Vimeo to indies: Cough up or get out

There aren’t many avenues for indie game artists to showcase their work, and yet another one has closed its doors to developers. Vimeo’s policy prevents creators from uploading videos of gameplay unless they’re willing to cough up $199 a year, which can be a lot of money for a small developer. In an editorial for Kotaku, Brandon Boyer, creator of Venus Patrol, and Independent Games Festival chairman summed up Vimeo’s hypocritical stance:

“So let’s just state that again more clearly. If you are an artist of any stripe: if you dance, sing, draw, paint, cook, write, film, knit, even create motion graphics, generative art, creative code with the same exact digital tools used to make games – audiovisual representation of your work is welcome on vimeo.com at absolutely no charge. If, and only if, you extend that art a step further into something goal-oriented, digital art, or play, or however they shallowly and narrowly define “video games”, you are the only artists stopped at the gates and instead get shaken down for two hundred dollars a year to join their club, and even then that community still has no access to your content without their case-by-case approval.”

Check out his full rant here.

– Filipe Salgado