indie developers

Microsoft’s decision to publish the Xbox Game Publishing Guide and lift long-standing NDAs is a meaningful, public-facing shift that deliberately moves Xbox’s platform closer to the open, developer-friendly approach long associated with Steam — and it could change how easily studios, especially...

Microsoft’s latest pricing ripple has reached an audience few players think about: game developers now face a higher barrier to build for Xbox as Microsoft raises the price of its official development kits from $1,500 to $2,000 — a 33% hike that the company says “reflects macroeconomic...

Microsoft’s push to make Xbox the gaming platform that follows players across consoles, PCs, and handhelds is now measurable—and exposed by a practical problem: some of the biggest publishers still aren’t playing ball with Xbox Play Anywhere, and that gap risks turning Microsoft’s cross-device...

Microsoft's decision to remove the Microsoft Store registration fee for individual developers is a deliberate, high-impact policy shift that lowers the financial barrier to publishing on Windows, replaces credit-card gating with identity verification, and refocuses the Store as an open...

Microsoft's decision to remove the registration fee for individual developers publishing to the Microsoft Store is more than a pricing change — it's a clear signal that the company intends to make the Store a lower-friction, broader distribution channel for independent Windows software creators...

Software engineer Jeff Schomay’s weekend experiment—feeding an old-school, ASCII-based roguelike called Thunder Lizard into modern generative models and streaming back full-motion, photoreal-style frames—reads like a proof‑of‑concept for what many game developers quietly hope AI can do: turn...

Microsoft’s move to stop “bundle spamming” in the Xbox Store is an overdue but significant step toward decluttering the digital storefront and protecting discovery for both players and legitimate developers. The company has begun notifying publishers that bundles made up of undifferentiated...

Microsoft’s Copilot 3D turns a single flat photo into a textured, downloadable 3D asset in seconds — a browser‑based experiment inside Copilot Labs that aims to democratize image-to-3D conversion for hobbyists, educators, indie developers and small businesses while intentionally positioning the...

Microsoft’s Copilot 3D turns a single flat photo into a downloadable, textured 3D model in seconds — a practical, browser‑based experiment inside Copilot Labs that aims to make 2D-to-3D conversion accessible to hobbyists, educators, indie developers and designers without a background in Blender...

Big news out of Build 2025 has the Windows developer world buzzing: Microsoft has officially dropped its $19 app submission fee for the Microsoft Store, making app and game publishing free for all developers on Windows 10 and Windows 11. The ramifications of this decision stretch far beyond...

Microsoft’s latest move to eliminate fees for individuals submitting apps to the Microsoft Store is sending ripples through the tech industry—reshaping expectations for developer empowerment and challenging long-held business models by competitors like Apple and Google. At its Build 2025...

You’d think that after two decades, the digital skies of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas would hold no more surprises—but just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water (or, rather, to try taking off from it), a bug as old as some Gen Zers themselves emerges, causing fans to wonder: are...

In a bold move that has sent ripples through the gaming community, indie developer Ice Water Games has pulled their open-world RPG, Tenderfoot Tactics, from the Xbox digital storefront. This decision aligns with the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which...

In more than a decade working at Reallusion – a 3D and 2D software and content developer that specializes in Windows-based real-time animation and creation tools – Enoc Burgos has seen a lot of changes in the industry, but one thing is consistent in his role as director of partnership marketing...

Reposted with permission from Link Removed Introduction: Building the best place… to build At GDC Europe 2016, the Microsoft developer platform team is excited to showcase the technologies we’ve been working on to make both game development and gaming better on Windows 10. Not only are we...

Developing games in Visual Studio 2015 will be easier than ever! Soma announced last week that Microsoft and the Visual Studio team is working very closely three gaming engine developers, so closely that in the future there will be "co-installation" of these engines baked in. As someone who...

Here are just 14 of the many shows published last week... Link Removed Have you ever looked at your code and thought that if you could JUST get it organized and versioned properly, you would be better off? Traditionally, version control meant you had to install some kind of server-based...

Steam is releasing Alien Swarm for free By Hilbert Hagedoorn, July 19, 2010 - 8:31 PM Today Steam is releasing Alien Swarm, which will cost you nothing. Two years ago, Valve hired a group of modders behind the popular Unreal Tournament 2004 co-op mod called Alien Swarm as ggmania...