The closure (or near closure) of Humble Games was yet another brutal headline in what has been a bleak 18 months for indie games publishers

We've seen collapsing share prices, redundancies, a reduction in games being signed and entire company closures. Of course, publishers are caught up in the same nightmare that the entire games industry has been dealing with – a drop in game revenue mixed with over-investment and rapidly rising costs. However, there are also some fundamental (and potentially permanent) shifts in the marketplace that are making it harder for publishers to compete.

"I’ve been in publishing for almost ten years and it’s always been uncertain," says Simon Byron, who is currently MD of Yogscast Games. "You can never predict exactly how a game will perform before it’s out. You can have a sense, sure, but accurately forecasting a game’s sales is impossible – I’ve certainly never got it spot on. And that’s tricky for particular companies who have pressures to provide certainty to its shareholders.

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