Indie Devs Clarify: Funding Didn’t End From Xbox, “Gold Rush” Is Over For The Whole Industry

gameranx.com:

Last week, a small set of interviews went viral over claims that the proverbial ‘gold rush’ for indie game funding had ended. Today, we get some clarification about those interviews.

We also reported on this piece from last week, which came from PC Gamer. They cited quotes from Mega Crit Games producer Casey Yano, who is known for Slay the Spire, and Red Hook Studios co-founder Chris Bourassa, who is himself known for Darkest Dungeon.

We quoted Casey and Chris directly, based on this report. Chris was the source of the “Gold rush is over” quote, though he didn’t name any company in particular here. On the other hand, Casey identified Epic Games Store in particular, as a company that was pulling back on funding for indie games.

However, we took for granted that PC Gamer implied that they knew someone who claimed that they knew that Microsoft was also pulling back funding for their games. Our report pointed out that they didn’t name Sony, Nintendo, Steam, or other companies, or claimed that they were pulling funding for smaller independent games.

In a new interview on Gamer Social Club, Casey and Chris returned to clarify their statements.

Bourassa said:                 

“My gold rush comment was meant as an overall appraisal of the indie funding situation – as I said, deals are more difficult to line up, their average size has diminished, and many companies are facing layoffs.

Chris provided a lot more clarification, reiterating he specifically referred to Epic and not Microsoft. He said:

“There were some VERY good deals at the onset of Epic Games, which is what I was pointing to, not Game Pass.

Yeah, those (Epic Games) deals have dropped in value. Game Pass deals are a bit more nebulous as there’s little data out there, a lot more hush hush. I know of two studios who locked great deals though (last year).”

He then painted the bigger picture for the independent video game companies looking for funding in the industry today:

“I thought it (the PC Gamer article) was