Search and software giant Google has partnered with engine firm Unity for the Stadia Makers self-publishing initiative.

Announced yesterday during Google's Games Developer Summit, the scheme is intended for "experienced" indie devs, though what the criteria is for that is not clear.

Taking part in Stadia Makers will mean that studios get access to technical assistance from Unity to make sure that their projects hit alpha, beta, cert and release dates. Furthermore, developers in the programme will receive a maximum of five dev kits, in addition to funding from the Stadia team.

The programme is open to developers using Unity 2019.3 or later who intend to release their game either this year or in 2021.

"The fact of the matter is that far more studios applied to be a part of our launch than we could work with at the time," Google wrote.

"Thank you for your ambition, patience, and support that those applications represent. Now that we’re a few months down the road, we’ve improved our tools and built new partnerships that will let us work with more independent studios.

"For this expansion of self-publishing, Stadia Makers is partnering with Unity, a team with a long history of building new platforms and gaming services hand-in-hand with the developer community. Unity has worked with thousands of game developers over the years, and today, powers 50 per cent of all new games with optimised support for Stadia and more than 25 other platforms."

This follows Stadia's rather strange launch in November 2019.