Naah, I'd rather see those devs find a way to break away from the major studio and actually get rewarded for their work. I think I would hate to see a single-dev labor of love end up owned by a mega-publisher without having to compensate the dev properly (and I have zero faith in the mega-publishers doing so voluntarily).

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So I partially agree with you, but there is something to be said about doing it under a financially secure company. The company could eat all the risk and let the devs make what they want without fear of failure meaning they don't eat. They could work full time on the project and if it doesn't work out then they can move onto the next thing. Sure, the company is going to take some of the profit, but the ideal model for this would be they use the profit to mitigate risks for the devs, not to just make themselves rich.

This isn't going to happen with any of the existing large game dev companies obviously, but if a smaller studio runs as a coop (or similar employee run business) and becomes successful I could see it happening.

[–] survivalmachine@beehaw.org 2 points 8 months ago

All excellent points. My comment was definitely colored by imagining current mega studios and I'd hate to see them rake in millions after paying a dev a regular salary to single-handedly conceive and develop a game.

Some sort of indy d3v incubator or co-op would be great -- spread out the risk, but also the reward. I'm not opposed to a financial backer receiving a slice of the pie, just not the entire pie in exchange for a meager salary.