While COVER has been actively expanding its business to video games with its own hololive-brand projects like hololive ERROR, Holoearthand Holo’s Hanafuda, the company is also making solid efforts to support the work of independent developers and creators willing to promote the hololive IP. Picking up where we left off in the previous article tracing the origins of the company, we asked COVER CEO Motoaki Tanigo “YAGOO” to tell us more about the tight mutual relationship between hololive production and its fanbase, and how it led to the creation of COVER’s indie publishing label holo Indie.
Fan works have always played a huge role in the success of COVER and hololive production, and ever since the VTubing branch’s early days, the company had a clear set of guidelines for derivative content like fan art, livestream highlight clips and even video games. As YAGOO explained, while the guidelines were there to help fan works tie into promotion for their talents, “at the same time, [the decision to implement such guidelines] also stemmed from our desire to support creators.”
As the fanbase grew, and with it the quality of fanmade content, COVER had to devise some workarounds for their guidelines – specifically, a legal framework which would allow creators to earn money by making derivative content. “Fanmade hololive-themed games were being developed since way back, but our derivative work guidelines back in the day suggested that monetization was forbidden. Because of that, we had to develop a scheme that would enable monetization and thus encourage developers to continue creating more games. That’s how, as a ‘game creator support program,’ the holo Indie project was brought to existence,” YAGOO explained.
holo Indie was launched in 2023 as a publishing brand under CCMC Corporation, which was originally started by COVER staff Kamochi Taro and Kanegawa Muneyoshi. As YAGOO explained, the new company was launched with the goal to provide proper means of support for game creators who create content based on COVER’s original IPs. But the idea to create such a company actually came after the unprecedented success of HoloCure – Save the Fans! in 2023, he notes. HoloCure – Save the Fans! is a fanmade Vampire Survivors-like game featuring many of the hololive production talents as playable characters. The game ended up becoming a hit among fans, and was subsequently showcased in numerous livestreams of the VTubers themselves. However, despite earning an Overwhelmingly Positive score on Steam (almost 40,000 cumulative reviews at the time of writing) and becoming a staple among holo fans, due to COVER’s derivative content guidelines, KayAnimate, the developer, wasn’t allowed to monetize the game in any way.
“The game was super popular, but I felt bad that the creator didn’t get anything in return,” YAGOO said. “This all became possible because of the games that were made with no compensation becoming huge hits, and we created holo Indie to return that favor.”
When asked what kind of impact he is aiming to make on the video game community, YAGOO said that COVER’s number one priority would be making video game creation more accessible. “I think ‘lowering the stakes of game development’ is what we wanted to do the most. I believe it would be great if we were able to help people achieve their dreams of making a living as game developers. That goes not just for solo creators – we would like to be of help to anyone who is trying to create interesting games, and that includes former industry professionals who went independent, and even veteran developers.”
At the moment, holo Indie boasts a roster of more than 30 different games, including hits like Chrono Gear: Warden of Time (developed by Team Chrono Gear, GalaxyTrail), hololive Treasure Mountain (developed by BeXide Inc.), and holo Parade (Roboqlo), with many more new titles to come.
[Interviewer, writer: Kousaku Akano]
[Editor: Sayoko Narita]
© COVER
