2024-03-29 08:31:44
If in recent years we have regularly heard that, without Xbox Game Pass, certain independent games would not have been able to see the light of day and even less achieve success, it seems today that places are becoming increasingly rare.
“The Gold Rush is over”
In an interview recently collected as part of the GDC and highlighted by PC GamerCasey Yano, co-founder of Mega Crit, said that the agreements that some small developers have relied on in recent years to obtain funds are no longer what they used to be.
The developer of Slay The Spire talks here about Epic Games Store exclusivity deals or even Xbox Game Pass and mentions that several developers have had contracts canceled:
I spoke to at least five small teams, 35 people or less, during GDC, and they tell me: cuts, cuts, cuts, funding canceled, discussions that had been going on for a year, canceled
[…]
It looks like shit. We are truly very privileged to be able to self-finance. Otherwise I would be very, very, very scared right now
Chris Bourassa, director of Darkest Dungeons at Red Hook Studios, says for his part that Microsoft’s offers to integrate games into Xbox Game Pass have “lost their scale” since the launch of the service and that the same is true for those of Epic:
The gold rush is over. I’m from the Northwest Territories. The town I’m from was built on gold, then they found diamonds further north. Maybe another paradigm shift lies ahead, but I really think the scale of the deals I’m hearing about is significantly smaller than it was back then. Certainly we got our deal with Epic at the right time.
Obviously, we must keep in mind that each situation is different and that one person’s experience is not necessarily another’s.
As recently indicated by the developer of PlateUp, Game Pass is an obvious way to allow as many people as possible to discover a game, but places are visibly increasingly rare to be offered the support of Microsoft or that of Epic Games.
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