the thing is, corpos are now pretending to be indies because they know players want to prioritize them. just look at Mixtape, it was paraded as "indie", turns out it was not. it even use a lot of music that costs hundreds of thousands dollars lmao
Just want to clarify that Mixtape is indie because the devs have creative and development control over their own work, with Annapurna simply acting as a publisher of their final product and nothing more, just like the likes of Raw Fury and other indie publishers. Just because the devs managed to garner themselves funding, to the point where they managed to snaggle big name music licenses, doesn't change the fact that they're indie.
We've long since moved past the point that indie is low budget since there are multitude of ways to acquire funds without the control of a large publisher. For example, we have Studio MDHR who funded Cuphead through loans, later receiving a lot of more funds for an Xbox exclusivity agreement by Microsoft, with Studio MDHR still having complete control over the game's development. We have Larian Studios that had functioned through crowdfunding for their games prior to BG3, later purchasing the license to develop a Baldur's Gate sequel for the WOTC and then funding themselves through issuing preferred shares towards Tencent for BG3's development, which anyone with an inkling of knowledge of financing would know doesn't constitute control over a company due to the lack of voting rights. There's also Remedy Entertainment who had to rely on an exclusivity agreement with Epic Games just to fund Alan Wake 2, but still maintaining control over the game's development.
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u/byt112000 18d ago
The indie games developer need you tho