But at a certain point, thanks to the free availability of game engines and their overal quality, the market got flooded with developers living on 5c a week and eating noodles, working on serial games and releasing top quality indie games.
It became a game of marketing. And sadly that's where we failed.
Steam says that there is no better or worse day of the week or month to plan your release... That should be your first red flag. There are about 30-35 quality titles being put out on steam alone, every day of the week, weekends included. Other markets are a bit of a joke, they hardly fly on the revenues radar, unless you have a special deal with them for increased visibility.
You see the title you've worked on for the last 6 months solid just fly off the list quicker than you can say woof.
I know for a fact (we talk) that most indies don't make a 10th of their budget back. It's a marketeting's game now. So you probably want a publisher to be in charge of that... and we're back to the old days of non-indies, or essentially small studios.
"True" Indie games are dead, by the law of numbers and algorithms. Even people that saw success in the past are now having a hard time pushing signal through noise.