building entirely original IP, a necessary step if the studio wants a future where it is not defined by one breakout formula. The third track is collaborations, applying the Survivors approach to established franchises, as with crossovers like Warhammer Survivors.
Sapio also notes that poncle’s proprietary tech stack is well-suited for this kind of crossover work, which makes collaborations less of a one-off and more of a repeatable capability.
Publishing Is Paused, Not Abandoned
One notable change is that poncle has paused its publishing initiative under the “poncle presents” banner. The studio has framed this as a temporary step back rather than a permanent exit, implying publishing could return once internal capacity and priorities settle.
For now, the takeaway is that the studio is scaling deliberately. With 27 million players behind Vampire Survivors and 15 projects underway, the studio is moving from “indie miracle” to a structured operation, but it is trying to do it without losing the speed and focus that made the hit possible in the first place.
