Devoted Fusion Reinvents Game Studio Access to Top Freelance Talent, Providing Fast Scalability Amid Rising Production Costs

Hiring Game Artists and Animators Just Got Easier with Curated, Streamlined One-Stop Solution

Devoted Holding, known through Devoted Studios as a leader in video game co-development, porting, and full-service art production, today announced its sister company, Devoted Fusion with the official launch of the Devoted Fusion freelancer hub. This innovative end-to-end self-serve solution quickly connects development studios, publishers, and brands to 3,000+ pre-vetted game art and animation freelance talent globally. Through tools like its proprietary image recognition, matching system, shortlists, and robust back office, this one-stop platform streamlines the time required to get from idea to starting production, helping teams overcome the most common scalability challenges in game development.

Ever-rising development costs and tighter budgets currently present the biggest threat to the success and stability of development studios of all sizes. Increasingly, more studios struggle with scalability and are forced to run lean with just a core team to lower its burn rate, driving the need to seek co-development solutions and external, specialized freelance talent when and where it’s needed.

“After speaking with AAA and Indie developers, it’s clear the days of building massive in-house teams in costly, competitive markets are behind us. Yet studios still face the same pressure to deliver ambitious games and live services. The overwhelming feedback is that moving from idea to production with external talent is slow and frustrating, often taking months,” said Jason Harris, Devoted Studios chief commercial officer and head of Devoted Fusion. “We believe the future belongs to agile studios that scale through co-dev and freelancer partnerships. And speed is critical. Devoted Fusion was built to help studios embrace that future and get to production in under 72 hours.”

Finding capable talent quickly presents its own set of challenges. For starters, the freelance artist hiring process can be daunting for studios. Slogging through infinite portfolios – many AI-generated, unverified, or irrelevant -- without a way to search easily is frustrating and time-consuming. Those less familiar with the process may lack the necessary working knowledge of fair market pricing, creative briefs and RFPs, or contract legalese. Devoted Fusion’s global pool of pre-vetted talent and SmART-er search tools aim to reduce the time to hire significantly, while its comprehensive artist profiles and contract, invoicing, and payments backend removes the haggling and administrative roadblocks.

Devoted Fusion’s team also surveyed art talent to learn their needs. Freelance artists struggle to gain exposure for their portfolios to drive a steady stream of profitable and relevant project work while also dealing with extensive paperwork, the chance of payment scams, and - worse of all, the threat of having their portfolios scraped by AI. Armed with Cloudflare’s anti-AI tech, Devoted Fusion’s hub safely puts the freelancer’s work in front of a global audience, filtering requests so only those pertinent to the talent’s skills get through, making it easier for artists to pick and choose based on their interests. The backend streamlines all the contracts and invoicing while ensuring secured payments.

“Devoted Studios has been on the frontlines of remote collaboration way before Covid made it mainstream,” said Ninel Anderson, Devoted Studios’ CEO and founder. “Devoted Fusion summarizes all of our knowledge and experience into a separate offering for the industry that could be leveraged by anyone. FAST. We provide visibility and discoverability for artists so it’s not scary to be a freelancer but instead feel empowered to choose projects about which they are passionate, while providing buyers instant access to specialized talent.”

Key Benefits for Studios

• Faster, streamlined hiring – Fusion’s proprietary image recognition system allows clients to drop in a reference image to quickly see relevant artists, combined with streamlined contracting and built-in invoicing and payment solutions;
• Shortlists of curated & pre-vetted, global talent – organize artists in themed groups to compare by key information and send requests individually or to the entire folder, making hiring decisions faster;
• Committed care – Devoted Fusion guides developers through the process with helpful tools and a concierge to assist in finding artists, securing accurate bids, and providing support if issues arise on either side throughout the engagement.

Key Benefits for Freelance Artists

• Global exposure – profile visibility and hire-ability to studios and service providers worldwide;
• Anti-AI scraping - protects artists with Cloudflare’s anti-AI scraping tech to safeguard portfolios from bots. While focusing exclusively on human-created portfolios, the platform continues to monitor the evolving role of AI in creative workflows;
• Relevant, verified projects – relevant skill-matched project bids thanks to the platform’s SmART Feed, Guided Art Briefs, Artist Shortlist, and Portfolio Call features;
• Secure contracts & payments –provides a secure framework for collaboration, contracts, and other legal safeguards; all projects are pre-verified, and talent receives secure payments via Stripe.

Already boasting a roster of 3000+ pre-vetted freelance game artists across categories like animation, concept, character, and VFX, Devoted Fusion is actively curating new artists and animators to join the hub. With time, the team seeks to add more complementary tools and resources for both clients and artists, such as their free master classes and developer vision boards.

Devoted Fusion will next turn its attention to disrupting the bidding process in its mission to become the go-to place for freelance resource hiring and custom asset creation.

To learn more about the Devoted Fusion hub visit DevotedFusion.com. Join the Devoted Fusion Discord and follow on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

About Devoted Fusion

Devoted Fusion is an end-to-end self-service freelance talent solution built for the games industry to help developers and publishers hire pre-vetted expert-level art and animation talent quickly, transparently, securely, and affordably. The Devoted Fusion hub connects studios to capable, available, relevant, and efficient freelance talent globally, with backend tools that handle contracts, invoicing, and payments while protecting the freelancer and studio clients.

Devoted Fusion Press kit: https://bit.ly/DevotedFusion_presskit

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250415282379/en/

Increasingly, more game dev studios struggle with scalability and are forced to run lean with just a core team to lower its burn rate, driving the need to seek co-development solutions and external, specialized freelance talent when and where it is needed.