Several indie developers shared with the BBC their concerns about the Microsoft and Activision Blizzard deal. They stated that a lot of AAA projects are already included in the Game Pass subscription, and after the purchase of the Call of Duty publisher, there will be even more of them. Because of this, small games can simply go unnoticed by gamers.

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.

Several successful indie developers have expressed complaints about the Metacritic rating system. They face a paradox: their games are sold in hundreds of thousands or even millions of copies, but the specialized media often ignore such projects. Due to the lack of ratings, small studios eventually lose some financial and business opportunities.Clone Drone In The Danger Zone

A small studio Aggro Crab Games acted as a publisher of the indie horror Subway Midnight and attracted attention with an unusual publishing contract. She will not claim a share of the proceeds until the sales of the project reach 10 thousand copies. This decision caused a strong reaction in the community.Subway Midnight

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.

Fullbright is a small indie studio, mainly known for the title Gone Home. Despite initial successes, the team literally collapsed during the development of a new project. Because of the actions of the co-founder, almost all women have left it over the past couple of years. There are less than 10 people left in the studio.Open Roads

After scandals with a massive decline in the rating of games, developers often begin to wonder if this will affect them as well. Some suggest radically solving the problem and completely banning gamers from rating. But according to the authors of the Dusk retroshooter, this can only aggravate the situation.

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.

The Reddit community decided to help indie developers get unbiased reviews of their games. For these purposes, the Destroy My Game subreddit appeared on the site (Destroy my Game), whose users should point out the pros and cons of the proposed projects without embellishment and as honestly as possible.An example of one of the projects submitted to the court of Destroy My Game users

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’ activity on YouTube is often limited to streams and diaries. However, sometimes independent game creators become real bloggers. Former game designer Simon Carless wrote a column about how a personal channel can help promote their projects.Preview of the video from the channel 

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?

The network has found a selection of almost 250 gaming media and influencers useful for game developers. It contains e-mail addresses and feedback forms.

The scandal between indie developers and the G2A store – the second in two years — led to the creation of a petition against the trading platform. Its author, the head of No More Robots Mike Rose (Mike Rose) demands that G2A no longer trade keys from indie games.

TabTale and its brand Crazy Labs are investing $500,000 in hyper-casual games from indie developers. The best of them will be selected as part of the Hyper Casual Summer Blitz initiative.

The Google Play store shared a list of initiatives aimed at supporting indie developers. A new competition for Android titles has been announced, as well as training programs.

Valve responded to indie developers who complained about declining sales due to falling traffic from their games on Steam.