For several years, Xbox or Epic Games paid some indie devs a lot of money with great games to get their gaming gems into the Game Pass or to distribute them exclusively through the Epic Games Store. Those times are over, says developer Casey Yano of Slay the Spire, a game with 97% positive reviews on Steam.
These are the indie games: The gaming site PC Gamer spoke with indie developers of 2 big hits that are both in the Xbox Game Pass after launching in Early Access on Steam:
- Slay the Spire boasts 97% positive reviews on Steam, the deck-building game had a slow start on Steam in 2019
- The role-playing game Darkest Dungeons has 91% on Steam
Indie games like Darkest Dungeon 2 are often a refreshing alternative for core gamers compared to the big titles in the industry:
Very scary right now
What do indie developers say? They say that indie devs have been able to snag big deals from the Epic Game Store or the Xbox Game Pass in recent years to finance themselves. But the times when there was real money to be made here are over. Casey Yano, the man behind Slay the Spire says:
I spoke with five teams, 35 people, during GDC and they say: Cuts, cuts, cuts, funding has stopped, talks that lasted a year have been abandoned. We are really privileged that we can finance ourselves. It’s very, very, very scary right now.
Got our deal with Epic Games at the right time
The man behind Darkest Dungeon says: The gold rush is over.
Even Epic no longer pays as much as it used to. He is glad that Darkest Dungeon received its ‘Epic deal’ at the right time.
What he hears is that the scale of the deals has decreased significantly. The times of big swings
are over.
What’s behind this: Under the conditions, one must worry that the next generation of gaming gems may not arrive if neither Xbox Game Pass nor Epic Games can be considered as sources of funding.
This is exactly what was always warned against. It was actually clear that Epic couldn’t maintain the strategy of buying new games with a lot of money just to keep them away from Steam.
Even the eternal cash cow Fortnite will eventually reach its limits. Recently, Epic Games even had to lay off employees.
Also, the Xbox Game Pass was probably too good to be true. Microsoft apparently put in a lot of money here to first establish a user base.
In the current gaming crisis, that is no longer so easily possible:
Epic continues to give away games, fighting and poking against Steam: Despite layoffs and losses
