Fish Game was originally made as an educational demo project for Nakama, an all-purpose backend for multiplayer games.
Fish Game - An open reference game using Nakama for multiplayer
Erlend started the Fish Game project as part of a contracting relationship with Heroic Labs, the creators of Nakama. Erlend is now working Fish Game as an indie together with Fedor, but we've still got a good relationship with the folks at Heroic. They have agreed to cover our Nakama hosting expenses (on their Heroic Cloud) for the foreseeable future.
Consequently, we can offer very advanced forms of matchmaking, tournament creation and content sharing at a very early stage in development, which in turn makes community-building easier.
https://www.mmorpg.com/developer-journals/what-makes-a-successful-living-games-franchise-2000119019
Heroic’s core function as a company is to enable ‘living game franchises’ by providing a suite of ancillary service for online interactions. Fish Game fits perfectly into this model, with a minimal core game loop that can be continuously iterated on year after year.