Dispatch sold over 3 million copies despite publishers discounting single-player narrative games
Single-player story-centric games have become few and far between in the current live-service-dominated video game industry, yet some shining examples manage to rise above the noise and show that there are still plenty of narrative-driven adventures waiting to be developed, discovered, and played, and Dispatch by AdHoc Studio stands as proof of that.
For context, the developers at AdHoc Studio had to fight an arduous battle to bring a narrative-centric, choice-driven game to players. The team was founded by four Telltale Games veterans with the goal of continuing to craft the choice-based stories fans adored. Unfortunately, Telltale Games shut down toward the tail end of 2018, leaving behind only a skeleton crew.
With Telltale Games filing for bankruptcy, very few studios wanted to bet on Telltale’s peculiar style of games. However, the team at AdHoc Studio took it upon themselves to develop and self-publish Dispatch in 2025.
At the recent Game Developers Conference, co-creative director Dennis Lenart sat down with Gamesradar+ to explain the struggles AdHoc Studio went through to get Dispatch out the door. He said, “It was a tough time to be a studio founded by two writers and two directors who were looking to make single-player narrative games.”
He continued, “When we’d go and pitch to potential investors and publishers, they would point to the data and say there weren’t enough recent successes to feel confident investing money. The common sentiment was that the genre of games we like to make is niche or, worse, dead. But we believed they were wrong.”
Co-creative director Nick Herman also chimed in, saying, “It was definitely a mix of arrogance and stupidity. But we knew that we were one of the most experienced teams out there when it comes to making these types of games, so we felt that if we couldn’t push back, then who would?”
Previously, Dispatch had a publisher for a short while who walked away midway through development. The studio then leaned on support from Critical Role to self-publish the game. Through every hurdle, AdHoc Studio focused on a few key principles.
Lenart said, “We’re going to focus on things we’re good at. Just because we can make an open-world action RPG doesn’t mean we should. Whatever we do, we want it to be great, and across the entire project, we didn’t want to make any cutbacks.”
He further added, “We weren’t just employees anymore. We couldn’t make a great game that no one buys. Now that we’re running a studio, we have a responsibility to our team to keep the lights on. So we need to make something that has a wide enough reach to be successful, not just critically but also financially.”
In the end, AdHoc Studio’s tumultuous efforts paid off, as Dispatch was met with critical acclaim at launch and quickly became a hit, selling more than three million copies toward the tail end of 2025.
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