TEN YEARS LATER, ONE MAGICAL TEAM

A letter from Karthik and Guha Bala

Team Velan,

As Velan reaches its 10th anniversary, we’ve been looking back at the simple plan we wrote when we started: build a studio around bold ideas, thoughtful craft, and people who can turn creative risk into games worth playing. A decade later, what surprises us most is how much that original belief still feels right.

That plan was never really about a checklist. It was about building a studio that could stay ambitious, adaptable, and human over the long term.

We’ll be honest about something up front: this letter is as much a reflection as it is a thank-you. Anniversary messages can sometimes make a company’s story sound cleaner than it really is, as if every bet paid off exactly as planned, and every creative instinct became a hit. That has never been the reality of making games. Our story is about taking risky creative ideas seriously, shaping them through craft and iteration, and turning them into experiences worth playing. Playing it safe was never the goal, because there is no real safety in a market that keeps changing.

The important thing is that we have continued to bet on bold ideas with the potential to break out, then kept iterating until they found their shape. Some of our best work barely resembles the original idea it came from. As you’ll often hear in this industry: it’s not a bug; it’s a feature. That’s the path we’ve always wanted to follow.

And we quite literally could not have done it without each and every one of you.

When we say the last ten years belong to the whole team at Velan, it is not a cliché. It could not be truer. Viper, our own game engine, exists because we have engineers who want to solve problems other engines could not. Putting a mixed reality racetrack in over a million living rooms around the world and bringing Knockout City to more than ten times that many people was no accident. Partnering with some of the biggest names in the industry to bring our games to market did not happen because of luck. Getting to work on a franchise as beloved as Star Fox did not happen without a powerhouse team that can push the boundaries of gameplay and technology the way this team can.

Launching six games over the last decade, across a broad variety of genres and platforms, is not exactly what we set out to do. But it is what happens when you gather curious people and give them space to invent. We did not want a studio that only makes one kind of game. We built a team with range, flexibility, and imagination to make almost anything.

Some of you grew into roles that did not exist when you arrived. Others started in one discipline and found your way to another. Many of you stayed through stretches that were not easy, when the path forward was not clear, and you chose to keep building anyway. We see all of it. Velan is not its logo, our office space, or even our games. It is the people behind everything: the people who care about the craft, support one another, and make this place feel like home.

This year, we also became a studio across two countries, opening our doors in Toronto alongside our origins in Troy. It is another milestone we are proud of, and it reflects the same belief that has guided the rest of this journey: bet on great people, give them room to be creative, and keep pursuing games that feel genuinely special.

Game developers looking for work can sometimes feel caught between two familiar paths: large studios, where individual contributions may disappear into the scale of the final product, and small indies, where chasing a creative dream can feel like taking a chance on a lottery ticket. Both paths are valid and worthy, but we believe there is another path that deserves more attention: an ambitious, independent studio that treats games as both a craft and a career, and that sets out to make new things in a sustainable way.

We believe smaller teams that punch above their weight are where a lot of the most interesting work will come from. For Velan, it means producing ambitious AA games built around established IPs that can deliver amazing experiences for highly engaged fandoms, as well as triple-i original games that stand apart as creative outliers.

That is the kind of studio we have tried to build. Our north star has not moved: we are still here to make breakthrough games that feel like magic. We will keep staying curious, taking on bold ideas, and sharpening the craft we have spent a decade honing. The next ten years should bring broader range, deeper mastery, and bigger ambitions than ever. And we will build that future alongside the people who have always been the only part that truly matters.

With gratitude,