Indie fund Outersloth has rejected every generative AI pitch it has received
Indie fund Outersloth rejects around 50 percent of the pitches it receives from developers—including every single pitch involving generative AI.
The company was quietly established by Among Us developer Innersloth in 2022 before officially breaking cover in 2024. The division allows the studio to reinvest revenue earned by its immensely popular social deception title back into the indie scene.
Anybody can pitch Outersloth, but how many of those proposals have actually been successful over the years? During a talk at GDC Festival of Gaming, Outersloth and Innersloth communications director Victoria Tran explained that roughly half of all pitches are immediately tossed out. That equates to around 1,700 rejected pitches as of February 2026.
Tran estimates that around 30 percent of those rejected pitches were "GenAI submissions." Evidently, they failed to strike a chord.
The Outersloth team plays around 10 percent of demos they receive, but only 1 percent of pitches actually make it to the final round where they'll have a chance at being approved. To date, it's a process that has resulted in the company financing 24 titles to the tune of $19,161,040.
Tran accepts it means theres a "pretty slim" chance of actually securing financing, not least because the part-time Outersloth team is fairly slow when it comes to sorting the wheat from the chaff. Case in point: Tran notes there are currently 300 pitches awaiting review.
What, though, is the team actually searching for? Tran is reluctant to nail down a definition—largely because there is no singular recipe for success. There is, however, one attribute she often gravitates towards.
"I really like a game that has soul," she explains. "I don't know how to graph that, so this is why I'm saying there's no real thing that we look for—and some funds will have this. Some publishers will have a portfolio and different metrics they look at, but for us it's kind of up in the air. Some people will say that's very irresponsible, and I say I don't care."
Of course, there is a minimum quality bar that a pitch deck needs to meet. Tran stresses that production timeframes and financial proposals need to make sense. In short, it's important anybody pitching Outersloth intimately understands the specific needs of their project.
"This can mean does the timeline make sense for the amount of money being asked for? Does the timeline make sense for the scale of the game that you're making and your level of skill? Does the budget include marketing, localization, and QA?," she asks. "If not, you usually have to increase the budget quite a bit because we don't offer these things."
Oh, and if you're curious as to what Outersloth is offering indies, the company has just published the contract and terms it offers to every single one of its partners. That includes pre-recoup and post-recoup revenue splits. Go ahead and take a look.
Game Developer and GDC Festival of Gaming are sibling companies under Informa Festivals.
