Have you looked at Steam recently? Indie studios are doing just fine, and new indie studios are popping up all the time. I'd argue the indie market is stronger than ever.
I don’t have any stats but would find that interesting, mainly as I’m not sure how much revenue indie studios have. Is the split like 10% get most of the money while the other 90% starve?
FWIW, I have heard they are hands-off and offer resources, like great groups for closed alphas.
The only concern I have is that they can become more hands on and excersie control over creative decisions in the future.
Personally, I value good stories from mid sized indy studios. The dominance of 2 engines can make things feel a bit homogenized. Pair a great story with another engine, and my interest is piqued.
1. invested in by one of the platform owners themselves, in exchange for a [temporary] exclusivity agreement, making them essentially a sharecropper on the platform; or
2. invested in almost exclusively by a single bigcorp publisher, making the studio essentially a secret marque of that publisher for projects they don't want associated with their regular brand image.
Many of the games that later make it to Steam, were originally funded by either one of the platform owners, or by a bigcorp publisher.
> Many of the games that later make it to Steam, were originally funded by either one of the platform owners
My account is full of games (including top sellers) with no such arrangements. And I have more access to such games than at any time in history.
> What evidence? My account is full of games (including top sellers) with no such arrangements.
Ignore indie games that have been on Steam for years and years, or that only get published on Steam and no other platforms; these are the exceptions to the rule (despite this set containing some of the largest hits by sales volume.)
While there are studios that sell only on Steam and other low-barrier-to-entry channels, 99% of them don't last more than a year or two, because selling only on Steam is leaving almost all your money on the ground. There's a reason that many of these games don't get support updates any more and won't run on e.g. macOS or Linux after any major OS update, despite originally intending support for those platforms: the studio didn't survive.
And while there are indie studios that eventually take their console-exclusive game over to Steam, it's often still published by the publisher on Steam. Take a careful look at the Steam catalog page for the "publisher" field. If there is one? That's who's making the direct revenue on the game sales. Like the publisher of a book. The "author" — the studio — is only getting a commission.
There are a few indie studios who manage to "earn out" their deals with publishers, and take over their own Steam pages (though not usually their console marketing rights — the platform owners don't like dealing with the long tail of self-publishers, they much prefer well-known bigcorps as marketing partners.)
This is such a narrow, HN-ified view of indie developers that I genuinely have a hard time believing this is anything other than satire.
