Publishers say indie games are caught in a death cycle: drought dies, flood dies

He says the Xbox Game Pass tie-up is "no longer viable", despite being an important source of revenue for the company in the past. Another pillar, the Steam Summer Sale, once "supported an all-year burn rate" for No More Robots. Now, he claims, "those spots are taken by AAA games" and his company can only make "a small amount" of revenue.

"Steam makes more money, but 50% of that revenue is generated by 1% of games," Ross claims.

That puts publishers like Mr. Ross in a difficult position when it comes to betting on new projects. His strategy is to pick a few "games that will all be released within the next year and hopefully they will all pay for themselves quickly". All of these, he says, are "very cheap and fast off-the-shelf projects", a trend he thinks could be quite significant in the coming years.

For developers, Ross believes games need to be "either very cheap or very expensive," explaining that publishers like him opt for smaller projects, while larger companies like Devolver Digital opt to spend more money because "if they sign a mid-sized game for $400,000, it looks weak, it looks like they sign a small game."

The massive layoffs in the gaming industry over the past few years have been a major topic of discussion. Late last month, Destiny 2's developer Bungie announced its latest round of layoffs, with 220 employees losing their jobs and another 155 being merged into the Sony ecosystem. While the loss of more than 10,000 jobs is headline news, the fragility of indie games is a less obvious extension of the same problem. Less money invested in the industry means fewer projects get the green light or survive until release, which has a ripple effect on the industry as a whole (a phenomenon that was outlined during GDC by developer Alx Preston of Ultimate Flash: Breakers). Projects may survive, but they have to adapt to do so, which means publishers like Ross have to do the same.