Archive link: https://archive.ph/168Vn
There are now several games known to be getting delisted by WBD. I will link to the article with the list at the end
Some key highlights:
Warner Bros. Discovery, as part of its ongoing effort to stretch the definition of “entertainment company,” recently told a solo indie developer it would be “retiring” his 2016 dreamlike puzzle adventure game Small Radios Big Televisions from the Steam and PlayStation stores. The developer, in response, has made it free to download for PC
Deery clarified that the game will be pulled in the next 60 days. Deery noted that Adult Swim Games “hasn’t really been a thing for many years now” and that most of the people he worked with had moved on. “When you’re working with purely digital products nothing is going to stay around for very long,” Deery told Game Developer.
The reason given by Warner Bros. Discovery, as seen in the notice that Game Developer also reviewed, was “internal business changes.” “Thank you for your contribution to our game library and understanding during this transition,” the notice concludes. “We are available should you have any questions.”
Warner Bros. Discovery executives said late last month during a financial call that its gaming business was due for a “tough” year-over-year comparison. That is largely due to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
At a higher level, the merged Warner Bros. Discovery entity has shown no hesitation when it comes to folding known names and removing content. The firm killed the fully produced Batgirl and a Scooby-Doo film prior to release as a reported tax strategy.
It’s hard to imagine how much it would cost to maintain storefront support for this sub-$20 game from 2016, but it was apparently too much for Warner Bros. Discovery.
The list of Adult Swim games can be found here: https://delistedgames.com/as-more-developers-confirm-it-looks-likely-that-all-adult-swim-games-titles-will-be-removed-by-may/ (Archive link: https://archive.ph/fjt3Q)
Call me crazy, but I think if a game can be “retired” by Warner Brothers (or another megacorp), and the dev doesn’t control it anymore, then it’s not really an “indie”.
On the other hand, Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 would actually classify as indie games, as they were published by their developer, not a third party.
But when everything gets one of the two labels, triple-A or Indie, they stop being meaningful quite fast.
By that logic most AAA games would be indies and most devolver games would not. Indie isn’t about publishing
And then:
They are independent, because they don’t have a publishing company calling the shots. That’s literally where the term comes from.
And that is why I said people have only two labels - they use “single person or small team = indie, big team or company = triple-A”. When they should be looking at who is publishing, and therefore who is funding the project, i.e are they actually independent, or do they depend on someone else for that monetary/technical/marketing support.
Indie is used to refer to independent and small literally because that’s usually how it is. You’re completely ignoring the first thing you quoted which is about it being just a few people, which is by far the definition today. Witcher 3 is in absolutely no terms an indie game. It was produced by hundreds of people. It is so far from the actual definition that it’s laughable.
By your definition Stardew Valley isn’t an indie because Chucklefish published it. That’s just not how it works. Video games aren’t music or movies. The same rules don’t apply, literally exactly for this reason.
Stardew Valley was published by the developer themselves. He can do whatever he wants with the game and there is no publisher to tell him he can’t because it’s bad for business. If they want the next update to be the “Fuck Russia, fuck Israel, Taiwan is the real China!” update, they can do it. Cp2077 can do that too. Because they are independent.
D’ya think that goes for the games in question of the article published by Warner Brothers that are being pulled by them? Are they independent of the publishers, free to do what the creator wants?
That is why having just the two labels makes them rather useless. Which is the point I’m trying to make.
Stardew was published by chucklefish in the beginning, it was not published by Eric. He publishes it himself now, but that was not true several years ago.
Your point is dumb, I’m sorry.
People don’t look at that because that’s not a useful metric. All the big publishers have their own studios so most things they publish are ‘independent’ by that definition, but they are the very thing people try to exclude when they say indie. In the indie definitions of both music and films, it is stated that they are independent from the established distributors, not that they are entirely self-distributed. It’s unreasonable to expect that from indie games.
And conversely for ‘independent’ to have any meaning it mustn’t include those who are in a position where others could depend on them whether through money, name recognition or some other thing. CDPR for instance, by the merit of being very well known and owning one of the most popular online stores is absolutely not an independent studio.
Edit: furthermore even when a large distributor is involved for marketing etc, this doesn’t mean the production of the art can’t still be largely independent.