💸 Almost half of the revenue in 2024 on Steam was made by indie developers
I believe that an indie report from Video Game Insights was the most important of the ones released last week. Everyone had a feeling that indies are on the rise recently, right? Same here. And I love the fact that 48% of the Steam revenue in 2024 was generated by indie developers.
But... I have a problem with the largest "indie breakthrough" of the year so far, I'm speaking of Black Myth: Wukong. It's a known fact that the studio is backed by Tencent (the largest company in the industry); it also has a track record of receiving an investment from Hero Games (Hero Interactive). And there is also a Shenzhen Youke Interactive Enterprise Management Center noted somewhere as a second-larger shareholder of Game Science. Unfortunately, I don't know Chinese, so it's quite hard to get through all the peculiarities of the financial structure of the company.
Where I'm bringing this - I just can't consider developers as an indie! Ex-Tencent founders, various projects on different platforms; several investment rounds; and unprecedented AAA quality of production - its attribution to an indie scene might be harmful to the overall optic.
Why? That's simple. If we exclude Black Myth: Wukong from the equation, we're standing at the same growth level as before. I'd like to push away the illusion of the growing power of indies while the actual power was driven by 1-2 breakthrough titles (Palworld, I consider as a "true" indie, in my own very subjective classification). Once again - the rise of indies in the current market is the rise of BM:W particularly.
What requires attention, in my view, is the share of old titles in 2024 revenue. New indie games (excluding Palworld or Black Myth: Wukong) are losing the battle for older indie titles ($0.8B vs. $1.7B). And this comes with the fact that 99.9% of games released this year have been considered as indie.
Though, there is good news - the appetite for indie titles on Steam is growing healthy. The overall market size is increasing. But years ago you might've expected a small share of the overall pie, now it might be only crumbs.
And another thought - PocketPair way of delivering is easier to copy and recreate than the (impressive!) journey of Game Science. VGI data supports this - 2nd and 3rd projects of indie studios are usually more financially successful than the first one.
There's been other impressive reports of the week (InvestGame on Q3'24; Circana on the US market in August & more), which you can find here: https://lnkd.in/daidWhrv
