If you’re a developer, make sure you read all the terms and/or have a lawyer. I support an outreach system for indie games but do not wish for them to be taken advantage of. Protect yourself!Protect your content!
A Game Pass for indie games: meet Indie Pass, a $6.99-a-month subscription launching with 70 titles
Submitted 2 weeks ago by commander@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
Soulphite@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Fuck subscriptions
hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
No.
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
the firm is working to sign up games from other developers, who’ll earn from a revenue share based on player engagement.
This is the dealbreaker for me. If there is a masterpiece game on there that takes 10h to complete, and a slop game that people sink 100s of hours into, I want the rev share to reward the 10h masterpiece more. I do not want an indie subscription service that incentivizes player engagement, full stop.
brsrklf@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
I don’t pay any subscription for games, I hate the idea of not being able to play what I want whenever I want. Even when it’s free (fuck you, No man’s sky expeditions FOMO).
But yeah, even though there are games that are not necessarily slop but with a structure that ensures I can enjoy them for hundreds of hours, it doesn’t feel fair that they’d dwarf the cool shorter ones I also play for revenues.
Some of the games I’ve completed in a dozen of hours still live rent-free in my head (most of them in a good way).
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
I was more hoping for a way to passively support indie devs that the market may otherwise not be giving enough attention to. I agree, I’d rather own a license (or better yet, physical copy) of a game and play it when I want, but I still view that relationship as part of the problem. I’d rather quality artwork not need to worry so much about playing the attention-lottery in order to survive.
Katana314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Fair criticism, though I’m curious if engagement translates directly to hours spent. I wonder if they have any other way to measure.
Maybe one simple thing would be if players take the time to review a game, it presents a boost to “engagement” disregarding their playtime.
grueling_spool@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
If Steam is any indication, a system like this would reward devs for posting something controversial on twitter
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I really don’t think we needed a subscription service for indie games (nor they do). Game Pass for AAA games makes somewhat sense, as the games are expensive. Game Pass concept in general will favor slop over creative and good game design with long time support. I am not a fan of this concept at all and its even worse for indie games in my opinion.
If this campaign is for discoverability, then they should find a different way to “advertise” the games. I agree that most games do need some discoverability though, besides the hits on Steam. There are so many good indie games for low price. But Game Pass concept is the wrong way in my opinion, for the entire industry (the player and the devs).
Zarxrax@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean, I can understand the appeal of it. I’m probably not going to buy any of the games on here even if they were cheap, because I don’t know anything about them. But if I have an opportunity to try out 70 games for a low price, I might give it a try. Afterwards maybe I found a couple that I actually liked and I can shell out a bit more directly to the developer to buy it.
Krauerking@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
So like UFO 50? We just need basically demo jams in a packaged form factor
Grass@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
nope. Pirate and if its good buy in preference order of direct then gog then steam.
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
No, thanks
FreddyNO@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yea this will only screw over indie devs
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There is a space for rentals to exist, but if you know exactly what you want already, the price of that indie game you’re looking for already isn’t very expensive, especially during a sale. We’ve probably got a bunch of these games in our libraries already just from bundles.
lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’d rather see them do a Humble Choice like subscription where the player gets to keep the games.
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Hard no, this benefits roughly nobody
arcine@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
Making the bait more appealing doesn’t make this any less of a trap than Xbox game pass.
Say no to subscriptions !
Pika@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I resound with the other commenters, this is a hard pass for me.
I got enough subscriptions to deal with than have a subscription for the cheaper style games.
This type of model isn’t even going to be helpful to the developers either, it may increase publicity but, the article says itself that it bases money earned on gametime and if people played a lot each dev is going to have diminishing returns… Nobody buys a subscription model with the expectation they are only going to play 1 or 2 games, people play as many games as they can, that way they can get the most out of the subscription. for 6.99 a month, even locking myself down to once a week only, if I played 3 inde titles a week, for an hour each, thats 12 games a month, which means that 6.99 is going to be less than 60 cents to each developer a month, and that is ignoring whatever cost they charge as a platform fee.
Sure the argument can be made that thats still money the dev wouldn’t be getting otherwise but, I see this as more of a disadvantage to inde studios. I think the example they used in the article is very optimistic and not super realistic to what will happen.
Katana314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The thing that might be missing from your hard math is addiction. You’re right that most games will be a blaze-past tryout period as you described, but sometimes will have 6 hour stories that you get invested into, while others are roguelikes that actually become compelling for 20+ hours. Which ones will form that addiction is unclear from browsing a store page, so it’s nicer to have complete access to them.
I’m also a little curious what worthwhile subscriptions you have. Most things I used to sub to, like Game Pass, have gone up to $15/$20-month and I decided to leave. Something simpler at $7/mo is a bit more agreeable to me. I spend more than that on some individual Patreons.
Pika@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I intentionally left addiction out of the equation as I don’t expect the everyday person is going to have that occur to them, and if it did occur that’s only going to make it /worse/ for the devs on the platform as it’s almost certainly going to favor rougelites and proc gen over story and action titles. I see no use of this.
as for my subs? I left the gaming sub field almost entirely. My only gaming sub I still have is humble bundle, because you own every game as long as you had choice the month it was released. I had gamepass ultimate for 2 years as part of the xbox X all access pass thing they did but, I found that there was very little actual decent “I want to play” games. I would play a few of them(like 6-8 of them) a month and then say “ok ill come back to them some day”, and then just not. For the price of a AAA title every 3 months (now a AAA title every other month) it wasn’t worth it for me.
From the consumer side, I feel the same way with this pass, I could take that same amount, and buy 2 or sometimes 3 of the games listed on this and have them to keep, and be helping the devs way more money wise.
CobblerScholar@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Or I could just spend that much on a single game that I would then own that supports the artist(s) directly and would likely take me about a month to play fully anyway and I could pick up again whenever I wanted without having to pay anything more.
CaptainBasculin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Makes no sense when fanatical exists.
Krauerking@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
I just type random words into the search bar and see what comes back, the mystery key bundles gave me frog detective 1 to many times.
But now I’m playing a fun gnome game so I am pretty happy with my method.
lyralycan@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I feel like 10¢ US per game per month is pretty expensive. I mean, that’s 30% more expensive than Xbox Game Pass Premium which offers top tier, popular games, and their monetised multiplayer servers. I think they’re gonna struggle to make a sustainable service from this
Katana314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That seems like a somewhat disingenuous way of boiling it down; realistically, most people will never play a significant percent of the games in a subscription. I think stats have shown most game pass players only end up playing 5 or 6 games in the majority of their time.
They also probably want 70 to be the low point if they’re still collecting indies into the program.
Katana314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I like it. This is what I wanted from Game Pass, minus Microsoft enshittification. Honestly, most of what I played on Game Pass was indies I was curious about, but sometimes only played 2-3 hours of.
That said, it doesn’t seem to be a complete announcement yet; much of the site is still marketing to developers, not gamers.
Jaegeras@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Reading the comments, this is a platform I’m sure to avoid.
Oh by the way, wasn’t something else $6.99 and kept gradually increasing and increasing overtime while dulling quality?
BreakerSwitch@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The fact that payout is based on engagement is kind of disappointing. Was hoping this would be a good middle ground for indies putting out first games or trying to make names for themselves to get their feet in the door, but it sounds like that probably won’t be the case, and thus, I’m not sure what problem this subscription is trying to solve.
That being said, it might be a fun way to ensure everyone in a group has a copy of a multiplayer game to run on a Friday night
foodvacuum@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ll try it out. I buy most of my indie games off fanatical bundles. It’d be nice to try a bunch one month. It’d be great if they integrated the subscription in steam so I could easily try stuff through proton
ThunderComplex@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I wanted to keep an open mind but two things turn me off immediately:
- The selection doesn’t seem that good and I think you’d be better off just buying the games you’re interested in (I have only heard of one game in the entire collection)
- The site seems AI generated. It has that default AI color scheme, the categories don’t seem to contain the right games (why is blue maiden „A slow-burning, psychological horror walking sim“ in cozy?), and the action category is listed twice.
The site just doesn’t seem trustworthy .
Krudler@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This doesn’t even sound like a real business. This sounds like one of those extemporaneous pitches that gets pulled out of the ass after martini 3, delivered by the sales doofus that doesn’t know how to send an email.
The red flag that caught my eye was all the cheerleading and then snuck at the bottom was (paraphrased) ‘well, people can play as much as they want but, ya know, if it’s like 10 games a month we might have to look at stuff’.
So, what? It’s subscription service but the games vanish (oh you can buy them individually) and and if you use the service for its advertised purpose, there’s going to be problems - only $7.99 ?
I should have said martini 8
balgruuf@nord.pub 2 weeks ago
No thanks. To me, indie is an escape from all this bs.
JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I could see this as useful to get for a month so you can try out a bunch of indie titles to find ones you like before you buy them. Could be helpful for developers that don’t have small demos or anything.
Certainly not useful to have perpetually.
Sanguine@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
2 hour refunds on steam have never let me down. Also I’d rather encourage devs to release a demo versus yet another subscription model. This is a big pass from me.
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
If I thought the majority of my $7 went to indie game devs, particularly ones doing interesting stuff that the market doesn’t properly reward, then I wouldn’t bat an eye at it. Probably wouldn’t even use the service and would continue buying game licenses directly, but if I’m only funding the few hits that make it in front of me, then I’m just contributing to the BS capitalist lottery that is the entertainment industry. Would much rather have a communal way to fund devs.
stupidcasey@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If I believed for a second It would hold that price forever and My saves are mine forever I M.I.G.H.T conceder it, but that is a lot of impossible qualifications that only leads to a soft maby