Xbox has paid nearly £2billion in royalties to indie developers

Independent Developers @ Xbox (ID@Xbox) is a scheme that Microsoft started in 2014 that allows indie studios to self-publish their games on the Xbox ecosystem of platforms.

The announcement of shared royalties comes from Chris Charla, who was director of ID@Xbox until 2018 and is now a partner of content creation and programs at the company.

“Since the program’s inception, independent developers have earned more than $2.5 billion [£1.89 billion] in royalties, and total revenue generated by ID@Xbox partners on Xbox almost doubled over the last three years. These are staggering numbers, and it speaks to the power of independent developers,” wrote Charla in a post on Xbox Wire.

Charla adds that because of the scheme, indie developers have been able to give Microsoft direct feedback regarding its back-end publishing, which has allowed developers to more easily ship their games on both console and PC.

“We’ve also paid developers and publishers across Xbox hundreds of millions of dollars in Game Pass license fees,” adds Charla, although no specific figure was given here.

Despite apparently having over 3,000 indie games on Xbox, Charla notes that one area the team needs to improve on is discoverability and making it easier for players to find games they may end up really enjoying.

Earlier in the month an ID@Xbox showcase was also live-streamed and showed off plenty of games coming to Game Pass in the near future.

In other news, a retro video game museum has been destroyed in Ukraine due to Russian bombing. “All that is left from my collection that I have been collecting for 15 years is just a fragments of memories on the [Facebook] page, website and radio station of the museum,” said museum owner Dmitry Cherepanov.