this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
82 points (86.6% liked)

Games

47559 readers
2039 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
Dremor@lemmy.world
JonsJava@lemmy.world
Dremor@jlai.lu
PerfectDark@lemmy.world
82
A Game Pass for indie games: meet Indie Pass, a $6.99-a-month subscription launching with 70 titles (www.gamesindustry.biz)
submitted 15 hours ago by commander@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world
27 comments fedilink hide all child comments
all 28 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 hours ago

the firm is working to sign up games from other developers, who'll earn from a revenue share based on player engagement.

This is the dealbreaker for me. If there is a masterpiece game on there that takes 10h to complete, and a slop game that people sink 100s of hours into, I want the rev share to reward the 10h masterpiece more. I do not want an indie subscription service that incentivizes player engagement, full stop.

[–] lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

I'd rather see them do a Humble Choice like subscription where the player gets to keep the games.

[–] FreddyNO@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago

Yea this will only screw over indie devs

[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 13 points 9 hours ago

nope. Pirate and if its good buy in preference order of direct then gog then steam.

[–] foodvacuum@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

I'll try it out. I buy most of my indie games off fanatical bundles. It'd be nice to try a bunch one month. It'd be great if they integrated the subscription in steam so I could easily try stuff through proton

[–] balgruuf@nord.pub 96 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

No thanks. To me, indie is an escape from all this bs.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 hours ago

If I thought the majority of my $7 went to indie game devs, particularly ones doing interesting stuff that the market doesn't properly reward, then I wouldn't bat an eye at it. Probably wouldn't even use the service and would continue buying game licenses directly, but if I'm only funding the few hits that make it in front of me, then I'm just contributing to the BS capitalist lottery that is the entertainment industry. Would much rather have a communal way to fund devs.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 17 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I could see this as useful to get for a month so you can try out a bunch of indie titles to find ones you like before you buy them. Could be helpful for developers that don't have small demos or anything.

Certainly not useful to have perpetually.

[–] Sanguine@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

2 hour refunds on steam have never let me down. Also I'd rather encourage devs to release a demo versus yet another subscription model. This is a big pass from me.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

To be sure, that's a decent way to do it. If indie.io had something similar, that might be nice.

Though given it's all indie games over there, I'd be on board to pay this 6.99 not as a subscription, but as a fee to get a week to try out whatever I'd like for some reasonable amount of time, maybe set by the developer. Then of the games I've tried but not purchased the full version of, split the 6.99 between them.

Maybe utopian thinking but it'd be nice.

[–] hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 38 points 14 hours ago

No.

[–] GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world 37 points 14 hours ago

Fuck subscriptions

[–] Soulphite@reddthat.com 51 points 15 hours ago

If you're a developer, make sure you read all the terms and/or have a lawyer. I support an outreach system for indie games but do not wish for them to be taken advantage of. Protect yourself!Protect your content!

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 22 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I really don't think we needed a subscription service for indie games (nor they do). Game Pass for AAA games makes somewhat sense, as the games are expensive. Game Pass concept in general will favor slop over creative and good game design with long time support. I am not a fan of this concept at all and its even worse for indie games in my opinion.

If this campaign is for discoverability, then they should find a different way to "advertise" the games. I agree that most games do need some discoverability though, besides the hits on Steam. There are so many good indie games for low price. But Game Pass concept is the wrong way in my opinion, for the entire industry (the player and the devs).

[–] Zarxrax@lemmy.world 9 points 15 hours ago

I mean, I can understand the appeal of it. I'm probably not going to buy any of the games on here even if they were cheap, because I don't know anything about them. But if I have an opportunity to try out 70 games for a low price, I might give it a try. Afterwards maybe I found a couple that I actually liked and I can shell out a bit more directly to the developer to buy it.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 20 points 15 hours ago

No thanks. Ill just buy the ones I want.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 14 points 15 hours ago

There is a space for rentals to exist, but if you know exactly what you want already, the price of that indie game you're looking for already isn't very expensive, especially during a sale. We've probably got a bunch of these games in our libraries already just from bundles.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 7 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I resound with the other commenters, this is a hard pass for me.

I got enough subscriptions to deal with than have a subscription for the cheaper style games.

This type of model isn't even going to be helpful to the developers either, it may increase publicity but, the article says itself that it bases money earned on gametime and if people played a lot each dev is going to have diminishing returns... Nobody buys a subscription model with the expectation they are only going to play 1 or 2 games, people play as many games as they can, that way they can get the most out of the subscription. for 6.99 a month, even locking myself down to once a week only, if I played 3 inde titles a week, for an hour each, thats 12 games a month, which means that 6.99 is going to be less than 60 cents to each developer a month, and that is ignoring whatever cost they charge as a platform fee.

Sure the argument can be made that thats still money the dev wouldn't be getting otherwise but, I see this as more of a disadvantage to inde studios. I think the example they used in the article is very optimistic and not super realistic to what will happen.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

The thing that might be missing from your hard math is addiction. You’re right that most games will be a blaze-past tryout period as you described, but sometimes will have 6 hour stories that you get invested into, while others are roguelikes that actually become compelling for 20+ hours. Which ones will form that addiction is unclear from browsing a store page, so it’s nicer to have complete access to them.

I’m also a little curious what worthwhile subscriptions you have. Most things I used to sub to, like Game Pass, have gone up to $15/$20-month and I decided to leave. Something simpler at $7/mo is a bit more agreeable to me. I spend more than that on some individual Patreons.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 5 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I intentionally left addiction out of the equation as I don't expect the everyday person is going to have that occur to them, and if it did occur that's only going to make it /worse/ for the devs on the platform as it's almost certainly going to favor rougelites and proc gen over story and action titles. I see no use of this.

as for my subs? I left the gaming sub field almost entirely. My only gaming sub I still have is humble bundle, because you own every game as long as you had choice the month it was released. I had gamepass ultimate for 2 years as part of the xbox X all access pass thing they did but, I found that there was very little actual decent "I want to play" games. I would play a few of them(like 6-8 of them) a month and then say "ok ill come back to them some day", and then just not. For the price of a AAA title every 3 months (now a AAA title every other month) it wasn't worth it for me.

From the consumer side, I feel the same way with this pass, I could take that same amount, and buy 1- 3 of the games listed on this and have them to keep, and be helping the devs way more money wise. It's a no brainer.

Being said, I could see how this could be useful with the more expensive titles on the pass, but that is the case with normal GP as well.

[–] CaptainBasculin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 14 hours ago

Makes no sense when fanatical exists.

[–] lyralycan@sh.itjust.works 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I feel like 10¢ US per game per month is pretty expensive. I mean, that's 30% more expensive than Xbox Game Pass Premium which offers top tier, popular games, and their monetised multiplayer servers. I think they're gonna struggle to make a sustainable service from this

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

That seems like a somewhat disingenuous way of boiling it down; realistically, most people will never play a significant percent of the games in a subscription. I think stats have shown most game pass players only end up playing 5 or 6 games in the majority of their time.

They also probably want 70 to be the low point if they’re still collecting indies into the program.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

I like it. This is what I wanted from Game Pass, minus Microsoft enshittification. Honestly, most of what I played on Game Pass was indies I was curious about, but sometimes only played 2-3 hours of.

That said, it doesn’t seem to be a complete announcement yet; much of the site is still marketing to developers, not gamers.

[–] CobblerScholar@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Or I could just spend that much on a single game that I would then own that supports the artist(s) directly and would likely take me about a month to play fully anyway and I could pick up again whenever I wanted without having to pay anything more.