Comment by ccmonnett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ccmonnett | Hacker News Reader

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Why do you say that? I am a Game Pass subscriber and find myself playing _many_ more indie games with it than before. It's easier for me to pay for the service and effectively amortize the cost of paying for indie games which is, at least how I would put it, inherently risky.

Before I would pay $5, $10, or $20 for games with a chance I'll like them - some are worth way more, some worth way less. With Game Pass I have a 'sunk cost' so I download and try out games much more eagerly and find myself enjoying many more indie games than before.

I have seen an interview where an indie dev said that Microsoft covered their entire development cost for a game to get it on Game Pass, leaving their sales on other platforms to be 'pure profit' in a sense.

I am not having a great time with the 'traditional publishing' model of the industry right now. If it gets shaken up, that seems like a benefit to me, not a drawback.

Before, the indie dev got that entire $5, $10, $20 (minus the stores percentage), while now they get whatever percentage you played out of whatever percentage of the game pass fees are paid to the gAsk me what working on Manhunt 2 was like some time.ame developers. Maybe that ends up more than before, especially if you play a game a lot and more than just during one month, but its not clear to me that this is the case, especially if you split your time between many games.

It seems like this model is better for the consumer (pay one fee, play whatever and however much you like), but whether or not its better for the game developers, I don't know.

I think the point is the OP and people like myself wouldn’t be buying the Indy games at all.

But those same indies get more people playing their game with a subscription like game pass. This is all just speculation, though. We need an indie dev to tell us how game pass has affected their company—positively or negatively.

Indeed. I’d love to see some real statistics from a variety of indie devs.

Bah too late to edit the accidentally pasted text in my message :(

how is this better than the steam model? pay for games you want, get a refund if you don't like them.

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