It has been nine years since Mike Rose founded the indie publishing house No More Robots. In that time the company has carved out a respectable niche, largely thanks to a back‑catalog that includes the wildly popular bike‑racing title Descenders – the very first game released under the No More Robots banner and still a strong seller today. Now the studio is preparing to launch its first self‑developed title, a cruise‑ship management simulator called Cruise Control.
The road to that release has been anything but straightforward. The seed for the project was planted during a conversation between Rose and Dan Foster, a veteran of Team 17 who had joined No More Robots to handle console ports and bring multiplayer expertise to the table.
Their discussion sparked the idea of a team‑based online shooter. The shooter entered development, consumed three years of work, and even attracted interest from a “big company” that Rose describes as “someone you would know very well.” That potential partner eventually pulled out, saying the project wasn’t a good fit. The timing coincided with the brief launch and rapid removal of Concord, a signal that the online‑shooter market was becoming treacherous. Rose admits that, as a tiny studio, No More Robots could not simply release a multiplayer shooter on its own.
“I was crushed,” he says. “It was one of the most unpleasant feelings I’ve ever had in this industry, especially coming from a partner I deeply respect.” With the shooter shelved, Rose had to decide what his five‑person team would tackle next. The answer was Cruise Control. He recalls thinking, “That’s a thing we could make quickly, and it’s a genre on PC that does well.” The concept originally resembled a cruise‑ship management game in the vein of Two Point Hospital or Two Point Museum, but over time it morphed into a puzzle‑oriented experience inspired by titles such as Mini Motorways.
Releasing a game that the studio itself has built feels radically different from publishing someone else’s work. The anxiety level is higher, but the upside is also far greater. Rose explains that every sale of Cruise Control will be worth three or four times as much to No More Robots because the company retains 100 % of the revenue, whereas with published titles it only receives a modest cut.
If Cruise Control can match the performance of their earlier hits, the financial impact would be “massive.” Should Cruise Control succeed, Rose hints that the dormant shooter could be resurrected, albeit perhaps in a more modest form. “PvP shooters aren’t viable for us as a small studio,” he says. “I’m thinking about re‑tooling it into a PvE experience.” Looking back on the past few years, Rose describes the broader games industry as a “massacre.” The COVID‑driven boom did not translate into rapid expansion for No More Robots; in fact, the prospect of scaling up “scared the shit” out of him, which spared the company from the deep cuts many larger studios later endured.
He calls the survival strategy an “accidental bit of genius.” At the end of 2021 he split all profits among staff, giving everyone a generous bonus. He expected the same pattern to repeat in 2022, but when it didn’t, the company simply broke even. “We don’t need to make loads of money,” Rose says. “Everyone’s getting paid, we’re putting out games, we’re having fun.
I know it sounds naïve and stupid, but somehow it works.” The publishing model itself has remained fairly consistent. Descenders was built on a five‑figure budget, as were most of the label’s other releases, including Hypnospace Outlaw and Yes, Your Grace. A handful of titles received larger budgets during the pandemic, and Rose admits the company was “bit a couple of times for that.” Today the budget ceiling has returned to five figures, with the notable exception of Another Door, an upcoming multiplayer roguelike funded at $180,000. Rose recounts a conversation with his wife about Another Door: “I was so sure about this one.
She just said go for it.” The game has already generated a flood of wishlists, and Rose believes it could become another Descenders‑sized hit. He emphasizes that organic interest—steady, upward‑trending wishlist numbers on Steam—is a far better indicator of future success than spikes caused by influencer pushes or paid marketing bursts.
One of the most striking successes for No More Robots remains Descenders, which has now surpassed $35 million in revenue. Remarkably, about half of those sales occurred in the last year alone, with a sudden surge between April and September 2025 that Rose can’t fully explain. He attributes part of the phenomenon to the game’s accidental resemblance to a Roblox experience. “Kids can just launch Descenders, hold the trigger, and the bike goes ‘brrrr,’” he laughs.
“We didn’t design it for that audience; we were aiming at hardcore mountain‑bike fans in their 30s. Yet 99 % of Steam reviews are from kids saying ‘bike goes brrrr.’” Because of that unexpected demographic, Roblox approached No More Robots about creating a Roblox‑specific version of Descenders. The talks lasted about six months and involved a ten‑step approval process, only to be shut down at the final stage by Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki, who felt the game was too different from anything on the platform and might confuse users.
Rose admits he semi‑regrets not taking the gamble, noting that Roblox’s massive user base could have offered a huge upside, but the studio lacked the expertise to execute the port safely. The company has refocused on PC releases after a period of console‑centric titles delivered through Game Pass deals, which Rose describes as “huge” for the scale of games No More Robots publishes.
He also stresses that modern wishlist metrics, rather than pre‑orders, now serve as the primary health check for a title’s prospects. A steady climb in wishlists signals organic buzz, whereas flat or erratic graphs suggest reliance on forced marketing pushes.
As the studio edges toward what could be its biggest hit yet with Another Door, Rose admits that after nine years he feels “drained.” He doesn’t see himself continuing in the same role much longer and is already thinking about new challenges and ideas. Even though No More Robots has never grown into a large operation—Rose still handles many of the label’s day‑to‑day tasks—the pressure of repeated launches, sleepless nights, and the weight of expectations have taken their toll. “I’m moving toward 100 % done,” he says, leaving the timeline open‑ended but clear that a change is on the horizon.