Russian Developer Explains How Indie Studios Can Maintain Project Quality with Limited Resources

Kirill Bubenko shared hands-on strategies for scaling small studios.

Indie developers frequently struggle to hire because they use specialized tools and pipelines, which narrows the pool of suitable candidates. Kirill Bubenko of Orc Group discussed this at the session “Game Dev Professions 2025: Who’s Being Hired Right Now” during the inaugural Moscow International Video Games Week.

He outlined practical methods for growing an indie studio while preserving product quality and maintaining control despite limited resources.

Orc Group is a two-person team building a game on a proprietary C++ engine, which means they must sometimes outsource to rare specialists. The studio avoids experimenting with inexperienced hires.

Bubenko says that effective talent sourcing is the cornerstone of growth. He singled out four reliable channels for finding people:

• Industry communities and competing studios.
• Social networks and recruitment platforms such as LinkedIn and HeadHunter.
• International contacts — he isn’t reluctant to engage overseas specialists even at higher rates; often a short consultation resolves a difficult issue.
• Mandatory test tasks. These help prevent hiring mistakes and also serve as a filter for candidate motivation.

Source: iXBT.games