I considered that but there have been IP holders in the past that would license it out to third parties. If a small studio licensed a big IP for a small game and then self-published, would that be indie or AAA?
Not only are they not getting support from the publisher, they're paying for the right.
It's been true for a while, a lot of big corpo dollars has been sunk into "indie" games that are anything but independent.
Isn't that the entire backstory to Supergiant Games? An "Indie" developer backed by titans like Time Warner?
Depends on how you want to draw lines. IIRC, they were showing off a half-finished Bastion and WB approached them to publish it.
Their other projects are listed as self-published. If we go with the "self-published" definition though, it's a label for games and not developers.
The lines are drawn at who owns what honestly, and while the developer is independent in this case, the issue is that ubisoft obviously OWNS the ip.
I considered that but there have been IP holders in the past that would license it out to third parties. If a small studio licensed a big IP for a small game and then self-published, would that be indie or AAA?
Not only are they not getting support from the publisher, they're paying for the right.