I think it all depends.
I remember a lot of people debating on Grow Home as an indie title because it was made by a few devs in their offtime within Ubisoft
He didn’t weigh in on Destiny 2 for community support? When even the community manager laughed at it?
Honestly, I think people only care so much because everyone hates Nexon, and don’t want to give them any flowers. I hate Nexon too, but if you look in half the nominees for the category, you’re going to see multi-million dollar publishers over and over and over. Devolver is literally a publically traded company, and their games are nominated literally every year, and nobody gave a fuck.
The spirit of indie is making a game from nothing, either low budget, and/or small team. You would not say that Half-Life:Alyx is an indie game, Valve is pouring a fuck ton of money from their billion dollar market place directly into the development. If Walmart started an internal game studio, and started making AAA games, you would not call that an indie studio. Does indie become a bit more meaningless? Sure. Not every title is going to be independent, but if that means that Dave The Diver, and Disco Elysium aren’t being contested by Baldur’s Gate 3, The Witcher 3, and Half-Life:Alyx, it’s probably for the better.
This should have always been game that’s beneath a certain budget on an indie label. Keighley is a joke.
This sets an extremely dangerous precedent. It effectively means that any non-indie developer can snatch “indie game of the year” as long as they can make a case that their game is indie “in spirit.” Which means literally nothing, so he might as well be saying that there are no rules. Because what makes a game indie in spirit? If it’s a budget issue, where’s the cutoff line? And does the fact that a major publisher did the marketing for Dave the Diver count against that?
This isn’t just an attempt to confuse the issue, it’s actively harmful to actual indie developers who will simply get outcompeted by major publisher-backed studios if this is allowed. Even just being nominated for indie game of the year is a huge publicity boost for small developers and it’s ridiculous that non-indie devs are allowed to just take up precious slots in the indie category. Never mind what happens if they’re allowed to win it.