Likely because when the big games weren't part of it yet, they were getting good payouts.

But as soon as you throw in one elephant into the pool, let alone a dozen, the rest of the swimmers are gonna have a lot less water to swim in.

Cause a lot of indie devs are also idiots when it comes to business decisions. Many (especially solo devs) didn't get into the industry to make boatloads of money; they are often creative types who are passionate about their work.

Probably same reason they defended being bought off by epic for exclusivity, short term stability at the cost of long term survivability.

Indie devs are probably gonna get their bread now and think about the future later. They don't know if they can get a single game out.

Did those devs already have a deal in place? Were they hoping to get a good deal in the future?

What were those devs saying when they defended Gamepass?

A lot of gaming sites asked developers whose games were on GamePass what they thought of it, and the answer was predictable. Like, nobody is going to ill talk the provider of the service their game is on.

Other developers didn't speak ill of it because of the fear of burning bridges, I suppose.

The Game Bakers (Furi, Haven) talked about their difficult relationship with GP on Vice (LINK).

“Game Pass is such a fantastic platform for players,” said Leprince, “so there are possibly more Xbox players than ever interested in indie games. Unfortunately, without Game Pass, it is also very hard for many indie games to be visible on Xbox.”

Basically, the problem with a subscription service such as GP is that it cannibalizes other games' sales outside the service itself. And since you are not guaranteed to land on GP, developing a game Xbox may be more of a gamble than it is on other platforms. I fear this may become the norm as more subscription services are rolled out and start encroaching the market.

There's also the problem with founding. Furi sold 78% of its copies through PS+, yet only one third of its budget was paid by Sony for the deal. Developers have to decide whether they need less money immediately, or potentially more money down the line; but for indie developers, sometimes there is no choice: they either accept the deal, or shut down because they don't have the founding to complete their next game.

I really like the Vice article I linked because it's one of the very few who tried to analyze the situation impartially, with data backing it up. Most of the other industry journalists at the time were like "GP is the future! Gamers spend less and everyone gains more money!!1!", parroting Spencer's bullshit.

In the case of both, how fair it is, depends on payment model. At least spotify is grossly unfair, to the point that there is an entire industry around bot farming plays to drain money from the payment pool.

As for game subscriptions, I've not looked into it much, but I know Apple's service at least is based on hours played, which has resulted in some games on the service attempting to stretch out their playtime using things like mandatory grinding to progress in their games. With this model, developers can literally shoot themselves in the foot financially, by allowing the player to sprint. It's stupid.

Games can't be reduced to that simple a value. You can get the same amount of hours out of God of War as you can Binding of Isaac, but their production and purchase costs, are not, and should not, be the same.