So EA has its own indie bundle now. Yes, I’m aware that hardly makes any sense. At the very least, each game is part of the EA Partners program, which means the devs do, in fact, own their IPs – not EA. That said, it’s all a bit silly, right? Especially in the past year or so, EA’s once again become synonymous with gaming’s fe-fi-fo-fumming, goose-that-lays-golden-eggs-milking corporate side. It is, to be frank, the near-comically polar opposite of the indie “scene.” Clearly, though, EA’s trying to evoke a certain reaction by co-opting that word. But that, in itself, strikes me as problematic, because gaming’s least gentle giant is right: “indie” has a connotation now, and it’s very much coloring the expectations of gamers and indie developers alike. To be a developer of independent games and to be “indie” are now two entirely different things.

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