Going gold?

[ptisinge]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

Then self publish
Or release it on steam which does NOT require a publisher.

There are mountains of success stories for devs who do this, but I would like to know where your analysis comes from exactly? Did you read this?

That's just insider experience from a game studio with more than 100 staff and 3 major releases to the counter, millions of units sold, and only starting to get a fragile sense of security now, and that's only because of a strong association with one publisher, which comes with weaknesses and drawbacks as well. Even with success, a game studio can often come very close to being bankrupt during fragile periods between finished projects and the next ones. This vulnerability does not help the bargaining power of developers. It's really hard to secure a publisher, believe me. It's not that easy to go for an indie release on a platform like Steam when you're a studio with more than a handful of people, you've got to secure funding to make your studio cover a number of expenses, not something you can do alone. Publishers are not only printing dvds, they're also producers, don't forget that.