Indie Game Publishing: The 21k+ Game Problem
Andrew Naicker of Skystone Games has spent 14 years watching the "ship faster, market louder" playbook fail. Here's what he actually builds and what it takes to launch in 2026.
Andrew Naicker came to games through an unusual door: accounting and fraud management. As Senior Product Manager and Console Release Manager at Skystone Games, a hands-on indie publisher in Vancouver, he pairs that lens with 8 years of experience in Korean live-service games.
The 21k+ Game Problem is Real
Close to 21,000 games were released on Steam last year. The number is not the problem; it's what developers do with it.
The panic response seems to be to push faster, release faster, and see what sticks. Larger studios work that way, but the indie developers I work with haven't been around long enough to pick up that habit, and I love them for it. They still believe in what they're building, and they care very much about details most players never notice.
At Skystone, we put that care to work and slow things down. When a prototype can launch in 6 months, the temptation is to spend all of them building. We push back, review the demo, stress-test the core loop, and think hard about the store page, the trailer, and the positioning. Blackjacket is sitting at 90% positive across a thousand reviews right now. That didn't happen because the game was rushed; it happened because we held the line.
We also have a dedicated influencer relations team that's built strong relationships over time. But console marketing is tough; there just aren't many established console influencers, especially on the indie side. The key is tying a console launch to another beat rather than letting it stand alone. With Tiny Bookshop, we launched on Switch and Steam together.
The statistics that matter aren't the number of games released. What counts is your review score on launch day, your wishlist conversion rate, and whether your demo earned real wishlists or just noise. Those numbers are yours to control.
"First, it's worth noting that of the 20,000+ Steam releases approximately three-quarters are student projects, asset flips, AI-generated content, and hobby games. These games don't get views or ratings, and constitute a "ghost" market that can be overlooked in analytics.
90% or die' is likely an exaggeration, born from the fact that most games with huge sales can have high ratings. Of course, the higher the player rating percentage, the better. Below 80% is probably fatal, but 80-90% is viable if you have traffic; above 90% is where commercial outperformance concentrates.
More important, however, is the store page conversion rate, and a rating above 90% isn't always required to become a profitable game. For small studios, which are the majority in the current market, the most realistic goal would be to aim for >80% rating and >50 reviews. With these results, player conversion averages 2%, which is a decent result. The biggest influence on success is likely a strong, high-quality demo for various events like Steam Next and building a community before its release/Early Access.
Yes, there is a correlation. For example, an increased rating and an increased number of reviews indicate an increase in conversion. The correlation is strong, but the reasoning is nuanced: review scores don't trigger visibility; they convert traffic coming from other signals (wishlists, demos, press, word of mouth). A high-quality game that no one discovers still fails.
The counterintuitive data point: underperformed games had an average of 400+ days of pre-release marketing; overperformers averaged 200+ days. Over-polishing with no audience is a trap.
Small studios may decide to release a game if they have been able to achieve a review score that's consistently above 80% in playtester/demo feedback (proxy for launch reviews); a demo that's been run and achieved meaningful concurrent player counts (~100+ during Next Fest); wishlist base is large enough to seed launch day traffic (10,000+ for small studio survival); day-1 crash bugs and progression blockers are zero; the core loop is working, fun, and complete.
Everything else can be patched and polished after release. Further polishing before release may be excessive. It's crucial to make a good impression on the release, as a game's rating in the first week is crucial. There are studies that show that low ratings and bad reviews in the first days of release can ruin a game's overall performance, even if developers subsequently fix all the bugs and address all the feedback, bringing the product to perfection."
- Alex Sevastyanov, Senior Game Evaluation Analyst • Global Strategic Initiatives & Partnerships (GSIP)
What a Publisher Actually Sells
Indie developers ask me the same question all the time. Among Us launched without a publisher. So did Untitled Goose Game. Why do I need one?
Those studios succeeded, but what gets missed is the ecosystem work behind them, the relationships, community, and platform conversations built while the game was being made. Most developers are not doing that because they are building, which is what they should be doing. That gap is what a publisher fills.
What we offer is not money or distribution. It is time already spent. The Game Pass deal for Tiny Bookshop happened because our CEO, Bill Wang, walked into a convention, found the right Xbox contact, and had a conversation that only happens when the relationship is already there. We do not charge for those years. We put them to work.
The same is true for localization. China is one of Steam's biggest markets, yet many indie developers ship without Simplified Chinese support, leaving that revenue on the table. We have people on the ground in China, Europe, and North America, and we bring that regional knowledge into every project.
You aren't buying a service; you're buying time you don't have.
"The connections a publisher carries are years of work compressed into a single deal. For most indie developers, those years do not exist yet. The publisher is essentially a time machine."
The Platform Stack in 2026
Steam is still king. If you can get there, get there first. The revenue concentration is unmatched.
Switch remains the best console platform for indie games. Nintendo showcases indie titles in a way that PlayStation and Xbox simply don't. The Indie World presentations put small games in front of a huge, engaged audience actively looking for them.
To be upfront, I can't share our internal revenue figures, but I can say that when we launched Tiny Bookshop on Steam and Switch at the same time, with a proper campaign behind it, Switch outperformed Steam within 1 month.
Even though we were recently certified as a Switch 2 publisher, I still value Switch 1 more. The install base and audience behavior are in place, and the new hardware has not yet reached critical mass.
The Steam Deck has not taken the Switch's audience; our data show no meaningful difference, as the two serve different players at different moments. But, in terms of general numbers, Steam is still king.
PlayStation and Xbox are similar for indie purposes. There is an audience for both, but the first-party love Nintendo shows for its platform is missing from Xbox. They're both worth being on them, just not where you build your launch.
Mobile is a separate industry that happens to involve games. Skystone is working toward mobile publishing, but I'm honest with developers: we haven't cracked the right formula, and neither has most of the industry.
How Skystone Wins on Steam When Outnumbered
The Steam algorithm is opaque and frequently changes: What worked at NextFest two cycles ago may not work today, so we reverse-engineer it. After every major Steam event, we pull apart the data. What happened to conversion rates? What wishlist threshold seems to trigger the algorithm now? The developers who win track those shifts instead of following 18-month-old advice.
Right now, the wishlist-to-purchase conversion rate is declining. You need more wishlists than you did a few years ago to earn the same revenue, so your pre-launch marketing matters more. That is why we partner with showcases like FGS and the PC Gaming Show, and why we insist on trailers with real beats attached: a demo drop or major announcement that gives media a reason to write and players a reason to click. If your showcase slot is just "here is the game," you have wasted it.
The live-action Blackjacket premiere at FGS was a real risk we had never tried before; however, the game had the quality to carry it off. Being a small studio means we can try things Electronic Arts cannot, without board approval and layers of sign-off. That flexibility is one of the few structural advantages we have, and we use it.
I suggest that developers who are on their own reach out to other indie developers who have self-published. Finding someone who has run a NextFest campaign and studying their data will teach you more in one conversation than any panel.
Price Sensitivity
Yes, there is real price sensitivity in the indie market. Some players will not pay more than $20 for an indie game on principle. Indie games do not carry the cost structure that justifies AAA pricing, and most do not need it. A well-run studio builds the best experience it can within real constraints, and that keeps margins healthy even at lower prices.
Where monetization gets interesting is live service. Let me be specific: I spent eight years in live service before publishing, and the rules there are completely different. At one company in Korea, we ran a title with 100 concurrent users that generated $500,000 a month, with players spending an average of $5,000 each month. The game was profitable, and the servers and the team were paid. Live service doesn't need scale; it needs retention.
For most developers, the question is simpler. Price it right for your market, don't undersell the work, and make sure your wishlist conversion is high enough that the launch pays out. Get that foundation right before you experiment with live service or episodic models.
The Most Surprising Number
On Steam, you are one game in a flood, and the algorithm decides whether to show you to anyone at all. On Nintendo, you compete with a fraction of that volume, and if you have earned the platform's attention, it lands on an audience that is engaged rather than drowning in alternatives.
That doesn't mean Switch is better than Steam: Steam is still where the long tail lives and where sales accumulate over time. It means that a well-executed console launch, tied to real campaign beats, can outperform a mediocre Steam launch, even on a smaller platform.
My advice? Don't treat the console as an afterthought, you bolt on six months later. Plan your launch architecture first, the beats, the patches, and the first-party support, before you lock the release calendar. The games that win this market are not just better games; they are better-launched games.
Andrew Naicker is Senior Product Manager and Console Release Manager at Skystone Games in Vancouver. Skystone's titles include Tiny Bookshop, Blackjacket, and the upcoming AfterQuest.
Building an indie game and not sure where to start? Xsolla works behind the scenes so studios can focus on making something worth a player's time, from payments and distribution to platform relationships and analytics. Visit Xsolla.com to explore All The Things your game needs to grow, monetize, and reach players wherever they are.
ADDITIONAL INSIGHTS: Q&As with Xsolla's Subject Matter Experts
Jana Hodgins
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Ecosystem, Xsolla
Q: How do platform editorial programs (Xbox Game Pass, Epic Games Store, Nintendo) select indie titles, and where does a publisher/partner help?
A: The platform landscape is polarized. While AAA leverage negotiation power through partnerships and franchise placement, indie titles require in-depth evaluations to determine how the game will be perceived in the market, whether through community engagement or proven critical success. A publisher can help navigate business management so developers can continue to make the game better and more fun for their audience.
Q: What's the difference between a studio going direct to a platform vs going through a publisher or industry partner?
A: Established publishers have pre-existing partnerships that give them more opportunity to leverage past success and bypass the platform gatekeeping queue, like a game industry fast pass.
Q: How has platform deal-making evolved in 2026?
A: The current gaming market is risk-averse and under pressure to show ROI. Budgets are smaller, milestones are higher, and unproven studios are harder to sell. Decision makers are more willing to go with the sure bet they already trust to hit their numbers.
Manny Hachey
Senior Director of Developer Success, Global Strategic Initiatives & Partnerships (GSIP), Xsolla
"The Demo release sends a notification to everyone who follows and wishlists your game, so it gets a lot of attention and should be very, very polished. But indies have another tool: the Playtest function.
Playtests can be run as often as desired; there is no push notification, but you can announce it on Steam and make noise whenever you run a playtest. And if you run the playtest as part of a Showcase and/or Event related to Steam, you can make very meaningful marketing beats. Playtests are also great for testing the fun and finding bugs/issues that indies might otherwise miss. You can also use it for balancing.
Playtest can help drive your community by bringing players together on communication platforms such as Discord, where players can report bugs, give feedback, and build community if the indie developer takes the time to respond and interact with players.
I would strongly recommend that indies look at playtests before just diving into the Demo. Demo is the most important beat before launch, and playtests can help you QA and test the fun of your game before that big moment.
Wishlists are great, but if they are driven by big showcases/events and marketing spending, they might not have high quality. Not all wishlists are created equal; some are just hype, and old ones can depreciate. Steam followers present more relevant numbers that indicate organic, real interest in the game than Wishlists do. Games with a huge wishlist count but a low follower count might not convert to buyers as much as the WL number alone might suggest.
Indie should also not just wait for a publisher to do all of the above. Landing a publisher nowadays is as much about game quality and team experience as it is about proving actual traction and interest with your title. Learn how to set up a Steam page, make it look good, start social media, apply for events/showcases, etc. If you can prove to the world your game is popular, pitching for funding/publisher support might be a lot easier."
Alexandra Kurennykh
Localization Manager, Technology, Xsolla
Q: At what stage of development should an indie studio start thinking seriously about localization?
A: The earlier, the better; it would be great to consider localization at the design and development stages. For example, developers should make sure, that strings are kept externally and not hardcoded (later this allows translators to work with these external files in special translation management tools), ensure the engine supports UTF-8 so it can handle different types of characters and alphabets, build UI that will be suitable for translated texts that are longer than English, and consider right-to-left layouts if the game will be targeted for the Middle East markets.
If the technical foundation is ready, adding more languages becomes much cheaper and faster.
Q: Which markets and languages offer the best ROI for a quality indie title in 2026?
A: It depends on several factors: the game's genre, budget, target audience, whether a game is text-heavy or mostly visual, and players' feedback. However, there are some general tendencies.
Simplified Chinese is now the second-most-used language on Steam, right after English. Russian holds a solid third place, and Brazilian Portuguese is rising fast thanks to a massive, growing player base. Based on these statistics, such languages are considered a priority.
It is also better to localize into languages where English fluency is lowest, because those are markets where localization isn't something optional; it's your way in. In East Asian countries like China, Japan, and Korea, most players will simply skip the game if it's not in their language. And players from these countries tend to spend more and have a strong indie game culture. European players are usually comfortable enough with English UI.
Q: What are the most common localization mistakes indie studios make when going it alone?
A: First, treating localization as something you do after launch instead of building it into the development process from the start.
The second mistake is relying too heavily on raw AI translation without any professional review. AI translation tools can give a decent starting draft, but they don't fully understand the game's world, its tone, or how a string actually appears on the screen. The result can be awkward phrasing, broken UI, and negative feedback from local players.
The third mistake is trying to cover too many languages at once with not enough resources. Not every language will result in big profits for each specific game. It is better to provide great localizations in 2-3 languages, than bad ones in 10 languages.
