The same is outsourcing, why is this only Thai company made?

The staff wearing the hat of the little yellow duck, and the cute and cute poster in the style of painting, at major offline game exhibitions, there is always a long queue in front of the booth of ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’ Players sit in front of the computer and concentrate, and they are often reluctant to leave after playing for a long time.

On the screen is a fantasy world filled with massive details: colorful foxes, potted plants that secretly stick out their heads, and ‘fly chickens’ that fly in the air, and all kinds of characters and objects fill the whole picture. There are nearly 1,000 interactive items in the game, and many players are addicted to it, and they are ‘a paradise for extremely traditionalist lovers’.

This is a healing and object-seeking puzzle game. Players will play the role of ducklings that are transformed into human-shaped animals by the goddess casting spells, and open an exclusive Lost and Found Co., Ltd., and help the goddess to find the divine power scattered all over the world in the adventure of finding lost and found.

‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’ was developed by Thai studio Bit Egg Inc. and distributed by Gamirror Games.

As early as a few years ago, publisher Gamirror was moved when he first saw the game. In their eyes, Bit Egg is a serious, pure and truly game-loving team.

For Bit Egg, ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’ is a key transformation work.

Several founders of Bit Egg have worked for major American game manufacturers. In 2013, they returned to Thailand and officially founded Bit EGG in Chiang Mai. In the early days, they mainly provided art outsourcing services for major European and American game manufacturers.

In 2018, Bit EGG expanded to 50-100 people, added offices in Bangkok, and officially established the project ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’, and the team has officially moved from pure outsourcing to self-development. With delicate and exquisite art and easy-to-use gameplay, this road has finally been proved to be the most suitable transformation direction for them.

Before the release, ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.”s Steam wish list exceeded 200,000, and won the 2025 Thailand Game Award and the most anticipated game.

On March 6, 2026, the game officially landed on Steam. With exquisite art and warm and interesting plots, it quickly gained 97% high praise after its launch, and the first wave of sales exceeded 50,000 copies, becoming a dark horse in the global market for self-developed games in Thailand.

The following is the dialogue between the teahouse and the developer of ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’ Bit Egg, which is presented after sorting:

01

From American Games to Thailand

Teahouse: What do you mainly do in European and American game companies? How will these experiences help to start a business later?

bit egg:Stephen is a programmer, Richmond is an art, doing 2D/3D animation, illustration and 3D modeling. We all spent time at different startups, and later met DNA Games at a Facebook game startup in the San Francisco Bay Area (Note: Not Japanese company Dena).

It was a close small team of about 15 people, and everyone had to have several jobs. Richmond was the only animator in the whole game, and at the same time had to take into account concept settings and illustrations. We have made several successful Facebook games together, and the company was later acquired by Zynga, and we also entered a large enterprise-level company, allowing us to have an in-depth understanding of the internal operations, advantages and shortcomings of large companies.

These experiences have a profound impact on us later. Streamlined and efficient consciousness and cross-professional and cross-personality collaboration ability are the foundations laid down during that period. After starting a big company, we know how to understand the needs of major customers, and we also know what the professionalism they expect is: it may not only be the quality of the delivery of things, but the communication itself must be in place.

Customers often say that we are reliable and good communication, which is our very important competitive advantage. In addition, the network of contacts accumulated during that time has also benefited us so far. Sometimes they will introduce customers to us, or directly hire us when they start a new business.

Teahouse: What was the opportunity to get you back to Thailand and founded Bit Egg in 2013? What did you think of the game market in Thailand at that time?

bit egg:Before we founded Bit Egg, we were still working in a small apartment in the Bay Area, raising funds by ourselves, and trying our best to save money. Richmond often cooks, we eat a lot of salmon heads, because they are cheap and delicious! Haha.

Shortly after leaving Zynga, Richmond went back to Chiang Mai to visit relatives. He grew up in Chiang Mai before the age of 5, and later moved to the United States with his family. Chiang Mai has always been home for him. The people, culture, quality of life, and food there are all very good, and the cost of living is relatively low according to international standards.

We ask ourselves: we are an independent game studio of self-reliance, why do we still live in one of the most expensive cities on earth? So we immediately decided to move to Chiang Mai. Stephen later also fell in love with this place, so we decided to take root in Thailand.

At the time, we knew very well that Southeast Asia is the fastest growing market for mobile games in the world. Richmond played a lot of console games in Thailand in the 1980s and 1990s: red and white machines, super Ren, PS1, and PS2 are all super popular in those years.

We have personally experienced: Thai people love games, but the market supply is insufficient. Of course, we also want to make works that can shine internationally, and we do not set limits for ourselves. We hope that the game can be successful in Thailand, China, and the United States. The more places the better.

We were most optimistic about the development talent potential of Thailand at that time. The gaming industry in Thailand is very young and we have seen the opportunity to enter the game early. We believe that we can recruit and cultivate really good talents here. In terms of art, we are very confident that programmers and planning will be relatively difficult to find. We have held the largest game creation activities in Thailand, attracting hundreds of people to participate. It is the first time that many people are exposed to game development, and some people later set up their own independent studios! We are very valuable to be able to participate in the development of the Thai game industry.

With the launch of ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’, we also prove that the Thai team can make international-level works.

Teahouse: You initially chose to land in Chiang Mai, and later expanded to Bangkok. Chiang Mai has gathered a lot of international talents now. Is this one of the considerations for the site selection?

bit egg:The main reason for choosing Chiang Mai is actually very practical. It is our home, and it is also a very beautiful city in itself. In the early days, we successfully attracted some outstanding talents who hope to run away from the fast-paced life in Bangkok and enjoy the pleasant atmosphere of Chiang Mai in Chiang Mai.

Bangkok is one of the largest cities in the world and is definitely the most fun, but that lifestyle is not for everyone. When they learned that they could do the same job but live in a comfortable and comfortable Chiang Mai, we attracted some really great people.

With the expansion of the company and the increase in the demand for talents, we found that the vast majority of top talents are concentrated in Bangkok, so we also opened a second office.

We know that Chiang Mai was a popular ‘digital homeless’ at the time, but this is not our consideration. Most of the digital homeless people do not do creative industries, let alone games. We are not a foreign circle in Thailand, focusing on local talents. However, with the improvement of the company’s reputation, there have been applications from senior overseas developers to live in Thailand. Therefore, Thailand, a ‘a place where everyone yearns to live’, helps us attract outstanding international talents. Now we go to overseas exhibitions, not only to promote games, but also to recruit.

‘Hey, do you want to live and play games in Thailand?’ The attractiveness of this sentence is very strong.

Teahouse: Are there many Thai companies like you who do art outsourcing for international game companies at that time? How many are there?

bit egg:There are several well-known animation outsourcing studios in Thailand, but very few focus on game outsourcing. The most famous is Studio Hive, which was established in 2009. It is a world-class concept art for many big-name IPs, but they focus on the early stage (concept, figure high model, CG), we focus on mass production. Other excellent art outsourcing studios serve film and television, TV, and online media, and do not play games. In short, the total number of game studios was very small that year.

The Thai game industry is very young. Thailand’s first commercial game was 2000’s CEO City. By 2010, there were only about 8 regular game developers in Thailand. By the time Bit Egg was founded in 2015, we have added 7 game companies, including us. It may actually be more, but the information is very fragmented. In recent years, the explosion of Thai game studios has exploded, and now about 30 are known, and most of them have been established in the past five years. Most do self-research, not outsourcing. A lot of investment, or a demo to find distribution.

02

From art outsourcing to self-development

Teahouse: Before turning to self-research, Bit Egg mainly outsourcing art animation for Square Enix, Wayforward, etc. Around 2018, the self-development of self-development began, why is this time point? What has changed inside and outside?

bit egg:In fact, we have always wanted to do self-development. When we first arrived in Thailand, we were making an original mobile game ‘Corgi Run’. Therefore, doing outsourcing is actually a transformation that deviates from the original goal to survive. But while we are outsourcing, we have been doing small originals. ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’ is our largest self-development project so far.

There are two reasons for our outsourcing at the beginning: on the one hand, it is a practical reason, and we need to earn an income maintenance studio. On the other hand, we also regard it as a learning opportunity, participate in top projects, and keep up with industry standards. Outsourcing is a great way to keep our skills sharp, and also give us the opportunity to participate in some companies and IP projects that we admire very much.

Teahouse: What are the preparations for turning to self-research? How do you make decisions in type and gameplay direction, and what factors do you value most?

bit egg:Our overall idea was influenced by a 2019 article on ‘Gemukai’. The core of this concept is: the game you want to make must be the love and deep understanding of your team, you must be able to do it well, and at the same time, it is also what your audience is really willing to pay for it.

These three points are indispensable. Taking ‘Lost and Found Company’ as an example, our outsourcing business is very large, so we have a very large art team. We ask ourselves: how to make a game that can really take this advantage to the extreme? ‘Lost and Found Company’ is the answer we found.

Teahouse: In your opinion, what is the biggest difference between the ability of outsourcing and self-research? What abilities must the team build from scratch?

bit egg:Game development can be roughly divided into two stages: pre-production and mass production (production). In the pre-production stage, the development work is more like a craftsman workshop or a research and development department, and the game design, visual style and overall architecture are still in the process of exploration and definition; , the development work is more like an assembly line, there is a production process, there are professionals who perform their own duties, and there are fixed pipelines. At this time, the design has been determined, and the main goal is to expand the assets and content of the game on a large scale.

To do customer outsourcing, we usually intervene in the formal production stage, and our expertise is to help customers expand on a large scale while maintaining high quality. For internal projects, the key difference is that we have to complete the work of the research and development stage by ourselves. But once it is completed in the early stage, our mature mass production system has become a huge advantage.

Teahouse: How does the team adapt to the transition from ‘serving customers’ to ‘serving players’? Has the mentality changed significantly?

bit egg:Whether outsourcing or self-developed, the goal is to make things that players can find fun. When outsourcing, the customer defines what the player wants (we give advice occasionally), and the mature customer knows his own fans very well and can give a clear goal. The self-development project requires us to understand the players ourselves.

Teahouse: Is Bit Egg still outsourcing? How to balance outsourcing and self-development? Is outsourcing income still supporting self-research?

bit egg:Yes, we are still doing outsourcing, no matter how successful it is, it will continue. Back to the metaphor of R&D and factory: If R&D is not ready for mass production, the factory has no reason to stop working. We draw on company models such as Wayforward and ARC System Works: we are both customer cool ip and our own original creation. We like fun customer projects that maintain industry standards. And the work itself is fun too!

03

Make a game with all things soul

Teahouse: When did ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’ start to develop? What is the project process like? Who is the first to put forward the theme and gameplay? Why did the team decide to do it?

bit egg:Back to the concept of ‘gemukai’. We have a large, experienced and technical Spine animation team. At that time, our key question was: what kind of games can we make to maximize our Spine ability? ‘Lost and Found Company’ is the answer we found.

We wanted to make an adventure game. Game director Nat wants to be a game that is easy to get started, even parents can play. At that time, his mother especially liked to play things-seeking games. The search for items is traditionally not popular in Steam, but we feel there is potential. We think we have the opportunity to make the best search game ever.

We want to really raise the standard in terms of art, characters, stories, scenes, animation, and how to integrate the gameplay. Most things to find things are very static, and we want to make a vivid world where everything is moving. We did the demo and it felt good, so we determined the direction. Demo proves that the team can control and be competitive.

However, the original version is quite general, with no protagonists. The core creative team quickly realized that this game must have strong stories and very infectious characters in order to really stand out. Therefore, after the basic gameplay is determined, we have invested a lot of characters, stories, and worldviews.

This is a highly collaborative process. The role designers come up with different plans, and the team discusses together: how to improve and how to be more attractive. When a character is designed to ‘too much by one point, and too little to lose one point’, we know that the final draft is finalized. When the duckling, Meilong, and the cunning little fox were born, the entire team fell in love with them. The project has really taken off from now on. After the character is determined, the story is polished, and the process is long and difficult. It took us a long time to get the game to the desired level. But the team did a great job and grew huge in development.

Teahouse: Why choose the themes of gods, offerings and other themes as the entrance to the world view?

bit egg:Our creators grew up in a multicultural community and have been exposed to various beliefs and gods since childhood. When I grew up, I was not only fascinated by stories, but also how these images evolved, spread, cross-cultural adaptation, and repackaged. This process is very similar to today’s brands: adapt, change, and convey meaning in the community. This perception has become the foundation of ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’ We want to explore this idea through the story, so that the game narrative is both familiar and fresh.

Teahouse: The most amazing thing in the game is the imaginative world: humans, anthropomorphic animals, plants, objects, and element elves are almost all personified. For example, when you walk into the dog house and find that the puppy is an agent. Where did these ideas come from?

bit egg:The core philosophy of our team has always been: make ordinary everyday life more interesting.

Inspired by studio Ghibli, they are good at adding fantasy to everyday life, turning ordinary moments into magic. We hope to bring this feeling into the game and re-assign it to everyday miracles. Every event, every ‘story fragment’ follows this principle, and wants to give players a simple feeling of hiding a feeling of surprise.

So you will walk into the dog house and find that the dog is an agent. I compare the game to a toy box full of surprises: opening and never knowing what to come. For me, the real success is the player’s emotions about these moments: laugh and feel amazing. If the world only has human beings, it will become monotonous and without surprises, and the world will become more vivid if it is given character to plants, animals, and objects.

Teahouse: The cute and healing art style of the game is widely loved. How is this style determined in the first place? Is the quality of art related to your long-term outsourcing experience?

bit egg:We choose this style to make the game warm, relaxed, warm and close. The cute doodle style makes the world affinity and fun, and reserves the imagination space. Another focus is collaborativeness: many arts can be quickly used to ensure a unified style. From this point of view, the long-term outsourcing experience of Bit Egg does help. We have cooperated with various arts for many years to know how to set a good-looking and easy-to-uniform style to ensure high quality throughout the process.

Teahouse: In addition to the core search, the game also has a decorative system with a high degree of freedom, which is very popular among players. Why join this function?

bit egg:This function is desperately won by the development team. We originally thought we could ‘stay until the sequel’, but the team is very enthusiastic, they are very happy to do complex levels, and they also know that players will like customization.

In Thailand, developers rarely have the opportunity to do original projects. The ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’ team did their best for this game, and it is the only opportunity in this life. So they are extremely enthusiastic and want to make the function as rich as possible.

Teahouse: The highlight of the game is nearly a thousand interactive items, and the workload is huge. Now many studios are reluctant to invest in details, why do you think it is worth it?

bit egg:We are all big fans of the search book and the game search game, and the goal is to be the best in history. We found a lot of game-seeking game animations very poor, even if there are, it is very repeated. But the classic search books are very vivid, the characters are unique, and every page is playing small stories. We have to capture that feeling.

To make the world really live, it requires a lot of unique resources + a lot of unique animation, our team is big and strong, and we are fully competent. The team members are very fond of games, and the games we like are full of attentive details. It is these details that make the game special. When playing games, especially when the time and funds are limited, I can’t help but ask: Can this function increase sales? A single detail will not directly increase sales, but together, they give the game soul. If you want to stand out and impress players with a game, you must have a soul.

Teahouse: What is the biggest difficulty in development? Is there a system that takes a lot of effort to eventually overturn the redo? Why?

bit egg:In the game development, the most difficult thing is to adjust the difficulty to neither too simple nor too difficult, and requires a lot of test iteration. Players are only playing the tip of the iceberg, and we have done countless levels and have been cut off over the years. The most difficult thing to develop is not a system, but to make all parts unified, refined and coordinated.

These problems can be solved, all thanks to the game director Nat, who pulls the game to this level. We have said many times, ‘It’s good enough, let’s post it!’ Nat replied: No, it must be better! There is no point in the release of a good game! If you are not good, you will not be able to stand out, you will not be successful!

It turns out that NAT is right. He has devoted a lot of effort to improve the game, and the team also fully supports it. We are very happy that we can finally complete it and achieve the quality we want.

04

Is the sales expected?

Teahouse: Who is the target user of ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’? How is the market positioning?

bit egg:At first glance, it is someone who likes cute healing games, usually more female players. But in fact, this game is suitable for everyone. Many people tell us: ‘I usually don’t play this kind of game, but I like your family very much, and I want to buy it for my family.’ We were not surprised.

Most members of Bit Egg prefer hardcore categories such as strategy, fighting, and horror, but we all like cute things too. In terms of market positioning, we believe that we have the opportunity to make the best game search game in the world. We draw on the previous excellent works, but the goal is to upgrade the whole: fine arts, stories, characters and sophistication. Our art team is very strong, and we have the confidence to make the picture to the top. But even more difficult is to keep the gameplay, plot, music, and feel at a high level.

Game director Nat repeatedly emphasized that the game must be coordinated and unified as a whole. Some games are very bright in some respects, and other aspects are very weak, but the delicate parts are rough, just like the Demo is not like the finished product. We work hard from the very beginning to make the game like a truly complete, refined and unified work. We know that this is the only way to get a true fan.

Teahouse: ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’ has won numerous awards, praised the exhibition, and won the 2025 Thailand Game Award. How is the current business performance? Did you meet expectations? What reflections are there?

bit egg:We are very satisfied with the current performance, far exceeding the expectations based on the wishlist. The game-seeking game is traditionally not popular in Steam, so the sales volume has exceeded expectations.

Some things are as we expected. China has always been the most important market for us (the world’s largest, with many Thai Chinese), and our largest sales volume is from China. The huge surprise is the overwhelming support of Thailand, and we really hope so, but we are still very moved when it really happens. Steam is still a niche in Thailand, and Thai players have always been accustomed to buying it again. But our Thai fans have fully supported it from the very beginning: add a wishlist, share, and promote the anchor. On the day of the release, they really came to the scene to support, which was amazing. As of the interview, the game has just been launched for a few weeks, and the future performance is still difficult to say, but we are very satisfied with the first launch.

Teahouse: How is the development of self-developed games within Bit Egg organized? Does each game have its own team? How do different teams work together?

bit egg:Yes, each project has its own team. There is generally not much direct collaboration between teams, but individuals may be requested by other teams for professional support.

Teahouse: What kind of products do you want to develop in the future? What is the direction of the category, gameplay and platform?

bit egg:One of the announced projects we can currently confirm is ‘Zecha Tactics’, which is a mecha war chess RPG. In addition, I can only say for the time being: please keep your attention!

We will also fully support ‘Lost and Found Co., Ltd.’ We are really happy to see players love this game and the characters in it. The details cannot be said much, but the team is already seriously discussing how to continue to expand the game and worldview in the future. We are very serious and will not quickly follow the trend to make a sequel. We hope to continue to provide a high-quality experience.