I get really irked when I see people post “indies will save us” or “the laid off devs should go indie” THERE IS NO MONEY publishers are cancelling contracts, angel investors/venture capital don’t want small returns. I think they mean hobbyists with a day job working doubletime & that is a rough ask
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-Thank you for bringing more attention to this.
not saying you're wrong i'm just genuinely curious what the conditions are
It's competing with every other game ever made. And most games lose.
(Per https://www.matthewball.co/all/stateofvideogaming2025)
Just don't look at the piles of burn-outs off-camera.
All the publishing deals we were offered were absolute ass, *nobody* bought the game, and then everyone lost their jobs because there just wasn't enough money left to go again.
Shit's DIRE for indies.
It's not gatekeeping to acknowledge that most devs won't "realize actual currency"
There were 19,000 games sold on Steam last year. 80% of them didn't get any players.
https://kotaku.com/steam-19-000-new-games-limited-pc-valve-unplayed-80-1851738322
Is that a career? Is that something you can live off of?
Or is it a hobby where you make cash on the side?
Saying anything other than "you have an 80% chance to put years of your life into this only to fail" is lying to these devs.
There's no career in indie games without VC funds. And there's no more VC in gaming.
Small, safe investments for small safe returns and big investments for big and less safe returns.
And people wonder why the triple A space is in trouble. They don't know shit about money management 🙄
-know nothing idiot
All those people are going to bizdev or softdev and we won’t get them back (if ever) until we ruthlessly purge all businessman types from gaming with a Stalinist ruthlessness.