this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
1838 points (97.7% liked)

Games

40546 readers
3025 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ter_maxima@jlai.lu 35 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Publishers are cancer. Self publish whenever possible !

[–] Wolf@lemmy.today 17 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

You Don't Need a F-ing Publisher*

*unless you do.

It would just require smaller teams making lower budget games that are more focused on Art than sales, which I would be really happy about honestly. Too many people are in this industry solely to rake in the big bucks.

[–] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 12 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

A self-published game with a focus on quality will outperform any AAA game.

[–] Wolf@lemmy.today 11 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

If you are going to compete with AAA games it's going to require a big budget, which not all Devs have access to.

A high quality AA game would probably do great, but would be unlikely to outsell a AAA with hundreds of millions of dollars for budget.

Obsidian made a fantastic game with Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire but it was considered a 'failure' sales wise (at least at launch), despite being well received.

Obsidian sold to Micro$oft despite making very high quality games and their crowdfunding campaigns consistently earning more money than they were asking for. The stated reason was they found it hard to keep their employees paid consistently and they didn't want to lay people off. Also that they thought they could do just as good as other big players in the industry if they had access to larger budgets.

I think it was a bad move. They managed to survive the massive round of 9,000 jobs cuts to Microsoft's gaming division (this time), but you just know that Microsoft would cut them in a heartbeat if they thought it would save them a dime in the future. That being said I think it's understandable to want to see your employees paid, and it's just a sad fact that AAA games require huge budgets nowadays, so I can kind of understand why they sold, even if I don't agree with it.

[–] Muaddib@sopuli.xyz 1 points 15 hours ago

I'm still waiting for Obsidian to finish writing the second half of Tyranny and I won't be buying another of their games until they do.

Source?

Pretty much every popular indie game has a publisher. Publishers are great because they provide relatively low cost marketing, the trick is to be careful when signing a contract that you don't sign away too much while still getting value from them.

[–] Vermingot@jlai.lu 7 points 11 hours ago

It's not so black and white, Clair Obscur : Expédition 33 has that level of quality and polish because the team behind it was able to find a publisher to finance it. Everything has nuance, we got shafted on subnautica 2 but we had other great games, some self published, some not