Can Indie Games Compete With AAA? An Open Letter From a Studio Betting On It
Updated August 3, 2026
Indie games can compete with AAA, and the scoreboard already shows it. Balatro sold 5 million copies in under a year. Stardew Valley has passed 41 million. Hades beat every big-budget release to win Best Game at the 2021 BAFTAs. We are a small studio with two unreleased games, and this letter is about why those numbers matter.
What is the argument that indie games can’t compete?
Dear everyone who ever said it,
We have heard the argument at family dinners, in YouTube comments, and once from a very confident taxi driver in Istanbul. It goes like this: real games are made by hundreds of people with nine-figure budgets, and everything else is a hobby that occasionally gets lucky.
We are the “everything else” in that sentence. Overbaked Studio is a small team in Istanbul, founded in 2026: a game designer, a 2D artist, two developers, plus sales and marketing. Our first two games are still unreleased. So this letter is not a victory lap; it is a witness statement from the small end of the industry.
What have indie games actually proven?
The pattern repeats too often to be luck.
| Game | Team size | Copies sold | Award | Why it counts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balatro | One anonymous developer, LocalThunk | Over 1 million in the first month, more than 5 million by January 2025 | Best Independent Game, Best Debut Indie Game and Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards 2024 | A poker roguelike that launched in February 2024 and was nominated for Game of the Year |
| Stardew Valley | One person, Eric Barone, on code, art and music | More than 41 million by December 2024 | Not cited here | About four and a half years of solo work, and 10 million of those copies came in 2024 alone, nearly nine years after launch |
| Hades | Supergiant Games, an independent studio | Not cited here | Best Game at the 2021 BAFTA Games Awards, plus the first Hugo Award ever given to a video game | Best Game is not an indie category, and it beat every big-budget release in the room |
| Hollow Knight | Three people, Team Cherry in Adelaide | More than 15 million | Not cited here | A three-person studio landed between Balatro and Stardew Valley on this table |
| Undertale | Almost entirely one person, Toby Fox | Not cited here | Not cited here | One person handled the writing, the design and the score, which is the whole argument in a single credit |
| Minecraft | Started solo, Markus Persson posted the first public build in 2009 | Over 300 million | Not cited here | Microsoft paid $2.5 billion for its studio in 2014, five years after that first build |
Every one of those games was, at birth, precisely the kind of project the argument dismisses.
Isn’t AAA still winning where it counts?
In some columns, yes.
Production value is real. Per CD Projekt’s own financial disclosures, Cyberpunk 2077’s spend across development, marketing, updates, and its expansion sits around $436 million, and the game has sold over 40 million copies. No indie team can rent that megaphone or build that skyline. When AAA execution lands, nothing else on the market looks like it.
The odds also cut hard against teams like ours. Indie marketing consultant Chris Zukowski counted 20,282 games released on Steam in 2025, and only 608 of them, about 3 percent, ever reached 1,000 reviews. Alinea Analytics put indie titles at roughly a quarter of Steam’s revenue that year, about $4.4 billion of a record $17.7 billion. For every Balatro there are thousands of games almost nobody played, made by teams who worked just as hard. We have written before about how long an indie game takes to make, and the answer is years of your life, with no floor under you.
So if “compete” means matching AAA budgets, reach, or hit rate per attempt, indies lose.
So what does competing even mean?
The argument assumes one race with one finish line. A game competes for someone’s Tuesday night, and on a Tuesday night Balatro’s “one more run” beats a cutscene that cost more than the entire game.
Small teams win there for a structural reason. A 400-person production has to aim wide, because committees, forecasts, and risk models sand the strange edges off. A handful of people can pick a single feeling and drill into it far past the depth a spreadsheet would approve. LocalThunk made a poker deck feel illegal. Barone made watering parsnips feel like coming home. That precision is a currency of its own, and headcount does not buy it.
The market keeps rewarding it, too. The cozy genre keeps growing on the back of small, specific games, and most of the next Balatros are sitting unnoticed on wishlists right now; we keep a running list of Steam hidden gems worth wishlisting for exactly that reason.
Why are we, of all people, writing this?
Because we are betting our working lives on it being true, and you should know what the bet looks like from inside.
Overbaked Studio has two games in development. Grandma Left Me a Building is a cozy apartment management sim about inheriting your grandmother’s building and the tenants who come with it; you can wishlist it on Steam. Hellmate: Chess Deck Builder is a roguelike deckbuilder built on chess pieces. Neither is released. Neither is guaranteed anything. Next year we will either be among the 608 or among the other 19,674, and no open letter can change which.
That uncertainty is why we trust the argument. The people who said “indie can’t compete” were describing the average, and the average is real. But nobody plays the average. Players buy the one specific game that hit them squarely, and small teams are better at specific. Consider this letter signed by the whole team.
Frequently asked questions
Has an indie game ever won Game of the Year?
Yes, at the top level of the awards circuit. Hades took Best Game at the 2021 BAFTA Games Awards, and Balatro, built by one developer, was nominated for Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024 and won three categories there.
Which indie game has sold the most copies?
Minecraft, at over 300 million copies. It started as Markus Persson’s solo build in 2009, and Microsoft bought the studio for $2.5 billion in 2014. Among the other games in this letter, Stardew Valley leads with more than 41 million.
What percentage of Steam games actually succeed?
About 3 percent, if you measure success by reaching 1,000 Steam reviews. Chris Zukowski’s count of 2025 releases found 608 games clearing that bar out of 20,282. Pick a different bar and you get a different number.
Do indie games outsell AAA games?
No, not as a category. Alinea Analytics counted about $4.4 billion of Steam’s $17.7 billion in 2025 game revenue as indie, roughly one dollar in four. Individual titles are another matter: Stardew Valley sits past 41 million copies against Cyberpunk 2077’s reported 40 million.
Key takeaways
- Balatro, made by one developer, sold 5 million copies in under a year and won three categories at The Game Awards 2024.
- Stardew Valley, also a one-person project, passed 41 million copies by December 2024; three-person Hollow Knight passed 15 million.
- Hades won the 2021 BAFTA for Best Game plus the first Hugo Award ever given to a video game, and Minecraft, now past 300 million copies, started as one person’s indie project in 2009.
- The counterweight is real: 20,282 Steam releases in 2025, about 3 percent reached 1,000 reviews, and budgets like Cyberpunk 2077’s reported $436 million buy reach no indie can match.
- Indies compete on precision: one feeling executed deeper than large structures allow, and the sales above show players pay for it.
If you want to watch a small team test this letter in public, wishlist Grandma Left Me a Building on Steam.
