Why don't companies just self-publish games?

Why don't companies just self-publish games?
What's the point of getting a publisher? They don't even do anything and they take all your money.

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Marketing money
How many good games nobody knew existed because they were not advertised

Publishers pay for development. They also pay for marketing and distribution.

Not sure how you think funding the entire project is not doing anything at all.

what about games like stardew valley that were developed entirely indepdentently and then before releasing the complete game got a publisher for some arcane reason

Because it is a cheap indie game made by somebody with absolutely no knowledge or connections who has no clue how to market a game or get it on stores and consoles.

It's the same reason people with already successful businesses go on Shark Tank looking to expand.

Publishers gave them more reach. But some companies are trying self-publishing like CyberConnect2.

Why don't developers just declare themselves to be independent countries so they can mint their own currency and have literally infinite resources for development????

sounds like a jewish scheme used to prey on poor people
if the game you make is good it'll sell, no need for publishers or marketing

good games flop all the time while stupid movie games with shit gameplay go on to sell millions

You have no idea how business works. Games won't necessarily sell on their merits alone. And even if it did it is down right retarded to not market your games to a wide as audience as possible.

Nigger business has always been done like that in every industry.

You can't just call up Microsoft support and say YES HELLO PAJEET FROM SOUTH DAKOTA I WOULD LIKE TO PUT MY NEW GAME STARDEW VALLEY ON THE XBOX ONE PLEASE CONNECT ME TO YOUR CEO.

You need industry insiders to get you in the door and show you how to get these things done.

word of mouth is the marketing

>good games flop all the time
name one

>release game on steam
>sells millions because its a good game
>pay an intern to port your game to xbox

making a game is a very high risk deal. what if it offends some twitter personality or a single bug causes the end boss to be too easy or hard to defeat and the game doesn't sell enough?

no one in his right mind should hire 10 people, pay them for 3 years(for likely a lot of money), and risk releasing a game that could make only 10% of the money back.What's the actual consequence of that on your life? it would be to fire 10 people and then committ suicide as you lost all your money.

of fucking course most teams are gonna need the financial safety of a publisher.Also 3 years of wages for 10 people is a lot of money for a starter too.

from what i heard a publisher could pay for any amount of your development cost, then demand 60% of revenue until it's paid back and 40% afterward. that's not a terrible deal to take when there is such a big risk on the line.

>good games flop all the time
Citation needed.

Okami
Psychonauts
Beyond Good and Evil
Jet Set Radio Future
Vanquish
No More Heroes
Madworld

You realize you need like hundred man development teams to make games today given how graphically demanding games are.

Unless you are making a shitty 1 man pixel art game, you need funding.

let's get an easier statement started:

average games flop all the times and there are plenty of them, mostly unknown to you.

publishers takes care of that risk.

>if the game you make is good it'll sell

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Those games didn't sell RDR2 levels, but they still did good.

>word of mouth is the marketing

No it's not. Marketing is a concise effort to spread the word of your game and make a case for why people should invest in it to as many people as possible through advertisement. Word of mouth you have no control over.

No they didn't, retard. They all lost money.

No More Heroes sold 10,000 copies on release. That's abysmal.

>You realize you need like hundred man development teams to make games today given how graphically demanding games are.
nintendo makes bad looking games all the time and they sell gazillions

>on release
irrelevant, Hat in Time sold like 10k on release too but over time through word of mouth it reached 3m copies sold

Okami and Godhand killed Clover.

All nintendo games still have huge fucking development teams. They look "bad" in comparisson to games on ps4/xbone/pc because of console limitations. But they still require large art teams and everything.

Not him but what the fuck are you even talking about? Are you actually saying advertisement is pointless? You're fucking nuts.

which is retarded. tons of games have already proven people don't give a shit if a game is ultra turbo realistic, it can look like Dead Cells or Risk of Rain 2 and it still sells because they play damn well

>an indie game who's small dev team worked on it voluntarily free as a hobby only selling 10k is the same thing as AA games only selling 10k
I knew you were underaged because of how clueless you were around simple business structures, but I didn't know you were retarded too.

>omitting my point entirely and jumping to ad hominem
Thanks for conceding

user. The games lost money. That means it failed. Just because Hat in Time went on to do well because they had no money to recoup because they spent no money developing it doesn't mean the games I listed aren't historical industry failures.

Marketing is the most important part in making a video game. The quality of the game has very little effect on wether or not it will sell (see Fallout 76)

if stardew valley didn't get chucklefuck as a publisher, it'd probably be sitting in steam greenlight right now, at the bottom of most charts, because it wouldn't have had the viral marketing campaign that they put in place for it.

this. also, it seems logical that the devs get a better contract in that case, since the game itself was self-funded, and only the marketing and experience was provided by the publisher. but they were indie, so maybe they got fucked in the contract anyway

And don't forget localization, which is also handled by publishers. It costs a fuck ton of money to record and translate dialogue in dozens of languages while also adding and removing assets to fit the cultural norms of those countries.