Coffee Stain Studios

Coffee Stain Studios is a Swedish video game developer based in Skovde, founded in 2010 by nine students from the University of Skovde. What started as a student project became one of Sweden’s most interesting game groups, built around the philosophy of small teams making big games. They are best known for Goat Simulator and Satisfactory. In December 2025 Coffee Stain spun off from Embracer Group and became an independent publicly traded company called Coffee Stain Group.

Coffee Stain Studios Origin Story

The University Beginnings

Nine University of Skovde students founded the studio in 2010. Their early output included the Sanctum tower defense games and I Love Strawberries before Goat Simulator put them on the map internationally. The founding team built the studio on the idea that games should be fun first, and that small teams with creative freedom could compete with much larger developers.

The Coffee Stain Group

In 2017 Coffee Stain launched Coffee Stain Publishing as a separate subsidiary to support other indie developers. That same year they invested in Ghost Ship Games, who went on to make Deep Rock Galactic, and Iron Gate Studio, who made Valheim. Coffee Stain North, formerly Gone North Games, handles the Goat Simulator franchise. THQ Nordic acquired the entire Coffee Stain group in November 2018 for approximately 317 million Swedish kronor, which later became part of Embracer Group. In December 2025 Coffee Stain spun off from Embracer and became independent again.

Coffee Stain Studios Key Games

Goat Simulator (2014)

Goat Simulator launched on April 1, 2014 and was released deliberately buggy as a feature rather than a flaw. The ragdoll physics and open world chaos turned it into a viral hit through Let’s Play videos and streamers at a time when that kind of exposure was still relatively new as a marketing force. For the right streamer, the game is a content gold mine. By August 2014 it had outsold all of Coffee Stain’s previous games combined and generated over $12 million in revenue by 2016. It spawned a sequel, Goat Simulator 3, developed by Coffee Stain North.

Satisfactory (2024)

Satisfactory is a first-person factory building game set on an alien planet. You gather resources, build production lines, automate systems, and expand your factory across a massive open world. It spent several years in early access starting in 2019 before its full release in September 2024. The game has a passionate community and Coffee Stain’s transparency during development, including regular livestreams with developers, built significant goodwill. It is the kind of game that turns into hundreds of hours without you noticing.

Coffee Stain Publishing Notable Titles

Through Coffee Stain Publishing the group has published several notable indie titles including Deep Rock Galactic by Ghost Ship Games, Valheim by Iron Gate Studio, Huntdown by Easy Trigger Games, and Songs of Conquest by Lavapotion. The publishing label focuses on community-driven games built around long-term player engagement rather than one-time releases.

Where Coffee Stain Is Now

As of December 2025 Coffee Stain Group is an independent publicly traded company operating 13 studios under the decentralized model they built inside Embracer. The group owns franchises including Goat Simulator, Satisfactory, Deep Rock Galactic, and Valheim. They are one of the more interesting examples of an indie-minded group that scaled significantly without losing the studio culture that made them worth paying attention to in the first place.