Xbox Game Pass and Epic Store: 'The gold rush is over' according to independents | X-Box

If in recent years we regularly heard that without Xbox Game Pass, some indie games would not have been able to see the light of day and even less achieve success, today it seems that places are becoming increasingly rare.

“The gold rush is over”

In an interview recently collected as part of GDC and highlighted by computer gamesCasey Yanow, co-founder of Mega Crit, said the agreements some small developers have relied on in recent years to get money aren't what they used to be.

Here the developer of Slay The Spire talks about exclusive deals for the Epic Games Store or even Xbox Game Pass and mentions that several developers have had their contracts cancelled:

I spoke to at least five small teams, 35 people or less, during GDC, and they told me: Cuts, cuts, cuts, funding was canceled, discussions that had been going on for a year, they were canceled.

[…]

It looks like shit. We are really very fortunate to be able to self-fund. Otherwise I would be very, very afraid right now

Chris Bourassa, director of Darkest Dungeons at Red Hook Studios, says for his part that Microsoft's offers to integrate games into Xbox Game Pass have “lost volume” since the service launched and that the same applies to Epic's offerings:

The gold rush is over. I'm from the Northwest Territories. The town I'm from was built on gold, and then they found diamonds up north. There may be another paradigm shift in the future, but I definitely think the volume of trades I'm hearing about is much smaller than it was back then. We certainly got our deal with Epic at the right time.

Obviously we must keep in mind that every situation is different and that one person's experience is not necessarily another person's experience.

As developer PlateUp recently pointed out, Game Pass is an obvious way to let as many people as possible discover a game, but it's increasingly clear where it's getting support from Microsoft or Epic Games.