An indie asking for $250,000 is 'a drop in the bucket' says Tunic's publisher, but indies are in a 'survival' era because companies think that 'isn't profitable enough' to fund

Indie games survived the theoretical "indiepocalypse" of 10 years ago and they survived the influx of AAA escapees of five years ago, and if we were going to coin a new era of indie games right now, it's "survival," says the CEO of indie developer and publisher Finji, Rebekah Saltsman, and not in the fun crafting-survival way either.

"The era is survival, and we've been here for way longer than people want to think about," Saltsman said in an interview with PC Gamer. "For a long time it's been 'just wait, it's going to be better in ___' and then fill in the blank with a year, which is always 12 to 18 months out."

It's been around five years of the "just survive until" mantra, since after the Covid-19 pandemic, by Saltsman's reckoning. While large publishers have been going through a brutal cycle of acquisitions and layoffs, indie studios struggle to secure funding amounts that Saltsman says used to be "not a big deal" to those writing the checks.

"Historically, an indie asking for maybe a quarter of a million dollars is not a big deal. It's a big deal to the indie, but for a big company that's like a drop in the bucket to the kind of budgets they're usually operating in."

Now though, Saltsman says what she keeps hearing is that companies don't want to back indies that aren't "profitable enough." Nobody wants a percentage on a $250,000 investment if there might be a $5 million investment to chase instead. The Balatros and Vampire Survivors and Stardew Valleys of the world are lightning strikes, says Saltsman. On top of that, they're also nigh impossible to predict, says me.

Somewhere between the winners of the solo dev lottery and the megabucks "triple-I" indies we're missing out on the middle tier of indie games right now, she says, things that could leave a lasting impact on the industry even if they aren't the kind of financial outliers that make one lucky developer rich.

"I think about those projects, especially over the last five years," Saltsman says. "What didn't get made because nobody would give them $100,000? What could have changed the way we thought about games because that game was only ever going to make $500,000, which would change a developer's life?"

Saltsman is the CEO of a small indie publisher, which means she's making her own bets on what games to back. In the past five years, Finji has published games like I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, Tunic, and puzzler sequel Wilmot Works It Out, while announcing its own upcoming action game Usual June and a bunch of 8-bit games called CorgiSpace by co-founder Adam "Atomic" Saltsman. Most recently Finji announced it will be publishing Michael Brough's next hacking roguelike 868-Back.

"The thing I think about constantly is how to survive," Saltsman says. "As a publisher, it's: how can I ensure that my developer makes enough money to make another game? It needs to be profitable enough for them to do what they do best, which is make another game."