Fuse Games CEO breaks down codev framework for Star Wars: Galactic Racer

Bryant Francis,Senior Editor,GameDeveloper.com

October 20, 2026

schedule3 Min ReadImage via Fuse Games/Secret Mode

Star Wars: Galactic Racer has hit the market with thunderous speed, careening around the track faster than Biddy Blas on a souped-up speeder bike. While we're still waiting for hard numbers, the game's regularly hitting 18,000 concurrent users on Steam on the back of a "mostly positive" rating, and CEO Matt Webster told VGC that sales are "healthy." That means developers are likely already looking to learn how they can replicate such soaring success, and while we encourage all industry professionals to pour their weirdness into characters like the game's breakout star, those looking for more concrete production takeaways should turn to an interview Webster did with the folks over at Gamesindustry.biz.

Specifically, Webster laid out a surprisingly transparent breakdown of how Fuse Games built a "distributed development" model that divided labor on Galactic Racer among the core studio, co-development partners, external development partners, and outsourcing partners. While GI.biz describes this as Galactic Racer being effectively "made by a core team of 75," (the game's credits list about 1,100 professional roles), Webster's explanation of the distributed development model more effectively lays out the labor division.

To understand the three-tiered model, it's best to start with the team "furthest" from Fuse Games: the outsourcers. These are partners who provide specific assets upon request in a series of limited interactions with clear deliverables. "You give a brief, you get an output back, and you integrate it in," Webster told the outlet. "Which sounds transactional, but you shouldn't treat it as transactional. It's very important that you build relationships with those folks, you get a better result when you do so."

Next is external development—a phrase often used in the same context as co-development, but is here differentiated as the practice of assigning specific sections of the game to teams outside the company. Webster said that Galactic Racer's photo mode was created by an outside studio, an example of a feature that could be produced externally and then "slotted in" thanks to the use of Unreal Engine.

"It's clear to brief, clear to point to a set of features, and you need a cross-discipline team to bring it together, so you need production, art, UI, and code to create that thing," he said in reference to features produced by external developers.

Then there's co-developers—outside studios that are "an extension" of the Fuse Games team who just happen to work for another company. These developers join stand-ups, contribute to Slack, and act as part of the main development team.

Developers deep in the trenches of modern double-A and triple-A development will be familiar with this framework—but if you even look at some of our coverage on GameDeveloper.com, you'll observe that it can be difficult to identify when you're describing what Fuse Games identified as "co-development," versus what it described as "external development.

It's a useful reference point for a game industry still flailing to find sustainable business models to make games that require the talents of hundreds of amazing individuals. The next challenge then, is to identify how to commemorate core studios like Fuse Games for their leadership and vision, while sufficiently crediting the labor of all the people who propelled "SKRIB DOON" into a widespread meme.

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About the Author

Bryant Francis

Senior Editor, GameDeveloper.com

Bryant Francis is a writer, journalist, and narrative designer based in Boston, MA. He currently writes for Game Developer, a leading B2B publication for the video game industry. His credits include Proxy Studios' 4X strategy game Zephon, Iron Anchor Studios' Down With The Ship, and Amplitude Studio's 2017 game Endless Space 2.

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