The Gold Rush Is Over: Epic & MS No Longer Sign Small Indie Games As Exclusives

gameranx.com:

There’s trouble for small indie game development, as developers have revealed after talking to each other in the latest Game Developers Conference.

As reported by PC Gamer, some developers for smaller games are no longer being approached for exclusive deals by companies like Epic Game Store and Microsoft.

For companies like Epic, Microsoft, Sony, and others, signing up exclusives has usually been a boost to the business. The usual idea, of course, is getting big exclusives, such as Marvel’s Spider-Man, will convince gamers to buy the platform it is on, thereby making them a lot of money. However, for possibly a decade now, the big companies have been trying to coax exclusivity deals for smaller companies and smaller games.

Now, this can be a mixed blessing for these developers. If, for example, Epic Games Store signs your game up for exclusivity, you can become part of Epic’s marketing, especially if your title uses Epic’s own Unreal Engine to their best.

That means you will miss out on the definite bigger audience a game can get if it was published on Steam. But the money companies like Epic and Microsoft give is often upfront, and can immediately guarantee that those games get made.

Casey Yano, one of the leads at making Slay the Spire, said this in his GDC talk:

“I talked to at least five small teams, like 35 [members] and under, during GDC, and they’re like: Cuts, cuts, cuts, funding canceled, talks that were going on for a year, canceled.

It sounds like it’s shit. We’re definitely very privileged to be able to self-fund. [Otherwise] I’d be very, very, very scared right now.”

Chris Bourassa, on the other hand, who was director on Darkest Dungeon, had this to say:

“The Gold Rush is over. I come from the Northwest Territories. The town I’m from was built on gold, and then they found diamonds further north.

Maybe another paradigm shift is waiting for us, but I definitely think the scale of the deals I’m hearing about is significantly dimishese from the big swinging