Ask HN: Is indie game dev a viable solopreneur option in 2025?

#1

Post by vcool07 » Mon, Jan 06, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

Taking some inputs here, is solo game dev (something of the scope of stardew valley) still a viable career option in 2025 to earn a decent revenue ? Or is it more of winning a lottery kind of situation ?

As for me, I've been a regular s/w developer and play video games as a hobby. Never built any games before as the learning curve was too steep (not to mention the various skillsets that needed to be learnt - art, music etc apart from programming). But with the advent of AI in almost all tools these days, I'm wondering if its more accessible now and building/publishing a game is easier than ever ?

Re: Ask HN: Is indie game dev a viable solopreneur option in 2025?

#2

Post by aswain91 » Mon, Jan 06, 2025, 4:30 PM UTC

As someone in the same position as you I would say it's more like winning the lottery. The game environment is filled with games so adding another one to the pile won't do much. I think making a video game is a great idea. Having myself coded a web browser game in JS its a lot easier now with all the tools and game engines available then it was 7 years ago. I would say that you should go for it. Build your game and release it. The market for crafting survival/ slice of life/ crafting games is huge and you definitely could make the next game to take the world by storm. I would recommend not quitting your day job though, unless you find a way to cover life expenses and build the game.

Re: Ask HN: Is indie game dev a viable solopreneur option in 2025?

#3

Post by strangecasts » Mon, Jan 06, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

Unfortunately it is notoriously in the "winning the lottery" situation, partly because it is much easier to build and publish games - even ten years ago the marketing effect of getting a game published on storefronts like Steam was waning, now it is basically zero (unfortunately, many people will still discard games out of hand if they aren't available there.)

> But with the advent of AI in almost all tools these days, I'm wondering if its more accessible now and building/publishing a game is easier than ever ?

Also worth noting that storefronts like Steam and Itch expect you (but obviously can't force you) to disclose whether you've used generative models to create assets - which turns away people who consider them unethical or a mark of shovelware

Re: Ask HN: Is indie game dev a viable solopreneur option in 2025?

#4

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Mon, Jan 06, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

Well, https://www.tweaktown.com/news/102333/steam-saw-close-to-19-... says "In 2024, Steam saw a 32% increase in PC game releases, totaling 18,965, with 79% classified as "Limited Games" due to not meeting sales thresholds for community features." That's an average of 52 new games released per day that you'd be competing for attention with. Then you can look at the estimates for the distribution of revenue for the lifetime of the game at https://gamalytic.com/blog/steam-revenue-infographic which are very grim. Building and publishing a game may be easier than ever but the odds of making money from it are no better than an actual lottery.