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Fossidarity wrote (edited )

They do, creating a game for indie developers usually mean that they have to work non-stop for at least a year without seeing much/any money, only to live with the fear that their game won't be received well and won't even support them for minimum wage. The indie games market is also very saturated with many games being released every day. The "minecrafts" are a one in a million outlier where they've had the perfect amount of luck, timing and marketing.

Watch Indie Game: The Movie for a documentary about (early) indie developers and their struggles (a lot of depression).

The difference with AAA games though that by buying their games as a consumer you usually give less money to corporate institutions like publishers but straight to the people making it who probably made it out of love.

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mofongo wrote

A few months a link was posted here that showed that most indie developers make less than minimum wage on their games.

https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2018/03/26/most-games-on-steam-will-make-less-than-minimum-wage/

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Dirtbagleftist wrote

Doesn't really go into detail why though. Is it because people simply aren't being paid, or are the developers just unable to pull in enough revenue?

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mofongo wrote

There's lot of competition, thousands of games coming out each week. It's hard to get their game known by word of mouth alone.

Some genres are saturated of new titles, which doesn't help. Games like Stardew valley are a rarity, and its popularity is in part because of its niche.

Consumer psychology also affects how the game is viewed. Cheap games are viewed as cheap games no matter how good they are and that affects how many sales a game gets.

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