Oh those guys? Yeah those are just the dozens of professional voice actors we could afford to hire with our tiny baby game studio budget! And those guys? Yeah that’s just our 7-person “engineering” team. What do you mean your entire studio is 4 people?
suck off me
(for the record I’m not dunking on Hades or Hades 2 as a game this is just something that pisses me (and I assume only me) off)
Stardew Valley and ConcernedApe are ‘small developers’.
Hades 2 is not. thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
30 is really small. solo dev is a separate other thing and not a requirement for “indie”. hell a solo dev can even remortgage their house and hire actors, localizers, and marketing, that doesn’t make them not a solo dev.
even without that kind of ill-advised gambling a solo dev is almost certainly benefitting from unpaid playtesters and QA