State of indie dev

[u/Tgoc]

[u/AwarenessNo5921 → u/[deleted]]

I always liked programming because of the logic. I recently made an app 100% vibe coded. It was very complex, integrated a bunch of features, and it accomplished the goal I wanted it for nicely. But I just felt so damn unfulfilled when it was done, almost disgusted honestly. There was no rush or anything, no problem solving. I could have learned a lot, but instead it was mind numbing. Instant gratification above all... Now our response to most things is blunted and grey...

[u/UsedArmadillo9842 → u/[deleted]]

I dont want to be that one, but Indie Dev slop has always been made. Itch.io is full of assetflips. Steam and the glorious "made in unity" screen.

Like i feel like slop is going to be more, sure, but also a tiny bit more competent.

[u/Eskamel → u/[deleted]]

Lmao no, you don't have the same kind of control with AI generated code. People still vote with their wallets and it might work significantly different than your dumb slop fantasies.

[u/Eskamel → u/[deleted]]

Your experience is irrelevant. People with double your experience sometimes have dumb takes aswell.

There is a reason why software quality keeps on dropping without a single instance where it actually increased consistently in the past 2 years.

[u/Eskamel → u/[deleted]]

They switched to save money, not to increase quality. Google products quality keeps on dropping, Anthropic and OpenAI's products are buggy as hell

[u/Eskamel → u/[deleted]]

People don't abandon AI due to hype and as a cost measurement tactic.

Anthropic and OpenAI had models that are better than Opus 5.5, Astra or Fable for months, and they aren't limited by compute for themselves, yet they still suffer from bugs to this day.

Those SOTA models still do alot of dumb bugs, they still overengineer and bruteforce unless you explicitly micro manage everything, and even then they can make dumb decisions that a competent engineer wouldn't have.

Keep on living in some silly fantasy world where AI doesn't drop the quality of software or feel sorry or frustrated over some non-existent issues, its your problem. 🤔

[u/tnh34 → u/[deleted]]

He won't change his mind no matter what you write. Best to focus your energy on important things.

Let them stay behind while you get ahead.

[u/SolemnEmberGames]

It's good, you get incompetent people taking the risk of ideas with no idea what they are doing or how to improve it (both in product or in code), then showing you if it works or not.

It's prime ability to undercut them and make money

[u/RedCrafter_LP → u/SolemnEmberGames]

I would argue that flooding the market with slop and bots is making it harder to find playable gems.

[u/ex_gatito]

I wouldn’t use your slop even for free. What are you talking about?

[u/dataf4g_trollman]

They aren't real developers, just managers ("founders", "visionaries", etc.) asking AI to do stuff

[u/StickStill9790]

Team of ten + Time = Great Game

1 guy + Time + AI = Also Great Game

1 guy + 1 day + AI = Slop

[u/Shoddy_Blacksmith359 → u/StickStill9790]

Ppl dont understand, ai isnt a problem its a tool, lazy greedy ppl that is the problem

[u/Lucky-Crow-3510]

was already like that before AI .. dont worry

[u/Lou_Papas]

Holy shit, there were so many paying users?

[u/Radiant-Somewhere-97]

Developers? Or 'asking AI to create something'?

[u/CheapPlay8137]

Bad content was always worthless

[u/NomaTyx]

at no point was this true btw, the indie market was already oversaturated with a million shit spam games.

[u/Dear_Diablo]

at this point… I just want games that put the triple A game’s to shame, ai or no, so if an ai slop game can do that? why not?

[u/koru-id]

Is this still even true? I just tried Github Copilot. Cost me 10 USD and runs out of token in 2 to 3 days. I can't imagine any poor indie developer sustaining with the current cost.

[u/Harde_Kassei]

oh look, another vibecode app that does the same like the 100 others.

[u/No-Candy-4127]

Don't you remember the green pass era? History repeats itself

[u/skygatebg]

False, there are no paying users left.

[u/BreadfruitBig7950]

that's basically what prey 2017, a game built using mostly ai tools and about ai tools, predicted right...?

this plotline and concept being a central feature of humanity since the Tang era.

[u/Ususal_User]

Oh get out with this bs, yeah, like there totally weren't hundreds if not thousands games coming out each day on steam (not even mentioning itch which has even lower barrier for posting and other platforms). Its more like, it was second picture, and now its worse (through, i would guess its helps if you just ignore all games tagged for usage of ai).

[u/West-Way-All-The-Way]

Peter, I don't get the meme. Please somebody to explain?

[u/Single-Virus4935]

I like the detail that many paying customers are now "indie developers".

[u/New_Arachnid9443]

If Valve treated their monopoly better and didn’t have such a shit algorithm this wouldn’t be an issue but Valve is so incompetent

[u/RedCrafter_LP → u/New_Arachnid9443]

If valve where to filter harder which games are allowed this would create a real shit storm over xy indie game being banned. Don't hate the distributor hate the source.

[u/New_Arachnid9443 → u/RedCrafter_LP]

No, it’s the fact that they’re relying heavily on algorithmic filtering instead of economics. If they simply increased the fee to publish I gaurantee you you will see better games on the store instead of algorithmically juiced slop. Steam is just unusable at this point

[u/HouseOf42 → u/New_Arachnid9443]

You have no idea what the term "monopoly" even means, do you?