Indie.io, which offers a platform to help independent game developers publish their titles, is launching a new subscription service called Indie Pass. The service will cost $6.99 per month and have more than 70 titles, including indie.io’s Echoes of the Plum Grove and games from the Fire Emblem-like Dark Deity series. Indie Pass launches on PC on April 13th.
Of course, there are a lot of subscription services that have already made a point of bringing attention to indies, like Xbox Game Pass, Apple Arcade, and Netflix’s gaming library. Those subscriptions haven’t had quite the same kind of uptake as streaming services for things like TV shows or music, and the companies behind them have had to make adjustments to their strategies and lineups over time.
But the big selling points of Indie Pass are that the whole lineup will feature indie games and that the service could help smaller developers with discoverability. More than 20,000 titles were reportedly released on Steam last year, so indie developers have to fight to get noticed, and being included on Indie Pass could help them break through. Console game stores have been flooded with slop, too.
What classifies as an “indie game” is something of a broad definition, but Jess Mitchell, indie.io’s director of growth, tells The Verge that the games on Indie Pass will often be “a solo player experience built by a small team or a solo dev and offers an artistic experience that brings a player real satisfaction.” The service isn’t for massive multiplayer or live-service games, Mitchell says.
Indie Pass is PC only right now, and you’ll be able to access the games on the service through a dedicated Indie Pass launcher. The expectation is that new titles will be added “regularly,” Mitchell tells The Verge.
Developers who put their games on Indie Pass will earn revenue based on “player time spent in each game,” according to a press release. Indie Pass is also a non-exclusive platform, so developers can still sell their games on other storefronts while they’re also available as part of the subscription.
