Modern gaming is a mess, an unpredictable tidal wave of flops and successes that never stops slamming against the cliffs of Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation. However, one bit of that wave is carrying the bulk of the industry—the indies.
While we have had occasional indie hits here and there all the time, from the very onset of gaming itself, 2025 has been utterly dominated by small teams and solo-dev ventures. Game after game has come out only to end up outselling even the biggest franchises on the market, whose corporate owners and publishers are grasping at whatever live-service model to increase that quarterly earnings report and put a band-aid on their sinking ship.
It all started with Schedule 1, an unassuming title about drug dealing and pretending to be Walter Heartless White, produced by a single developer out of Australia. The game’s quick and easy-to-understand gameplay, unique concept, and co-op functionality allowed it to achieve an amazing 459,000 concurrent player count on Steam alone, making it one of the best-selling and best-performing games of all time.
It wasn’t the first single-dev game of this year, nor the first successful indie launch, but it did herald a new age of gaming, one where AAA blockbusters pale in comparison to small teams pursuing fun and artistic expression over profits and short-term gains.
Later on, we got Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a game with a relatively sizable studio, though still within the indie or AA range. Around 30 people worked on this title, which has more artistic merit than some classical artworks, and is by far one of the most beautiful and gripping games to have come out in the past few years. It has everything: a good story, great visuals, exceptional Unreal Engine optimization (another point for indies I’ll get to later), and a soundtrack to rival European orchestral greats.
Small and privately-owned, the studio behind Expedition 33 is proof that you don’t need trillions in market cap to produce something grandiose. It, too, sold millions of copies, placing the studio on the map.
But the month of September was in its own league. Back-to-back, we got Hollow Knight: Silksong, Megabonk, Hades 2, and CloverPit—four roguelikes, each iterating on the genre in its own way.
Silksong expanded on what its predecessor had established, amassing countless players in just its initial weekend. Hades 2, too, upped the ante over the previous title, providing a recognizable but nonetheless fresh experience for fans and newcomers alike. Megabonk took what Risk of Rain and Vampire Survivors did and made it better, mashing them together for tremendous effect, while CloverPit looked at Balatro and decided to move from poker to slot machines, which turned out to be an incredible idea.
In just one month, more copies were sold in the indie department than most AAAs, with untold millions on Steam alone (and consoles). And you know how many people worked on most of these games? Silksong had three people, CloverPit had two, and Megabonk had just one. Hades‘ team was a bit bigger, about equal to that of Expedition 33.
And these are still just some of the most exemplary titles, most of which were produced by either one or a handful of people in a steamrolling indie takeover of the gaming industry. They prove that budgets and studio sizes dictate neither success nor quality, as well as that the use of generative AI to “speed things up” isn’t going to save AAA.
So far, in the AAA department, we’ve had MH Wilds that still has an overwhelmingly negative review score because many can’t even get it to run; Borderlands 4 with the same issues, despite being good underneath; Assassin’s Creed: Shadows that peaked at 10 percent of Silksong‘s numbers; and Death Stranding 2, which is perhaps the only game worth anyone’s while out of the AAA department, but still one coming from a privately-owned studio.
Speaking of low-tech quality and performance, small, dedicated indies one-upped AAA in that as well. Expedition 33, despite being on UE5, runs phenomenally on most machines while still looking good. Borderlands 4 looks marginally “better” than 3 and works many times worse, failing to even launch on many machines due to poor UE5 optimization.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, another indie AA hit, uses the notoriously demanding CryEngine, but still runs perfectly on most machines without sacrificing graphical fidelity. Small teams, which have limited resources and nonexistent R&D departments, are somehow managing to beat huge thousands-strong studios in optimization. That itself speaks volumes, the sales notwithstanding.
This year has truly been the year of the indie, and I can only imagine what else will come out by the end of it. It’s high time AAA stepped up and used those many resources at hand to innovate rather than regurgitate, but even if they don’t: the indies have our backs.
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