Comic: https://www.deathbulge.com/comics/441
Alt text: Yeah yeah, there's always exceptions, I mean look no further than the game in the 2nd panel, not the most thrilling gameplay, is it?
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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Depends on how you define indie. By my definition, Deltarune is still indie but made by a quintillionaire so like, meh. Celeste was indie when it was just a fantasy console bs thing.
I think the most accurate definition is "produced without a publisher". That's the thing they're independent of.
Where it gets grey is things like "okay it has a publisher, but they're tiny and cute and only publish indie-feeling game"
So the "feeling" of indie is "made by a small group of people with a shared cohesive vision and minimal outside influence", where publishers tend to be large sources of outside influence, and teams larger than, like, 50 people tend to be unable to all have a truly shared cohesive vision. And a single person, by definition, always has a shared vision no matter what they make. But if a publisher is low-touch, or brings a game that's basically done to market without asking for changes, and the game feels cohesive and personal, then that's good enough.
That's also a really shitty definition since Valve and Nintendo are publishing themselves too. If you argue "well they are their own publisher" then I counter with "well anyone uploading to itch.io will have itch.io as their publisher".
Right, that's where the other definitions come in. I'd say itch is a distributor rather than a publisher, but even if you don't care about that distinction, it is definitely the case that itch doesn't tell the developer to do anything. So publishing on itch doesn't affect the vision for the game.
Nintendo... I mean kinda yeah. They're a weird one. Some of their games they're just the publisher, and there is another developer with a different name. But some things they do actually develop and self-publish. And some of the games have surprisingly few people working on them...
There may actually be a few Nintendo games that are kinda indie, oddly enough.
Yeah I think it was the original meaning. And New Blood, ultrakill's publisher, is only doing small games so far IIRC (also they have some ridiculous merch for their games alongside some pretty cool one) so they fit the "indie-ish" publishers category I have
I mean Deltarune was made by toby fox who became a millionaire from his other indie game Undertale. I think it definitely counts.
I did say "is still indie".
You also said, "but made by a quintillionaire," as if that is a point lowering its indie status, and as if money is the defining aspect of indie vs. AAA.
So if an indie game blows up because it's great then it's not indie? That's a silly way to define it.
Have some mid-sized studios co-opted the term? Sure. Expedition 33 is on that AA spectrum, but a game by a very small team? In what definition is Celeste not an indie game?
Here's one definition. If you go to the Steam page for Deltarune, it says "tobyfox" as developer, that's a (nick)name. OneShot (2016) says "Future Cat LLC" but that seems to be made up since Steam asks for "company name". Celeste's "Maddy Makes Games Inc." seems real, however. Therefore, Celeste isn't indie.
You still haven't defined anything. So if a game is only made by one person, it's indie? Games made by very small teams aren't indie?
Look, I get it, "indie" is actually a bit of a nebulous term, and is often co-opted by medium/large size studios who want to pretend to be "better" than the AAA games, but no reasonable person would call Celeste "not indie."
The first two examples are clearly made by multiple people. They just haven't registered a company. I good rule I found, not for games but just in general, is that if it's a registered organization it's probably not as good as you think it is otherwise.
And ultrakill probably sold the least out of these 3 but actually has a publisher (it's also my favorite of the 3)