The state of the indie games industry in 2024
The games industry continues to experience layoffs and studio closures, with indie studios such as Black Flag and Studio Thunderhorse being recently shut down due to numerous challenges.
Over the past few months, GamesIndustry.biz spoke to indie developers about the most significant challenges the sector faces in today's market, and the support that needs to be offered to keep indies thriving.
The leading issue developers raised is the difficulties of securing funding. Aurélien Condomines is the co-founder of Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge developer Humble Reeds, and he notes this is especially a challenge because of how competitive the market is.
"There's a problem with the offering of the markets, and there is also a problem with pricing because a lot of developers are ready to underprice their games," he explains. "When you combine that with financing [issues], you have a real squeezing effect which in the long term… I mean, you can already see it. Studios closing and people not being able to make a living out of game development."
"Finding external funding or a marketing partner often feels crushingly impossible"
Finji CEO Rebekah Saltsman agrees, adding that the pressures of long development cycles, the size of your team and what they can accomplish without burning out, and "astronomical" budgets don't help either.
"The quantity of money we have to make from our projects, and then finding external funding or a marketing partner, it often feels crushingly impossible. Even for our studio, we have quite a track record of coming out of it. Everybody is [feeling it] right now. Whether it's studios looking for $100,000 or $10 million – it's really hard."
An added issue for Finji (and many other indie developers) is using third-party engines such as Unity, as it can be challenging to keep up to date with technological advancements the longer a development cycle becomes.
"There's often a moving target with these engines where you think you have everything set, but because games take
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