Sony To Provide Up To $10 Million To Struggling Indie Studios

[Nautilus]

vivster said:

Nautilus said:

People are going to lose their jobs, this is going to be the worst economic crisis since 29'.So people in general will start saving money, and gaming is not an essecial product.It may not hit them now, but it will soon enough.

Plus that, indies have to pay bills, and these past 4 weeks and the next 4 weeks will basically be thrown to waste, because little work, if any, will be done.That's why.

Why would indie studios work even a second less in these days?

And even if, do you think indie devs are being paid by the hour?

It's not that they will necessarily stop working, but rather their efficiency will drop.Most indies nowadays aren't one man teams, but are rather composed of 5, 10, 30 people.Take Image & Form for example.They are 40 men strong if I'm not mistaken, and they all work in a studio.

Because of this pandemic, I'm assuming they stopped working on said studio and are doing Home Office.For people unaccustommed with it, it slows down their work efficiency, meetings regarding decisions that have to be made in the game are slower(because nothing beats a face to face conversation.Yet) and so on.That's some of the reasons why the work will definetely slow down(pretty sure there are more variables), and that will happen while employees still receive their salaries in full.For a big company like Square, it might be incovinient but they will live, they have enough money and relevant IPs on the bank to survive.But not an indie that requires the monthly sales of past games to keep afloat.

Because, as it's pretty obvious, sales will go down soon enough.Companies already started firing people left and right and, while at this moment people aren't really thinking about what will happen in the next 3 or 4 months and thus are expending the money they have, this economic crisis will soon hit everyone and stuff like videogames will be hit the hardest.

And the first to suffer are the indie developers, especially the "small" ones, because if someone's revenue is down, and they can only buy one game a month, they will always choose FF 7 Remake over Gato Roboto.Always.That's why.

So again, videogame is safe for now, but will soon feel the effects of this economic crisis which in my opening we already are in.