If you have been on X at all these days, particularly in the cozy/indie game sphere, you may have heard a bit of a ruckus around Mike Rose of No More Robots and the recently released fantasy life sim, Spirittea.
No More Robots is the publisher that worked to support, distribute, and promote Spirittea (developed by Cheesemaster Games) up to and after launch. Mike Rose is the company director of No More Robots, and also the catalyst of indie creator drama after he posted a rant on X about how paying content creators for an ad spot feels “icky and disingenuous.”
What Was the Spirittea Controversy?
Here’s a summary of the infamous rant, for those not already in the know (or not on X).
Rose announced that Spirittea has been one of their biggest launches to date, hitting $1 million in sales in the first week and netting over 150,000 players across PC, Nintendo Switch, and Game Pass. Cause for celebration, right? An amazing launch for an indie game!
Not quite. It’s here that Rose actually makes some decent points about how Steam, once the platform champion for indies, has become home to a lot of AAA games that failed to get a foothold in their own “non-Steam PC gaming platforms.”
Rose writes:
“Steam has become more AAA-heavy which means there are more eyeballs on the bigger releases and less for the smaller releases. On console the playing field remained pretty much the same. In fact there’s *less* AAA on Switch since the Switch can’t really handle newer AAA. So at launch, Spirittea easily moved into the Top Sellers charts on Switch, and has stayed there.
This means that while Steam sales have begun to naturally drop, Switch sales are staying solid, as people are discovering the game more through the Top Sellers.”
Here, Rose makes a good point about how indie games are being squeezed out of spaces where they typically thrived. Instead, they are being pushed onto a technologically inferior device, simply because AAA games don’t want to touch it. That’s not great. And I understand his frustration.
But here’s where his rant got ugly. Rose bemoaned the lack of coverage for Spirittea on YouTube. How he didn’t want to pay creators for promotional slots. About how the whole promotional process with influencers was “so fucking eugh.” See the posts below for specifics, and watch the screenshot in particular:
Two things spring to mind when I read that. First: Rose posted a screenshot of small content creators who previewed, played, or spoke on Spirittea for free in the middle of his rant. I’m sure you don’t need the rundown from me about how absolutely ungrateful and disrespectful that is.
Plenty of content creators did create content around the game, including The Cozy Gaming Club and MadMorph. And they did so unpaid. To showcase their channels in a rant about how no one covered your game is a faux pas of the highest regard. Honestly, “disrespectful” doesn’t even cut it.
But then there is the Other Big Thing. The heart of the matter.
Should it be expected that you pay content creators for their work in order to have your game featured on their site or channel?
First of all, no one would ever say they “like” ads. But they are effective; they work. There is a reason why the advertising industry is worth billions of dollars. Paying a target location at the heart of your desired audience to host your ad is a marketing strategy that works well.
In digital marketing courses, they teach you that you need two types of promotion: paid and earned. Paid is exactly what it sounds like. You buy a spot; your product appears there. Earned simply means that you crafted a great product and certain media outlets or personalities will want to talk about it regardless—for free.
Most successful marketing campaigns have room for both. Most campaigns also have a budget. Smaller projects equal smaller budgets. Small budgets also tend to mean smaller reach. This is real—and it sucks.
It means the rich get richer (in profits and fame), and small artists struggle.
The crux of disliking the “pay to win” advertising model is relatable. As a small content creator, I know this intimately. If I want my voice to carry, I have to work ten times as hard because I can’t afford to offload the work to a large influencer with a built-in audience. Pokimane will never retweet (re-X?) me; I don’t have the cash.
But I can work closely with other small creators and we can all uplift one another instead. I can pay their (usually very reasonable) rates or trade products/services somehow. I can at least listen to what they have to say, share their content that resonates with me, and appreciate how much they do for free to cultivate the kind of audiences that I would want to be a part of anyway.
And here’s where it gets really tough: the cozy game community is largely a woman-led space. And we are very, very used to being told our labor isn’t valuable, that it isn’t worth anything, financially speaking. So hearing a cozy game publisher make the above comments sting with a particularly nasty heat.
Let me tell you: as a small content creator, it is so, so hard to ask for compensation for your time, energy, and work. You feel like a sellout. We all start these passion projects because we love the material we work with, whether it be cozy games or something else. Most of us are doing this on top of our day job. Maybe multiple day-jobs.
I was going to cover Spirittea regardless. I have a review template mocked up and I purchased it for Nintendo Switch. But before that: I am way behind on a My Time at Sandrock review due to hosting out-of-town guests for a couple of days and Coral Island is popping off right now so I need to hurry and join in to be part of the buzz.
I could not wait to play Spirittea. In fact, I posted my intentions to do so over a week ago. But to drop everything I’m working on and produce content right now? That’s a huge ask.
Content creators are not saying: “Pay me or I will never touch nor support your game.” If it’s a good fit for our audience, I promise your game is on an ever-expanding to-do list. A to-do list that often starts when we get off our full-time job at 5 PM and ends when we are aching and tired after midnight.
But if you want to cut the line? That’s a privilege that most small content creators cannot afford to give you without great cost to themselves and their current works-in-progress. If I stop playing My Time at Sandrock to review Spirittea instead, Sandrock may never be completed. Or I may have to restart the game to catch up on the flow and mechanics of where I was before.
And how is that fair to Pathea Games and Focus Entertainment, when their title was released first?
And that, my cozy friends, is the heart of the matter. If you want to be promoted (and you have a great product): just wait! The content is on its way. I promise. But if you need more, right now, at the expense of others ahead of you…well, that must be worth something, right?
Signing off. Please stay cozy…and kind.