A Small Team, Big Support — Partnering with Dell & Nvidia
Hey everyone,
We’ve always believed Hawthorn exists because of people who took a chance on us: Our community, our content creator collaborators, our friends who offered their time. And now, in a moment that still feels a little surreal to type out, we’re incredibly honored to share that we’ve partnered with Dell and NVIDIA!
We’re a small indie team. Every day, we’re just trying to build the co-op RPG of our dreams, the one we wished existed. The kind of world where people could belong, where families and friends can explore together without anyone feeling like they have to compromise. That idea is what brought our team together in the first place, and it’s what continues to drive everything we do.
This partnership came about in a very indie and organic way. An extremely talented character artist student, who we reached out to in hopes of being able to hire in the future (when she finished her course work and when we hopefully one day would have funding), helped connect us to Dell and NVIDIA through an industry partnership program within her school. It’s not the usual path, and honestly, we’re grateful they were willing to take the time to meet with a small, scrappy studio like ours.
Through this collaboration, we received a Dell Pro Max Tower T2 workstation equipped with dual NVIDIA RTX PRO GPUs. The impact was immediate. Tasks that once took nearly a full workday, like packaging a playable build, now take just minutes. That means faster iteration, fewer blocked developers, and more time spent actually improving Hawthorn instead of waiting on builds.
Some of our heaviest workflows were previously crashing due to memory limits or locking up personal machines for hours. With the new system, we can generate open-world optimizations, load the full map, and run complex Unreal workflows without bringing development to a halt. It’s the kind of boost that changes how quickly we can test ideas and move forward.
For a team of our size, support like this isn’t just about hardware. It’s validation. It’s a reminder that even small studios chasing big ideas can be seen and supported and ultimately, it helps us build a better experience for all of you!
We’re incredibly grateful to Dell and NVIDIA for believing in what we’re making and for helping us bring Hawthorn to life. And as always, thank you to this community for being the reason we get to keep going!
Check out the blog post that Dell shared about the partnership here.
— The NEARstudios Team