Microsoft's mega-deal worries small video game makers
Indie games developers are nervous they will be squeezed out if the big firms' dominance grows.
www.bbc.co.uk
Interesting article from the indie perspective
When Tanya Short first pitched the idea for Boyfriend Dungeon, a computer game where the player's romantic partners are monster-vanquishing weapons, publishers didn't seem overly interested.
"They all rejected it. They said the name wasn't interesting, or they just didn't understand it," says Ms Short, the director and chief executive of independent game studio, Kitfox Games.
It was only after a growing buzz about the game, and some initial funds, via Kickstarter, that the games platforms changed their tune.
Boyfriend Dungeon is now available on a variety of systems, including PC, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.
But Ms Short worries that quirky games like hers, designed by creatively independent studios, will have an even harder route to market in the future - because the biggest corporate firms in gaming are expanding.
Ms Short is one of a number of indie game developers who have told BBC News they are worried about what the deal could mean for the industry.
Microsoft insists it will continue to cater for small, independent developers. But some of those developers are deeply concerned, for instance, that if the Microsoft-owned, Game Pass subscription service, increasingly becomes the only means through which many people access games, small studios could be left competing for funding and promotion via that platform.
It could be viewed as a video game version of the problem that some artists say they face on music streaming platform, Spotify.
Ms Short also points out that, currently, indie studios already avoid launching their games in the run-up to Christmas, since so many large, or "triple-A" titles are released during that period. Think Call of Duty or FIFA. But with greater consolidation of large developers - and platforms, such as Xbox and Game Pass, calling more of the shots - things could get even trickier.
"This Activision acquisition strikes fear in us because it makes it so much more obvious - maybe they could dominate the rest of the year and then what do we do?" she says.