Amazon today announced an initiative to help indie game developers promote and sell their games: the Indie Games Store. The dedicated storefront is a new category in Amazon’s Digital Video Games Store, designed specifically to help indie games for PC, Mac, and the Web get noticed.
The store appears to be US-only, but if you don’t live there you should be able to get away with just putting in an American address. Most of the games are Steam downloads, so where you are in the world shouldn’t matter too much.
In typical Amazon fashion, the company is celebrating the launch by offering features and promotions to encourage the embrace of the indie game scene:
- Indie Spotlight – The Indie Spotlight puts the focus on developers with Q&A and featured bios to give customers a glimpse of each developer’s style and personality. Amazon will feature a different indie developer every week starting today with Gaijin Games.
- Indie Bundles – Starting today until July 23rd, gamers can get great deals on Indie Bundles and increase their collection. These bundles are made up of five, six, or 10 games each, and will cost $9.99, which is a discount of up to 90 percent off if purchased separately.
- Gift with Purchase – Starting today until July 17th, customers who purchase any indie title from the Indie Games Store, will receive codes to redeem three pre-selected titles for free. The games change daily and each purchase entitles customers to three free games, so customers are encouraged to check often.
- Indie Gamer’s Choice – To help connect gamers and developers, Amazon is introducing the Indie Gamer’s Choice program, which positions two indie games head-to-head and allows players to vote on their favorite title to become the Indie Gamer’s Choice, which is naturally featured in the store.
Amazon says it understands how difficult it is for indie developers to get their games in front of both gamers and reviewers. It is thus offering the dedicated indie-specific storefront to increase discoverability for indie developers while at the same time offering its customers more options.
Amazon will need to approve the games that appear in the new storefront, so if you’re interested in selling your work on the Indie Games Store, you should send an email to [email protected] sooner rather than later. The company says it has already added many innovative indie games including “Don’t Starve” by Klei Entertainment, “FTL: Faster than Light” by Subset Games, and “The Bridge” by The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild.
At the time of publishing, the store featured over 200 games. We expect that number to rise very rapidly over the coming months.
Top Image Credit: Emmanuel Dunand/Getty Images
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