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Windrose Crew is an independent video game studio headquartered in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The studio was previously known as Crosswind Crew and renamed in December 2025 alongside the rebranding of its debut title. Windrose is the studio's first game and their first release on Steam.

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 previously wrote for Game Developer magazine about game design topics, including an article on balancing submarine gameplay in World of Warships (2020).

Publishing

The game is published by Forward Gateway, a legal entity incorporated in the Republic of Uzbekistan that handled the Gamescom 2025 booth and press outreach. The studio self-publishes on Steam under its own name.

Development History

The studio originally planned Windrose as a free-to-play survival MMO with PvP and shared servers under the name Crosswind. After running an alpha playtest in June 2025, they made a fundamental pivot: the game became a buy-to-play PvE co-op survival adventure. Producer Molodkovets explained at Gamescom that the MMO infrastructure was unsustainable for the team's size, and that it would be better to make a good survival game than a bad MMO.

IGN Fan Fest

On February 25, 2026, Windrose premiered a "Raging Seas" trailer at IGN Fan Fest, previewing Early Access content. The appearance marked the studio's growing presence in major gaming showcases alongside earlier appearances at Gamescom 2025 and the PC Gaming Show.

Studio Reception

Some press coverage has noted the limited public information about the studio's background. The team is small compared to the scope of the game they are building. Despite these concerns, the Steam Next Fest demo attracted over 22,000 peak concurrent players and a 93% positive review rating from over 3,000 reviews, with the game surpassing one million Steam wishlists on February 23, 2026. The studio described the response as "humbling," posting: "We couldn't even have imagined this." They asked fans for patience with the release date, requesting that people "let us cook more" as they work to deliver the best possible Early Access launch.