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'The gold rush is over:' Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon devs say that big Game Pass and Epic exclusive deals have dried up for indie devs

Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
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In an interview at last week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the developers behind indie sensations Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon said that the deal some small developers have come to rely on for funding in recent years—like Epic Game Store exclusives and Xbox Game Pass—are no longer what they once were.

"I talked to at least five small teams, like 35 [members] and under, during GDC, and they're like: Cuts, cuts, cuts, funding canceled, talks that were going on for a year, canceled," said Casey Yano, the co-founder of Slay the Spire studio Mega Crit. "It sounds like it's shit. We're definitely very privileged to be able to self-fund. [Otherwise] I'd be very, very, very scared right now."
Slay the Spire launched to slow sales in Steam early access before eventually becoming a deckbuilding juggernaut. Darkest Dungeon was likewise a Steam early access success; both games are available on PC Game Pass, though DD director Chris Bourassa said that Microsoft's deals for getting games on Game Pass have "come down in scope" since the subscription service began.

"Way down," Yano added.

"So has Epic," Bourassa said. "The Gold Rush is over. I come from the Northwest Territories. The town I'm from was built on gold, and then they found diamonds further north. Maybe another paradigm shift is waiting for us, but I definitely think the scale of the deals I'm hearing about is significantly dimishese from the big swinging days. Certainly we got our Epic [deal] at the right time."
Darkest Dungeon developer Red Hook Studios made the somewhat controversial choice to launch the sequel in early access as an Epic exclusive. While those exclusives haven't been popular with players, they've allowed some indie developers to "break even" on their games even before release, a safety net that's hard to pass up when a game's success can make or break a small studio.

To help give the indie scene a boost, Red Hook and Mega Crit have teamed up with Dead Cells DLC studio Evil Empire to put on a "Triple-I" showcase on April 10, alongside other developers including Re-Logic, poncle and more.
 

pqueue

Member
what arrogant trash those developers are, as if they are OWED whatever imaginary monetary support they think they should get.

no one is forcing them to take any deal with Epic or MS.

Seems like the fault is with themselves and their games. If the games cannot stand and sell on their own without being financially supplemented by a third-party game service, maybe they should not be making games in the first place.
 
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this is where the statement of the Xbox deemphasizing Game Pass comes from.
but you know, Jez and Colt (Big Brain analysts and commentators) just loled.
🤡🤡
 

NickFire

Member
If they hang on until the next generation of consoles they may have a couple of good years when it first begins. I'm guessing that being able to slap a next gen label on a brand new indie game is more valuable when a new console has less software.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
No surprise whatsoever. Their calculation was based on continued massive growth, and its simply not there.

It was always going to end up like this because gaming has grown through becoming more diversified whilst the sub-sectors of interest within it have remained largely plateaud.

The "blue ocean" vision pursued by MS particularly was always doomed to failure because the gaming world is more a collection of archipelogos connected by narrow bridges where only a few people cross.

The upshot was always going to be the destruction of value through perceptually making product more disposable and transient, an effect that was guaranteed to manifest "from the ground up" in the sense that smaller producers would bear the impact first.

Its something that I suspect may have even been planned in to a degree, given what MS seem to be aiming for is owning a tentpole product in every category and binding them together under a unifying brand/distribution umbrella.
 
I think people should give Phil a little rest, i personally enjoy my games being day 1 on GP or even PC. IDK.

I'm actually not ragging on Phil here at all, personally. This probably isn't even his decision.

If anything I'm ragging on the indies who were cheering on the acquisition thinking they would somehow have a better change for GP deals if MS got ABK, when everyone else was telling them opposite would happen. They welcomed their own irrelevance (to getting service deals).

Easy solution for funding.

Like every other industry, walk into a bank and apply for a business loan.

But the loans have to be paid back. MS were giving indies free cash to fund the games that didn't have to be paid back.

Obviously they preferred the GP deals vs. going for business loans.
 

Pejo

Member
Easy solution for funding.

Like every other industry, walk into a bank and apply for a business loan.
Problem is that game devs, for some reason, are unilaterally fucking terrible at planning, setting realistic goals, and budgeting. I will always look at Shenmue 3 as the penultimate "what the fuck are you doing?" game.
 

Sushi_Combo

Member
what arrogant trash those developers are, as if they are OWED whatever imaginary monetary support they think they should get.

no one is forcing them to take any deal with Epic or MS.

Seems like the fault is with themselves and their games. If the games cannot stand and sell on their own without being financially supplemented by a third-party game service, maybe they should not be making games in the first place.
That's true. They never should have bet on GP to sustain their finances.
 
That means less and less indy games.
Sequels and remakes and microtransactions are what gamers are willing to pay for.

I hope that's not what it means, because a lot of the innovative game design ideas are going to come from indie and small/mid-scale AA games, not the AAA sequels and remakes (unless it's a remake of an unconventional game...and those almost never get remakes sadly).

Hopefully publishers like Annapurna, Devolver etc. pick these studios up. Hell, Sony need some 1P indies and AA titles in their pipeline and they have suitable legacy IP that could be leveraged with them. So they should consider picking some of these devs up or at least partner with them on new titles for PlayStation.
 
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Not surprising when you see all the layoffs happening everywhere. The industry exploded because of COVID and everyone is settling back in. The companies running these sub services don’t need to offer as many deals and don’t want to offer as much money.
 

bender

What time is it?
Anecdotal sure, but Game Pass, and to a lesser extent PS+, really altered my purchasing habits for indie games. Microsoft did a really good job of securing tons of high profile indie games for day one release on Game Pass. So much so that if I was interested in an Indie game, more often than not, it was on the service and if it wasn't, I just told myself to be patient as they were bound to show up sooner or later. I'm curious what the long term effects will be, if any.

The ebb and flow of indie game support from the big three since the PS3/360/Wii ear has to be maddening. Further, with the amount of games released daily and how quickly knock-offs can be turned around, being in that space must be terrifying from a discovery perspective alone.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
I'm actually not ragging on Phil here at all, personally. This probably isn't even his decision.

If anything I'm ragging on the indies who were cheering on the acquisition thinking they would somehow have a better change for GP deals if MS got ABK, when everyone else was telling them opposite would happen. They welcomed their own irrelevance (to getting service deals).

Didn’t you people always claim GP devalued games and hurt sales?
Why’s it now a negative for indie devs as MS focuses more on their content pipeline and ID@Xbox for GP?

wow! never saw this comin'...

Despite MS repeatedly saying their long term aim was to beef up first party and published efforts for GP?
 

Puscifer

Member
I at least appreciate the indie devs who saw it for what it was, a way to easily recoup cost upfront but made sure their games still hit other platforms but LOL at the ones cheering this shit on and butt mad that it's dried up.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
Good. The sooner Game Pass dies the better

…that’s not what this means or implies, though.

Because the "GP devalued games and hurt sales" talk was always towards AAA games, not indies. Though even then, some indies were hurt by being in the service Day 1, but those seemed like outliers.

I see.

Weird how we had a 6 page thread snarking at MS paying six figures to bring Coffee Talk to GP, but now they’re the bad guys for offering less generous terms these days.

You seemed to get it then, in that thread.
 
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All the deals on GP were so obviously short term. No company is gonna do things that massively benefit the customer forever. They thought subscription growth would solve their eventual problem but that growth has stagnated.
 

Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
If it’s a choice between GP having day one exclusives and bigger titles for free, or a giant bunch of lower priced indies, I’ll take the bigger titles.

I’d much rather save $ on star field $70, or get burned by paying out of pocket for a $20 indie title that sucked.
 
I see.

Weird how we had a 6 page thread snarking at MS paying six figures to bring Coffee Talk to GP, but now they’re the bad guys for offering less generous terms these days.

You seemed to get it then, in that thread.

Bro that link is busted, takes me to a blank page.

Six figures for a small little indie game is dumb, though. But MS were probably willing to do that when they were desperate for exclusive content. Now they've got Zenimax and ABK, they don't need the indies anymore (at least, that's how they feel).
 
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