Multiple indie devs "blindsided" after multi-year passion projects get immediately buried by EA's Command & Conquer Steam onslaught: "Maybe I'm just cursed"

Potions: A Curious Tale
(Image credit: Stumbling Cat)

On March 7, EA shadow dropped a host of classic PC 𝓰games on Steam, including pretty much the entire Command & Conquer series. That's good news - unless you're one of the indie devs who released a game the very same day and suddenly had to compete with decades worth of nostalgia amid🙈 the notorious whims of the Steam algorithm.

One of the affected titles was , a cozy adventure and crafting game about a witch and her potions. "My 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:indie game I worked on for 10 year♈s was immediately bump𝄹ed off of New and Trending by EA spam releasing 11 titles at once," developer Renee Gittens said on . "All of the built-up marketing and momentum squashed in an instant."

It's notoriously difficult for a game to stand out on Steam, but one of the ways for an in✅die to get noticed i𝓡s through its placement on the platform's New and Trending tab. That front page section highlights new releases that have achieved some degree of popularity, effectively filtering out those games you might ungenerously refer to as 'Steam trash' - you know, the hentai puzzle games and the like.

Getting shoved out of that tab dramatically decreases your game's visibility i🍷n the crucial early days after launch, and Gittens noted that she would "have avoided this date like 💎the plague" if EA's releases were announced ahead of time. "The game took ten years of dev because I had to work full-time jobs during development," she said, adding later, "This is my dream game and I didn't cut any corners."

Gittens said that "one of my goals for this game was to help young girl⛄s to recognize their own strengths and empower them to follow their dreams. The mechanics and story of Potions, and sharing my own journey, was intended to do that. It's why I decided to release on the eve of International Women's Day, and why it feels extra bitter to have happened on that day. I don't think I deserve special treatment for being a woman, I just had a wonderful, joyful day turned sour due to forces outside of my control. I'm sorry if my strong emotions came off as self-righteous or anything other than what I was feeling: blindsided and devastated."

Potions was not the only indie game to have been handed a very bad launch day by EA's shadow drop. Throwback action-platformer - a game I've played and quite enjoyed for its efforts to imp🌜rove on the like𓂃s of Mega Man and Sonic with "Metroidvania elements" - also launche꧅d on March 7 after five years in development, and also got kicked off that front p꧂age amid the EA onslaught.

🧸"The first week hasn't really been the smoothest of launches," according to the game's . "Berserk Boy was knocked off the New and Trending with EA's game dump." A few other include "yeaaaaaah this hurt [crying emoji]" "maybe I'm just cursed."

"I don't think EA is out to get me," Gittens acknowledged. "This was just horrible timing/luck." For those of you who play indie games rather than make them, just take this opportunity to remember how much of a role timing and luck play in a given tit🅷le's suc💟cess.

Pay it forward and put these 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games on your wishlist.

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for n♚early five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.