There was a discussion among developers about the dominance of indie games, which are released on Steam by the thousands every year. Two polar points of view collided. First, most of these titles are not needed by the market, because they have zero value. The second is that people should not be forbidden to express themselves through creativity and consider games only as a business.

Sergey Klimov, who founded the Charlie Oscar studio, shared his opinion about what indie is. He believes that independent developers sacrifice everything for the sake of their games and in case of failure may be left penniless.

In August, German indie developer Arnold Rauers switched his games in the App Store to a free-play distribution model. After that, the total monthly revenue of his titles increased by 41%.

Indie developer Jan Wojtecki shared his experience in promoting his Pawnbarian bagel. Having no funds for at least some marketing, he managed to collect more than 10 thousand vishlists on Steam by the release. The developer spoke about working with streamers, game festivals and other effective promotion channels.

Google has summed up the results of the Indie Games Festival 2021. This year the winners were 10 games from independent developers. Three for Europe, Korea and Japan, plus one best game according to users.

A few years ago, the indie apocalypse almost turned Steam into a “garbage dump”. Valve managed to defeat the invasion of low-quality games, while continuing to let everyone into its store. However, due to the new Steam algorithms, small titles actually have no place left on the site. Marketing consultant Chris Zukowski told about this problem in his material for the website How To Market A Game.

Indie developers have repeatedly talked about the negative experience of working with PlayStation. Yesterday it turned out that the feature in the PS Store costs $ 25 thousand. After that, Sony was hit by a new wave of criticism. Developers began to point out many other problems of the company — including lack of support, poor game findability, and, as a result, low sales of indie games.

After Sony denied the creator of Return of the Obra Dinn the right to introduce a temporary discount, attention was drawn to the problem on English-language forums and social networks. It turned out that this is not the first time the company does not allow indie developers to arrange sales.Lucas Pope, the creator of the detective indie game Return of the Obra Dine, decided to arrange a sale in honor of the two-year anniversary of…

Developers from the Thunder Lotus studio, who released the “cozy death game” Spiritfarer, were criticized online and forced to apologize. Users felt that the storyline of one of the characters offends people with disabilities.

The N3twork platform is ready to invest money in the promotion of mobile indie developers. To this end, she has established two new foundations.

GTP Media named the winners of the Indie Cup Winter’20 contest. Encansed was recognized as the best desktop game, which also won in another nomination. The best mobile game was R.A.C.E.

The organizers of the GTP Indie Cup Winter‘20 competition have opened the acceptance of applications from indie developers. The works are accepted until February 29.

Nintendo has unveiled a list of this year’s indie bestsellers for its console. It featured platformers Cuphead and Unravel Two, as well as the “goose game” — Untitled Goose Game.

Sony veteran Shuhei Yoshida has moved to a new position in the company. He has led a new program to support indie developers on PlayStation platforms.

In January, the first episode of the indie shooter Bright Memory appeared on Steam. The author of the game no longer has enough funds to develop the rest of the game. To solve the problem, he will release Bright Memory on iOS and Android.

Promoting an indie game is not an easy task for single developers. A developer under the nickname Ninja_Gah shares his personal experience on Reddit. Listing marketing schemes, he asks the question: are there any practical benefits from them?

Half of indie developers sell their games too cheaply. Game designer Simon Carless talks about why an indie game should cost at least $20.

Yesterday GTP Media announced the winners of the Indie Cup Summer’19 contest. The best PC game was This Land is My Land. The best among mobile games is Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery.

The Polish Superhot Team has launched a fund to support indie developers. Two games have already been funded from his funds.