9 Game Co-Development Studios in Canada (2026)
Most of the famous Canadian studios cannot take your project. This list is filtered by who actually accepts external co-development work, and by who owns them.
Canada is one of the 3 largest game development countries in the world, and almost all of that capacity sits in 3 clusters: Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario. If you want a co-development partner in a North American time zone with real console experience, this is the obvious place to look.
The problem is that most of the studios that made Canada famous are not available to you. Beenox belongs to Activision. The Coalition and Compulsion belong to Microsoft. Ubisoft Montreal, Toronto and Quebec build Ubisoft games. Those studios appear on every top Canadian game studios list you will read, and not one of them will answer a request for proposal.
So this list is built differently. Every studio here takes external co-development work, every one of them has named and shipped credits, and each entry states who owns the studio. Ownership is not a footnote. It decides who gets the senior people when 2 projects need them in the same quarter.
How to read the ownership tag
Both arrangements can work. Neither should be a surprise after you sign.
The 9 studios
1. Devoted Studios
Engineering and design co-dev from a Canada-based senior team whose credits include Arc Raiders, Sunderfolk and Borderlands 4.
Devoted Studios is an independent full-cycle co-development and art production partner. Engineering, porting, end-to-end art production, game and level design and LiveOps run inside one pipeline rather than across 3 separate vendors.
Studio Technical Director Jean-Francois Goulet works out of Montreal, with 20+ years shipping console games and credits on Borderlands 4, Gotham Knights and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Executive Creative Director Jason Millena is also based in Canada. The engineering and design leadership a client deals with sits in a North American time zone, while production capacity stays distributed, which is how the studio avoids pricing a project against one city’s salary market.
Named co-development credits
- Arc Raiders (Embark Studios). Co-development, UI engineering, gameplay features and performance optimization on Unreal Engine 5. Winner of Best Multiplayer at The Game Awards 2025 and at the BAFTA Games Awards.
- Sunderfolk (Dreamhaven). Co-development, porting to Switch, Xbox Series X|S and PS5, tech art and engineering. Devoted started as the porting partner, delivered ahead of schedule and was moved up to co-development partner.
- Risk of Rain 2 (Gearbox). Ported to 5 platforms simultaneously with first-submission certification on every one, 4-player co-op introduced to PlayStation and Xbox, and a 57% FPS improvement across levels.
- FNAF: Secret of the Mimic (Steel Wool Studios). Co-development, porting, UI and gameplay engineering, 3D tech art.
- Palia (Singularity 6). Co-development and engineering, tools and UI, meta-game feature implementation.
- Invincible VS (Skybound Games). Co-development, UI engineering, services integration.
Risk of Rain 2Porting, network integration, rendering optimization
PaliaCo-development, tools and UI, meta-game features
FNAF: Secret of the MimicCo-development, porting, UI and gameplay engineering
Invincible VSCo-development, UI engineering, services integration
2. Behaviour Interactive
The studio behind Dead by Daylight runs 2 divisions, and the one that matters here is Behaviour Services, a work-for-hire and co-development unit that has delivered for Microsoft, Sony, EA, Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, Take-Two, Disney, Nintendo, Activision and Ubisoft. Its service mix covers production, porting, remastering, technology, design and live operations. It is the largest independent studio in the country.
3. SkyBox Labs
Founded in 2011 by 3 EA Vancouver veterans, SkyBox built its entire reputation on co-developing other people’s tentpole franchises: Halo Infinite with 343 Industries, ongoing Minecraft work with Mojang, Age of Mythology: Extended Edition, Age of Empires II HD: The Forgotten, and work on Fallout 76. Few studios anywhere have a longer unbroken co-development record.
4. Blackbird Interactive
Mojang brought Minecraft Legends to Blackbird in 2018 specifically for its strategy design depth, and at peak 125 Blackbird staff were on the project. The studio also carries the Homeworld lineage, which makes it one of the few teams in the country with genuine real-time strategy and simulation engineering in its bones.
5. Certain Affinity
Certain Affinity has co-developed across Halo, Call of Duty and DOOM, which makes it one of the clearest examples of what co-development looks like at AAA scale. It opened its Toronto studio in 2019 and has since expanded the site, so the Canadian operation is a real second development centre rather than a satellite office.
6. Snowed In Studios
Snowed In covers feature co-development, porting and certification, tools development, rendering and UI/UX, through to full title development. It is an engineering-led shop rather than an art house, and it operates a stated no-crunch policy.
7. Other Ocean Interactive
Other Ocean has made 8 games of its own and contributed to roughly 40 others, with a long catalogue of ports and conversions behind it. Its Atlantic Canadian location gives it better European time zone overlap than any other studio on this list.
8. Frima Studio
Founded in 2003, Frima is one of the oldest continuously operating work-for-hire studios in the province, with a broad capability set spanning game production and interactive content.
9. BKOM Studios
BKOM handles art production, co-development and engineering at mid-size project scope. It is a practical option when a studio needs responsive execution on a short timeline without the minimum commitments a larger partner will ask for.
What to check before you sign
Every pitch deck in this category says the same 3 things. The partner works embedded, the partner treats your game as its own, and the partner is senior. None of that is provable in a sales call. These things are.
- Who owns the studio, and what that obligates them to
4 of the 9 studios here sit inside a larger group or a platform holder. That is not a disqualifier, but it determines who gets the senior people when 2 projects need them in the same quarter. Ask directly, then write the answer into the contract.
- Named credits, with the specific contribution
Not we have worked with major publishers behind an NDA. The title, the client, and what the studio actually built. A partner who cannot name any of it has a problem larger than confidentiality.
- Whether the team is dedicated or pooled
A dedicated team learns your codebase once. A pooled team relearns it every time staffing changes, and you pay for that relearning in milestones rather than in invoices.
- Multi-year partnerships, not successful pilots
A 2-month engagement that went well proves very little. A studio kept inside the same production for 3 or 4 years is a different signal, because that only happens when the work keeps clearing the bar.
- What they turn down
A studio that enforces its own limits is more trustworthy than one that says yes to every scope. Ask what they declined in the last year, and why.
- The last question of the pitch: what do you do when the brief changes?
A task shop restarts from new instructions. A co-development partner was close enough to the work to catch the change before it became a problem.
The studios on this list have verifiable answers. Start there.
About Devoted Studios
Devoted Studios is an independent full-cycle co-development partner covering engineering, porting, end-to-end art production and design across PC, console and mobile, with senior engineering and design leadership based in Canada. 250+ team, 15+ countries, 250+ projects shipped.
