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Discussion Devolver Digital vs Annapurna Interactive

Devolver Digital vs Annapurna Interactive

  • Devolver Digital

    Votes: 30 52.6%

  • Annapurna Interactive

    Votes: 27 47.4%
  • Total voters
    57
Enpsty

Enpsty

Bob-omb
Arguably the two best indie publishers out there. But which one reigns supreme?

Devolver Digital notable games:
Hotline Miami, Shadow Warrior, OlliOlli, The Talos Principle 1 & 2, Broforce, Downwell, Enter The Gungeon, Mother Russia Bleeds, The Messenger, Gris, Katana Zero, My Friend Pedro, Serious Sam 4, Loop Hero, Death's Door, Inscryption, Cult Of The Lamb, Return To Monkey Island, Pepper Grinder.

Annapurna Interactive notable games:
What Remains of Edith Finch, Gorogoa, Donut County, Ashen, Outer Wilds, Telling Lies, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Kentucky Route Zero, The Pathless, Twelve Minutes, Solar Ash, Neon White, Stray, Storyteller, Mundaun, Cocoon, Open Roads.

Which one you prefer?
 
Annapurna by far for me: they just publish games that are my vibe and style much more. They really can boast a great portfolio. Edith Finch and Outer Wilds are groundbreaking.
 
i like a lot more of the games published by annapurna even if i don't like the multimultibillionaire money it originates from lol. so i guess them!
lots of great stuff from both though
 
I don't know, for me Devolver comes on top on the list of indie publishers but Annapurna ain't the second one. It's Humble, I like their games more. They have a lot more diversity than Annapurna.

If I had to do a list:
1- Devolver
2- Humble
3- Annapurna
4- 505
5- Modus
6- Thunderful
7- Team17
8- Wired
9- Merge
10- Fellow Traveler
 
Devolver comfortably.

Annapurna have released some wonderful games obviously, but Devolver are more my jam.

Death's Door
Disc Room
Katana Zero
Loop Hero
Olija
The Messenger
The Red String's Club
The Talos Principle
Minit
GRIS

Still need to check out stuff like Cult of the Lamb and Gunbrella.

My favourite Annapurna release is Donut County. Plenty I need to try like Neon White, still.
 
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Devolver. Their releases feel more fun/gameplay oriented to me overall, which is what I value the most in gaming.
 
I give Devolver credit for their marketing strategies and the games they choose to push, but of the games I've played from both publishers I feel like I've had more impactful experiences from Annapurna (Artful Escape, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Stray, Journey, Donut County, I Am Dead, Thirsty Suitors). Nothing against the games from Devolver either, (although I still wish Metal Wolf Chaos XD would finally come to Switch), but for the games I've played from them, they didn't leave as lingering a mark on my psyche after finishing them
 
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Devolver has much better range and a generally higher hit rate imo. For Annapurna Neon White is a banger but Stray, Twelve Minutes and Solar Ash drag their stuff down.
 
They're very close in my view, but I voted for Annapurna because I feel like AP has a higher ratio of hits to misses over DD, even though Gris and Death's Door are my favorites from the OP's lists.
 
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bixente said:
The Plucky Squire
Skate Story
Anger Foot
Children of the Sun

Annapurna have got Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Ghost Bike, Blade Runner etc. They're both offering exciting titles tbh.
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I was making a call based on the list in the OP, but even with these additional examples devolver seems more interested in fresh takes on familiar forms while annapurna is bankrolling weirder stuff
 
0
Both have published a lot of good games. Devolverโ€™s more action-based games are more my kinda stuff than the more thoughtful, slower-paced games typically published by Annapurna though.
 
0
I like both. I feel like Devolver is much more consistent whereas Annapurna churns out all timers alongside absolute stinkers (mostly referencing Twelve Minutes, which I like but objectively kind of sucks).

Devolver has The Messenger, Deathโ€™s Door, Katana Zero, and Olli Olli. Those are some of the best indie games of all time! Annapurna has an all timer in Outer Wild, which may be the very best of all, but I could take or leave most of the rest.
 
Devolver still manages to occasionally tap into that late 2000s/early 2010s Adult Swim games energy of just doing some new and weird, even if they mostly feel like the punk band that still thinks they're edgy and underground and are in complete denial about having sold out 15 years ago

Annapurna meanwhile feels a little less "how do you do fellow kids" but also sometimes strikes me as having their head up their own asses and buying into their own prestige

Broadly speaking I tend to be more interested in what comes out of Devolver, but tbh I don't love having either as "the face of indies" and imo any game they publish should have an asterisk next to its "indie status"
 
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I haven't played enough of either publisher's games to say. I definitely have played more Devolver games though. I liked Katana Zero, but it was a bit one note and the story wasn't amazing or anything. The Messenger was great in the first half, and terrible in the second. The Talos Principle 1 is peak, though I've not finished it.

I don't think I've played a single one of those Annapurna games. I'm actually kind of confused because I know I've seen their logo in a game start up before, maybe when I started up Neon White?

I will say, Devolver has the cringiest corporate humor.
 
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Annapurna is has a tendency to publish more experimental titles compared to Devolver, and doesn't use embarrassing marketing tactics. so they are the clear winner here.

case in point. the sheer amount of Devolver titles that are gameplay (Ape Out, Ruiner.) or aesthetically (Mother Russia Bleeds, Katana Zero) inspired by their first big hit Hotline Miami.
don't take that as a jab at their quality though, some of them are definitely good. it's just clear there's a ulterior motive to Devolver picking them up.

slide's said:
i like a lot more of the games published by annapurna even if i don't like the multimultibillionaire money it originates from lol.
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for the record, Devolver also comes from an affluent source. the founder was an executive at 2K for a few years and basically formed the company solely to keep the rights to Serious Sam.

this is specifically why i find their "press conferences" so exceptionally awful. people lap them up at face value, laughing at the jabs towards "AAA gaming" when the company is really not that much smaller than the studios they're mocking, and are perfectly willing to "ironically" use the same tactics at times.
you don't get access to larger brands like Disney and HBO by being a scrappy indie upstart.

constantly doing these conferences every year also misses the original point of the joke, the first one was shown during an "after dark" Twitch event designed to be deliberately campy, complete with showings of B-Movies.


(i don't think they actually ended up streaming Kabukiman though, but Wolf Cop definitely was shown.)

that's why there was no actual reveals then, it was basically a short film made to go along with the rest of the festivities.
then it went viral outside of that context, and now Devolver is chasing that clout train by repeating it again and again.

though at least it's not as horrible as some of the shit Mike pulled at his prior companies. he was the one who made the notorious Daikatana ad that Romero hated even back then, and at one point crashed the VGAs by interrupting Ken Levine's speech after Bioshock won game of the year.
 
Devolver has the more fun catalogue imo. Annapurna tries to be arthouse way too much, often at the expense of fun. You can see that even in their more gameplay/sim-y games; there's just a slightly too large amount of polish, every system is just slightly too calculated to maximize engagement. Of the Annapurna games I've finished, I've absolutely never felt the urge to go back to any of them.

On the other hand Devolver has a catalogue that, at least to me, screams "were throwing any wacky idea to the wall and see if it sticks". It's a very varied list of games and many of them I've played over and over again. Not all of their games are amazingly polished, but the one thing their games are is incredibly creative.

---
These next few points are less game-related but make it hard to like Annapurna once you know how the sausage is made so to speak;

Annapurna also gets a massive amount of negative points for their poor responses towards abusive behaviour at their studios, as well as the numerous accusations made against them of executive meddling to make sure that the games their studios work on fit the company's "arthouse indie" umbrella and don't deviate from that. PMG did a whole video on both of those (CW: heavy shit - YouTube gives a warning before watching the video, take it seriously) that for some reason people give Annapurna a pass for. It makes it hard to not look at the publisher in an extremely negative way.

Also less mentioned about Annapurna is how many of their studios are one-show wonders, which Devolver is generally more consistent with. Many of their studios go bankrupt after the first game they make, which is... concerning to say the least. I'm sure it's a real risk with a lot of indie companies in general, but Annapurna's track record on that is especially poor. Given the aforementioned executive meddling, I'd not be too surprised if this is in part because of their heavy arthouse brand push exceeding good business sense.
 
I appreciate both (and critique both) but Devolver seems to ultimately go for things that feelโ€ฆ more gamey. Like thereโ€™s a bit more of a โ€œtry the wacky thing and just make it the best version of that you canโ€ instead of art for artโ€™s sake. And, to be clear โ€” I VERY much enjoy both approaches. They both have (publisher) claim to games that I cherish. But Devolver tends to be more fucking fun, even if their games that donโ€™t suit me are more inherently annoying to me.
 
all this really clarifies is that itโ€™s ultimately kind of weird to rate indie games by which conglomerate shelled out for publishing rights, instead of like. yโ€™know. the developers.
 
Wake me up when Annapurna does a presentation live from the Dave Lang Memorial Colosseum
 
0
Razgriz said:
---
These next few points are less game-related but make it hard to like Annapurna once you know how the sausage is made so to speak;

Annapurna also gets a massive amount of negative points for their poor responses towards abusive behaviour at their studios, as well as the numerous accusations made against them of executive meddling to make sure that the games their studios work on fit the company's "arthouse indie" umbrella and don't deviate from that. PMG did a whole video on both of those (CW: heavy shit - YouTube gives a warning before watching the video, take it seriously) that for some reason people give Annapurna a pass for. It makes it hard to not look at the publisher in an extremely negative way.

Also less mentioned about Annapurna is how many of their studios are one-show wonders, which Devolver is generally more consistent with. Many of their studios go bankrupt after the first game they make, which is... concerning to say the least. I'm sure it's a real risk with a lot of indie companies in general, but Annapurna's track record on that is especially poor. Given the aforementioned executive meddling, I'd not be too surprised if this is in part because of their heavy arthouse brand push exceeding good business sense.
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I had no idea about any of this, but thatโ€™s some grim stuff. Iโ€™ll watch the video later, thanks for the link.
 
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Suswave said:
all this really clarifies is that itโ€™s ultimately kind of weird to rate indie games by which conglomerate shelled out for publishing rights, instead of like. yโ€™know. the developers.
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Agree with this. I donโ€™t look for who the publisher is on the box, but they do have a large influence on visability for what gets press coverage when thereโ€™s hundreds of games released each year, and the larger indie publishers, initially at least, were one way to at least lift up some of the quality games. One I thought worked out really well was Yacht Club publishing Cyber Shadow, but itโ€™s true that itโ€™s the development team (or individual developer in the case of some games) that deserves the kudos rather than publishers picking and choosing titles that are close to the brand identity they want.
 
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Outer Wilds is by far the best game from either publisher by a wide margin imo, and Cocoon is on my radar, but I really don't care for pretty much anything else under Annapurna's umbrella. Devolver definitely has the overall better batting average. Hotline Miami is massively influential, Luftrausers, the whole OlliOlli series, Minit, Ape Out, Gato Roboto, and Inscryption were all instant all timer classics for me, and Gungeon and Downwell are staple games I always come back to.

And as for other indie publishers of note, Playism deserves some props for brining over so many Japanese indie games, as well as handling some western indie games over in Japan.
 
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Outer Wilds was an instant top 3 game ever of mine, so that alone decides it for me.
Add What remains of edith finch, Gorogoa, Kentucky Route Zero and Sayonara Wild Hearts to that.
I am looking forward to playing Cocoon as well (recently bought it).

Devolver has more action/arcady games and these are often not to my tastes (slow reflexes...).
Tried several games like Hotline Miami, OlliOlli, The Messenger, Katana Zero but couldn't really get into them.
I liked The Talos Principle 1, will play the second one.
Gris, Death's Door, Inscryption I should be more into than I have been. Something was missing for me. Good games though.
But I look forward to Skate Story a lot!
 
0
Cant go wrong with either - both among the top of my favorite publishers

I think What Remains of Edith Finch is probably my favorite game from either publisher and in a top 10 list I'd probably have it at 50% featured per publisher.

I cant decide.
 
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Suswave said:
all this really clarifies is that itโ€™s ultimately kind of weird to rate indie games by which conglomerate shelled out for publishing rights, instead of like. yโ€™know. the developers.
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Tbf I have zero idea about the background of both these companies. Reading the comments here made me go wtf? Especially the Annapurna backstory.
 
Enpsty said:
Tbf I have zero idea about the background of both these companies. Reading the comments here made me go wtf? Especially the Annapurna backstory.
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oh Iโ€™m not challenging the premise of your thread โ€” itโ€™s a good one, and both companies have very carefully curated their selections. they have specific voices that do in fact merit comparison.

I just ultimately think the roles of publishers become kind of weird as they go on in the real world.

a little bit like how debates about favorite record labels keep making less and less sense as we stray from the dawn of their creation.
 
Suswave said:
all this really clarifies is that itโ€™s ultimately kind of weird to rate indie games by which conglomerate shelled out for publishing rights, instead of like. yโ€™know. the developers.
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on reflection this is probably the only answer that matters
 
0
I actually had that reflection just yesterday thinking about what Devolver had published, and I thought that they are the GOATs of indie games publishing.

But it depends on what you're looking for. Annapurna has the more classy games. Devolver (mainly) focuses on action games.
 
0
In my view, Devolver Digital usually publish guaranteed bangers and have better quality control while Annapurna Interactive usually publish lot of artsy or uncommon genres tho most are usually mixed bags or downright dreadful (Twelve Minutes was a mistake).

I think its important that Annapurna Games publish all different kind of games while Devolver Digital usually stick to a specific audience maybe have a few oddballs here and there. I feel like this comparing the two is a bit unfair its like Bandai Namco vs Ubisoft kinda argument.
 
0
I prefer both. Options are great ๐Ÿฅฐ

Edit: sorry, maybe this is a cheap answer. If I had to choose? Devolver. I love their games and their attitude.
 
0
I didn't think about it at the time but I will certainly cosign the argument that Devolver's presentations immediately make them lesser. But, like Sus said already, it's more about the developers than the publishers so far be it for me to hold that against some of the wonderful teams that just happened to have signed deals with Devolver.
 
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