Dev Pods didn't come from a business plan. It came from two people who watched too many talented developers quit — alone, burnt out, and convinced it was their fault.
230+ games shipped. 400K+ students taught between Tim and Chris. The original belief — that hobbyist devs deserve a real team — hasn't changed. Dev Pods is still the same thing it was in 2015: a place where the game actually finishes.
230+ shipped · 0% DNF rateThrough an early pilot in May 2025, Dev Pods first began taking shape — connected to HomeTeam's proven community game-dev process. That early version sparked a new direction. Tim and Chris teamed up directly, combining Chris's long-tested system with Tim's experience in game dev, education, and community building.
The pieces come together
The 100th Dev Pods game ships on time. Members are landing jobs at Blizzard, EA, and indie studios worldwide. And in April 2023, HomeTeam ships its first Unreal 5 game — Unreal becomes an official part of the platform by July.
100+ shipped · Members in the industryGodot is formally added alongside Unity and browser JavaScript, reflecting the community's growth across engines and skill sets. What started Unity-first was becoming something bigger — a community for all hobbyist devs, regardless of the tools they chose.
Unity · Godot · and more to comeAfter rebranding Gamkedo Club to HomeTeam GameDev, the community discovered that once groups grow too large they stop working. Chris split the original community into smaller teams (known back then as the "Apollo group") and began streamlining the Pod Process around that idea — the beginning of what would eventually become Dev Pods.
Pod concept takes shapeChris ran a conference called Game Dev Biz, hired Tim as a speaker, and they started meeting up every month to chat about life and game development. Those conversations planted the seeds for later collaboration and the start of Dev Pods' founder partnership.
Founders connect
After launching in Los Angeles in October 2015 as LAGameDevs, with weekly meetings held at the Beverly Hills public library, the community evolved into a fully online format rebranded as Gamkedo Club in June 2016. That shift opened the door for developers everywhere to join projects, share updates, and collaborate from anywhere — laying the foundation for the global game dev community Dev Pods grew out of.
LAGameDevs → Gamkedo Club (online)
As a grad student at Georgia Tech, Chris founds VGDev — expanding the same team-based, ship-focused game dev culture. These college experiments proved something crucial: small volunteer teams could consistently finish and release games.
Proof the model works
Chris DeLeon co-founds the Game Creation Society at Carnegie Mellon — a club where volunteer teams pitched, built, and released games together. The hunch was simple: hobbyist developers could ship real games if they just had each other. It was scrappy and early, but the idea was right.
The spark that started it allEvery tutorial you've watched taught you how to make things. Dev Pods gives you the reason to. Real teams. Real games. Real reps — the only kind that actually stick.
We have opinions. Strong ones. About game dev, about learning, about what it means to actually make something. Here's where we stand.
Most developers spend years optimizing for "ready." Ready to start. Ready to show people. Ready to be good enough. We optimize for done. Because done is the only place the learning actually lives. The reps are the lesson — and shipped games are the reps.
"I accomplished more in four months here than in four years at my college game dev club."
— Dan Dela Rosa, Dev Pods member
Solo dev isn't Hard Mode. It's a mode nobody asked you to play. Your pod fills the skill gaps you can't see, picks up the slack when life gets busy, and genuinely cares whether your name ends up in the credits of a shipped game. That's not a nice-to-have. That's the whole model.
"I love how a project has momentum. The team keeps making the game better even when you're busy. You get this amazing jolt of motivation coming back."
— MrPhil (Philip Ludington)
We don't do sprawling open-worlds with 18-month scopes and zero accountability. Tight scope, trusted structure, actual shipping — that's the Dev Pods way. Every game finishes. Every credit is real. Your portfolio grows with every cycle you're part of.
"Having worked professionally in game dev for close to 10 years, I can truly say this is the most fun I've had making games."
— Gabriel Cornish, industry veteran & Dev Pods member
Between us: 230+ shipped games, 400K+ students taught, 20+ years of community building, and enough solo dev burnout to know exactly why it breaks people. Here's our story — hover to dig in.
Co-Founder · Game Dev Underground
"The loneliest moment in game dev isn't when you're stuck. It's when you finish — and there's nobody there to see it."
Tim shipped 30+ solo games and knows exactly how bleak that silence gets.
The founder of Game Dev Underground (GDU), Tim spent years building communities to fight the isolation of solo dev — and shipping games to prove it was worth it. He knows every flavor of burnout, scope creep, and "I'll finish it next month" because he lived all of it. Dev Pods is his answer to the question he kept asking himself: what if you never had to do this alone?
Co-Founder · Pod Process Architect
"I watched too many talented developers quit — not because they weren't good enough, but because they were doing it alone."
The reason your game actually ships: Chris invented the Pod Process. 100% on-time rate. Every game. Every time.
Chris has been building online game dev communities since 2004, taught game development at Georgia Tech, and has spoken at GDC on making games that actually get finished. He's not interested in inspirational talks about potential. He's interested in the systems that turn potential into shipped credits — and he built those systems into Dev Pods from the start.
Games are in progress. Tasks are waiting. You can jump in the same day you sign up — no waiting, no cohort, no "we'll start next month." Just you, a real team, and a game that actually ships.
Join The Club — $39/month →