Indie Firm Devolver Digital Rejected PS Plus, Xbox Game Pass Deals Over 'Undervalued' Games

Devolver games are great and I think putting them on services after a while is a valid strategy.

Going to see this from a lot of publishers moving forwards, subscription services I feel are good for older content but newer stuff the costs are going to be high.

@Voltan agreed. Always have looked forward to some of their oddities in the past, and paid good money for some, even though I know nearly everything comes to plus nowadays in some shape or form.

They know their own business model, and if day one doesn't suit them, they have no commitment to do so; so good on them for sticking to their guns.

At the end of the day, unless you release a microtransaction heavy game, or are a massive publisher that can absorb the potential losses, there simply is no point going day one to a sub model / service.

One assumes Cult Of The Lamb would never have seen the huge sales it got had it hit either sub service at launch. It's fine for some games to hit at launch, but for others they may just be losing out on a surprising payday.

@BeerIsAwesome agreed. i was trying to wait it out but I'm starting to think its not coming

@number1024 the reason costs are going up is because developer' salaries are increasing pretty significantly. Salaries are only going to increase with inflation and if they unionize. This might be an unpopular opinion but don't be surprised if you start seeing AI and outsource replacing a lot of labor costs. With game development increasing significantly in countries like China and advancement in AI, devs might want to prepare themselves

From my perspective, I wouldn't play these games at all if I had to buy first and even if they do come to a Sub service day 1, they don't appeal to me 'more' than many of the other games in that service or in my backlog.

Every game is competing for my 'time' first and foremost - regardless of the 'paywall' to entry (Sub fees to full retail price). As such, if I want to play a last gen game via BC more than a brand new release, I couldn't care less if that new release is in a sub service or not - I'm not going to play it.

As more and more games release every week, there is more and more competition for my time. With PS and Xbox both having BC, that means they have 'big' libraries, hundreds of games to play. Sub services add to my own personal Library too so without considering games I could buy, I have 'hundreds' of games I could play without spending any extra money. Therefore these games are 'competing' for my time against all those hundreds of other games so unless it appeals more than everything else I can play, I won't play it.

I don't think I have ever bought anything from DD and if I have played any of their games, its only because they gave them away 'free' on PS+/Gold/Game Pass.

Catch 22 for them - can they make more money from sales despite the massive competition they face in that market or would they get more money from Sub services as more people could end up trying it than risk buying? In a great year for games, would people spend their free cash on their games or rather spend it on something else?

If you aren't getting the sales or the number of gamers you'd want on a Sub service, to me that is more likely down to the game itself - not appealing enough for them to want to spend Time and/or money on their product.

@number1024 game devs salaries are the majority of costs, remember their salaries aren't the full picture though the company also has to pay benefits/taxes for each employee. For each employee salary you look at the listed amount and add an additional 40-60% on top of that. Also where I heard that salaries were a majority of costs was from a sacred symbols plus episode with some devs talking about the increase cost of development.

@number1024 To keep things very simple, when budgeting for a large scale project such as a video game, costs are usually broken down into a per person catch all. This includes salary, rent, utilities, insurance etc. These are not individually fixed and can easily increase, meaning that per person number can change significantly over just the development period alone, let alone over the natural inflationary spectrum. This is also one of the reasons layoffs happen. The easy answer to saving $30,000 per month on a project that costs $15,000 per person per month is to lay off two people. There is a far, far more detailed conversation to be had here but this might help clear some things up a bit.

@Americansamurai1 I think the "problem" (a subjective take) is that both Sony and MS are undervaluing the kind of games the likes of Devlover publishes in favor of bigger titles. I have not been looking too much at the PSN side of things, but many have noticed that MS is going more after bigger titles from bigger studios.

The recent MS leak showed how much they are indeed undervaluing indies and over-valuing big triple-A titles. I think a while back @LiamCroft had made the observation in some replies that he is seeing fewer titles come to game pass, something I didn't perceive because I myself simply get clouded by the bigger titles taking the headlines.

Makes sense as the services grow, they now have the budget to go after bigger games and they start to feel the indies are not worth as much to them anymore. They are at a point where triple A are the ones that will get them new subscribers, not indies, at least not unless they are big names like Silksong.

Good. The "everything locked behind subscriptions" future is one I don't want to see. And The Plucky Squire looks amazing!

In Sony's case,as has been seen previously, they tend to target older releases rather than day one releases,though there are exceptions ala Fall Guys which they clearly saw mutual benefit with its live services monster it became,much like Rocket League.

Gamepass is quite happy to splash the cash on day one/& or single player content like they did with games like Death's Door or Carrion, (timed exclusives),or Octopath Traveller (which is still to see PS4/5 port despite the sequel being belatedly announced for XB),as its likely to get more "user engagement" vs sales. But just looking at Phil Spencer's AAA publisher shopping list, they clearly have bigger fish to fry buying publishers outright. So smaller indies bit less of a priority at present.

If only everyone declined, we could end this sharade right away xD

It doesn't make sense to put games on subscription services D1. Subscription is second class access to games and only people who buy these games should have early access to these games. when you pay subscription you don't care what games ypu play but how many

Fair play to them if they feel the are being low balled and their games being undervalued. They will know how much they've made from sales of previous games and whether it is worth taking the undervalued money up front from Sony or Microsoft or not. It's probably worth also noting that there are far more games that don't get released on Plus/game pass than do and the majority of them seem to do just fine.

@number1024 if studios would still make exactly the same games as 20 years ago then the better tools would allow the devs to make the same games faster. But they do not make the same games. More detailed, more complex graphical assets with more realistic lighting, and just more. Richer sound environments, more complex music scores, more complex haptics, more complex game systems. more complex animations, more complex game worlds. I suppose also it gets more complicated to manage these large teams. So, I guess there is some efficiency loss. But other then that I doubt that the development teams got lazier over the years, but it is just that the more fancy tools allow for more ambitious projects. If You just look at a single character. Nowadays they are full of tiny little details.

I swear people here must think that Microsoft (or to a lesser extent Sony) send John Wick to the offices of these developers/publishers and demand Day One releases of their games.

I am sure both Microsoft/Sony do a market analysis so to an offer price to have a game on their services on Day One. Then the developer/publisher does its own market analysis to determine whether the money is worth the risk.

People talk in meetings. Give and take happens. And if they come to an agreement then it happens. If not, then the process is over, and everyone moves on.

This so-called "devaluing" is bred out of fear of some apocalyptic outcome where subscription services are going to be the be-all and end all.

All Sony and Microsoft can do is offer. Nothing more, nothing less.

Neither one of them is dumb enough to make the subscription service the only way to consume games - just like the movie and music industry still produce physical copies of movies and albums.

The interesting word here is it is not as big as they were. I am sure Microsoft (partly Sony) overpaid initially just to get good word of mouth from developers. The thing is they now realise it is unsustainable. I am sure people also noticed all the subscription prices including movie streaming services have gone up (the exception may be Crunchyroll whose price has gone down in Europe) as the period of focusing on subscriber growth has now finished. The ceiling has already hit.

Honestly that's a really fair move on Devolver. The fact that Sony and Xbox only want to pay big bucks for titles that only attract eyes of casual less in-tuned people who play games instead of focusing on paying games of huge quality lots to be on the service. Considering that Devolver is one to try and make a mockery of the greater gaming industry and try to focus on new and interesting looking experiences, it honestly only makes sense that they would reject the drive to have everything on a subscription service and focus on making more money with people who are guaranteed to pay the price for owning actually good games

It's true. It does undervalue games and that is exactly what microsoft wants. They want services to be a thing, not individual games.

@number1024 IF You just use stock models and use the out of the box templates, I suppose You can quickly put something together. But If You try to create something according to your vision i.e. something that does not look like the stock assets and does something "unique" it is work, and a lot of work because of all the detail that needs to be taken care of. Yes, modern tools make it easier. And that is why it only takes 5 years to make a AAA game and not 15. Anyway there does not seem to be a single game studio which mass produces one visual spectacle after the other. Most struggle to get out a single game in twice the time compared to the preceding title. It is unlikely that all devs just got lazy and greedy, I would say. if it was as simple as You depict it then there would be more "ground breaking" indies.

@Darth_Stofi put it out on early access. You get big headlines for claiming a day 1 release AND still enjoy the money of the people who just can't wait. Worked for starfield.

These services most certainly devalue games, they are a very talented studio and did the right thing imho.

These services will do to games what streaming has done to film. Devalued and water down! Soon they’ll be churning out console games like mobile because they have to justify these services. All “free” games with each new level, chapter, and new content sold separately.

When they go cheap it makes sense for subscriptions. For immediate day one I think is too risky for them. Big titles can justify it, but smaller ones do suffer.

There is a reason survival/cosy games do what they can offer with their audiences casual or gamer or in-between but other AA or Indies it's us gamers that are into very particular titles mostly keep certain games alive/relevant on launch or discounted or whatever the case to show some interest in them.

The audience awareness helps but if people jump in, jump out of a game then play the whole thing or enough, doesn't really work well for the company. Besides the deals they have to make for the period they set/have to work with in GP and PS+ Extra.

I haven't played many Devolver Digital games or at all but I respect the Indies and what they do as a publisher and I can see why they want them to have as much impact as possible (even though they do) in sales and when so many Indies release they do need more a chance out there whenever time of the year and at whatever prices and later for a audience increase of awareness to subscriptions if need be.