Kraken Express is the current name of the independent video game studio that developed Windrose. The studio is headquartered in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. It was previously known as Windrose Crew (December 2025 to April 2026) and originally as Crosswind Crew when it announced its first game in March 2025. The team is approximately 60 people plus occasional outsourced work.
The rename to Kraken Express took effect on April 14, 2026, the same day Windrose launched in Steam Early Access. The developers explained the decision simply: "we are renaming our studio from Windrose Crew to Kraken Express. It just sounds cooler, otherwise, that's still us." The studio's team and leadership remained unchanged.
Published Titles
Windrose is the studio's debut game and first Steam release. It is being developed on Unreal Engine 5.
Publishing Arrangement
At the April 2026 Early Access launch, Kraken Express operates as both developer and self-publisher for most regions, with Pocketpair Publishing acting as the regional publisher in Japan. The previous publisher Forward Gateway no longer appears on the Steam store page. The change is part of the studio's transition from a pre-launch development entity into a fully operational live-game studio.
Key Personnel
Philip Molodkovets is the studio's producer and primary public spokesperson. He conducted the Gamescom 2025 demo presentation and has given multiple interviews about the game's direction. Molodkovets has also written publicly about game design topics, including balancing submarine gameplay in World of Warships (2020). Other identified team members known by handles include Yar_master, Leo, and Jack Vondragon, who have posted on Steam and social channels throughout development. Sean Dagher composed the original soundtrack and sea shanties.
Development History
Studio Name | Period | Key Events |
|---|---|---|
Crosswind Crew | March 2025 - December 2025 | Announced Crosswind as F2P survival MMO, ran alpha playtest, announced buy-to-play pivot |
December 2025 - April 2026 | Rebranded game to Windrose, ran Steam Next Fest demo, hit 1.5M+ wishlists, released a major showcase trailer, Pocketpair Japan deal | |
Kraken Express | April 14, 2026 - present | Launched Windrose in Early Access at $29.99; 22,000 concurrent players within 2 hours; Very Positive Steam rating; surpassed 1.5 million copies sold by late April and 2 million copies by May 14, 2026 |
Community Engagement
Throughout development and into Early Access, the studio has maintained an active presence on the Steam Community hub, posting devblogs, hotfix notes, and responses to player feedback. The five devblogs published between April and August 2025 were critical for the pivot from MMO to PvE co-op, as community responses during the Crosswind alpha informed major design decisions. A dedicated "Windrose Community Review & Feedback" Steam thread remains the primary channel for community input. The studio has committed to publishing a detailed post-launch roadmap once player feedback from the Early Access launch has been incorporated. The official Discord has grown to roughly 53,000 members.
Studio Direction
Producer Philip Molodkovets articulated the studio's philosophy at Gamescom 2025: "We realised during the Alpha test that in terms of amount of work and technical limitations, it would be very risky to keep pursuing this huge scope, so we decided to narrow it down a bit and make one thing right." He has also said it is "better to create a good survival game than a bad MMO game." The Kraken Express team has committed to an Early Access period of 1.5 to 2.5 years, during which the game will grow by roughly 50 percent in content before 1.0.
Launch Day Performance
Under the Kraken Express name, the game achieved a strong launch: over 22,000 concurrent Steam players within two hours of release on April 14, 2026, combined with a Very Positive review rating. The launch reception article has details on critical and community response.
Platform Roadmap
At Early Access launch Kraken Express ships Windrose on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store only. The studio has said the team does not have specific updates about console versions, but is "enthusiastic about eventually coming to consoles" once the full 1.0 PC build is stable. No console platforms, dates, or timelines have been confirmed, and the studio has publicly positioned the 1.0 PC release as the prerequisite milestone before any porting work begins.
Peak Concurrent Players
After the 22,000 concurrent figure recorded within two hours of release, Windrose continued to climb across the launch week. Windrose reached a peak daily concurrent count of more than 69,500 players on Steam within the first 24 hours, giving Kraken Express one of the strongest pirate-game openings on the platform. Early Steam reviews showed a "Very Positive" rating across the first ~292 reviews, with players calling out combat feel, visual fidelity, and the core survival-and-sailing loop as highlights. Across the first post-launch weekend the game climbed further, reaching an all-time peak of 222,134 concurrent Steam players on April 19, 2026, one of the highest concurrent counts recorded for a pirate game on the platform.
Post-Launch Milestones
Windrose's commercial momentum continued well past launch week. By late April 2026 the game had passed 1.5 million copies sold, a figure Kraken Express acknowledged alongside an accolades trailer on April 30, 2026. On May 14, 2026, exactly one month after the Early Access launch, the studio confirmed that Windrose had crossed 2 million copies sold. That pace made it one of the fastest-selling survival titles of the year and comfortably outsold the studio's pre-launch wishlist count of more than 1.5 million.
Alongside the 2 million milestone, Kraken Express said it had begun full production on the next major content update, with the studio still working through internal discussions on that update's scope. The team noted that one more fix-focused patch would ship first to address common community-reported issues before the larger update enters its main development push. No release date or feature list for the next major update has been announced. The roadmap page tracks the studio's broader Early Access direction, and the patch notes page records every shipped hotfix in order.
Studio Influences
Around the Early Access launch, Kraken Express cited classic pirate adventures and co-op survival games as primary inspirations for Windrose's structure. The studio reiterated that the decision to leave free-to-play behind was driven by studio capacity, because sustaining a live free-to-play service is a "tremendously huge process" that a roughly 60-person team could not have handled properly while also building out the world, combat, and naval layers.