The state of games publishing: "The era of the generalist indie publisher is over"

gamesindustry.biz:

The closure (or near closure) of Humble Games was yet another brutal headline in what has been a bleak 18 months for indie games publishers

We've seen collapsing share prices, redundancies, a reduction in games being signed and entire company closures. Of course, publishers are caught up in the same nightmare that the entire games industry has been dealing with – a drop in game revenue mixed with over-investment and rapidly rising costs. However, there are also some fundamental (and potentially permanent) shifts in the marketplace that are making it harder for publishers to compete.

"I’ve been in publishing for almost ten years and it’s always been uncertain," says Simon Byron, who is currently MD of Yogscast Games. "You can never predict exactly how a game will perform before it’s out. You can have a sense, sure, but accurately forecasting a game’s sales is impossible – I’ve certainly never got it spot on. And that’s tricky for particular companies who have pressures to provide certainty to its shareholders.

"What we’re seeing at the moment are huge changes in the market, where forecasting models haven’t caught up with oversaturation, the impact of subscription services and the prevalence of aggressive discounting. Companies that overstretched during times of plenty now find themselves in a world where more agile companies are moving in and performing better.

"I’m still tremendously excited about the market. There are great games launching all the time, and breakout hits popping off week after week. It’s not that people aren’t buying games – far from it. It’s that the foundations some companies have built their operations upon rely on games selling an unrealistic amount. Many of these companies are still very profitable, which is what makes it even more heartbreaking."

Unrealistic expectations is something that came up multiple times with the businesses I spoke to. Snow Rui, who is CFO and president of publisher Hooded Horse, cites inflated expectations as a challenge