Valve was a completely new company then. They weren’t going indie, but Sierra didn’t pay them for the remake of Half-Life. In the documentary they talk about financing it by creating Half-Life: Day One.
Chet Falizek, a dev who led L4D and a couple other games at valve talks about this a lot on TikTok, now that he’s running an indie studio. He’s a cool guy, would fit in on .ml or something for sure.
Usually publishers have multiple products in development simultaneously with varying degrees of investment, the more money invested into a studio to develop a game the more urgent they want it finished.
The real question is… Can indie games publishers afford the delay of a game?
Valve was a completely new company then. They weren’t going indie, but Sierra didn’t pay them for the remake of Half-Life. In the documentary they talk about financing it by creating Half-Life: Day One.
Chet Falizek, a dev who led L4D and a couple other games at valve talks about this a lot on TikTok, now that he’s running an indie studio. He’s a cool guy, would fit in on .ml or something for sure.
Implying they’re not passing on whatever that “costs” them to the studio…
Depends on the circumstances. Small self funded team, part time? Can probably delay indefinitely.
Generally they would fare better than AAA studios who are beholden to their publisher to release no matter what.
Usually publishers have multiple products in development simultaneously with varying degrees of investment, the more money invested into a studio to develop a game the more urgent they want it finished.