Palworld’s Buckley Says Creative Control Should Define Indie Games

The word indie still sounds simple until someone tries to draw a hard line around it. Does it describe a studio’s headcount, its budget, who paid for development, who published the game, or who gets the final say when a major creative decision lands on the table? John “Bucky” Buckley, Pocketpair’s head of publishing and communications, has put forward a clear answer: creative control matters most.

In comments on X, Buckley argued that the economics surrounding game development have become “so blurred” that funding or outside assistance alone can no longer settle the question. Pocketpair’s own position is straightforward: Palworld was fully self-funded and Pocketpair says it has no outside financial influence. By that measure, the company considers itself independent.

The more difficult cases are studios that receive some form of external help. That help may be necessary to get a project finished or noticed, but it does not necessarily mean another company dictates the game’s design, story, schedule, platforms, or business strategy. Buckley’s proposed dividing line is whether a creator retains genuine freedom to make those decisions.

“For me, creative independence is probably the most important factor. If a studio has genuine creative freedom, then I think it’s fair to consider them independent.”

That framing brings useful precision to an argument that is often flattened into a label fight. A publisher, investor, marketer, and parent company can all be external parties, but they do not inherently play the same role. Calling every project touched by an outside company “not indie” may be neat, but it risks concealing the central question: who has power over the work?

Why marketing support is not the same as creative ownership

Buckley’s comments came amid discussion of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which drew debate after receiving a Best Indie Game nomination at The Game Awards despite its developers using an outside publisher. He challenged the premise that marketing assistance, by itself, should force a game into the AAA category.

“Is it really fair to say E33 isn’t indie just because someone helped with marketing?”

The question matters because “publisher” is frequently used as shorthand for “owner,” “funder,” or “creative boss.” Those relationships can overlap, but they are not automatically identical. Marketing work can include public-facing promotion, campaign planning, press outreach, audience messaging, and other efforts aimed at making sure people know a game exists. None of that proves the marketing partner selected the game’s mechanics or held approval over its creative direction.

That does not make every marketing relationship trivial. A campaign can affect a game’s visibility and commercial prospects enormously. It can also be accompanied by broader arrangements that are less visible from the outside. The point is not that outside marketing never matters; it is that its presence does not, on its own, explain where creative authority resides.

Buckley’s broader test is less about detecting whether a studio received help and more about identifying whether it remained autonomous. In his view, the independence becomes questionable when another entity begins applying creative pressure or making the studio’s decisions.

Creative independence, explained

Creative independence is not a formal industry certification with one universal checklist. In the context of Buckley’s comments, it means a studio has meaningful authority over the choices that define its game. That can include the basic concept, artistic direction, game systems, narrative, priorities, and the decisions that determine what the finished project becomes.

By contrast, creative pressure refers to influence that goes beyond logistical support or promotion and reaches the content or direction of the game itself. The hard part for players, awards bodies, and commentators is that these internal arrangements are not always public. A studio may describe itself as independent while working with a publisher; observers may know that a deal exists without knowing which party controls what.

That uncertainty is one reason Buckley describes the label as nuanced rather than pretending a simple rule can cover every studio. A production can be small but creatively constrained. It can also receive substantial external assistance while its developers retain the authority that Buckley considers decisive.

Stardew Valley is the obvious test case

Buckley also pointed to Stardew Valley to illustrate how a game’s circumstances can evolve without making its origins or core creative identity disappear. He asked whether it would be reasonable to say the game is not indie merely because Chucklefish assisted with some marketing years ago.

Stardew Valley has become a major franchise, including an official tour built around its soundtrack. Yet the core game remains handled by ConcernedApe and a small team. That combination exposes a weakness in definitions based exclusively on present-day reach. A game can become culturally large without suddenly becoming a creatively controlled product of a vast corporate development apparatus.

Scale is still relevant to the conversation, just not sufficient on its own. A huge audience, a long-lasting franchise, or a polished public campaign tells people something about a game’s impact and commercial success. It tells them far less, by itself, about who shaped the game or who could overrule its creators.

This is also why “indie” and “AAA” do not always function as clean opposites. In everyday gaming discussion, AAA usually suggests a production of large scale and resources. But that is a broad cultural shorthand, not a complete explanation of financing, ownership, creative authority, or publishing arrangements. Treating the terms as a strict binary can produce odd results: a creatively autonomous studio may be declared non-indie for hiring support, while a smaller studio with limited control may receive the label simply because it looks modest from the outside.

What Buckley’s standard gets right—and what it cannot answer alone

The strength of the creative-control test is that it focuses on the people who make the work. If a studio can make the defining calls on its project, it has a persuasive claim to independence even if it works with specialists in funding, marketing, distribution, or publishing.

It also avoids turning success into a disqualifier. Fans sometimes treat an indie game’s popularity as evidence that it has stopped being indie, as if a hit is required to remain charmingly obscure. Buckley’s reasoning rejects that reflex. Commercial reach and creative self-determination are different measurements.

There is a practical benefit to keeping those measurements separate. Developers often need help with tasks outside game creation itself. Marketing, communications, publishing operations, and other support can be difficult for a small team to manage alone. A definition that penalizes any partnership can imply that a studio must stay under-resourced to count as independent. That is not a particularly useful incentive for creators or audiences.

At the same time, creative control is not always easy to measure from the outside. The public may not know the terms of a studio’s agreement, the degree of approval a partner has, or whether financial pressure affects choices even without an explicit order. Buckley acknowledged the broader ambiguity in the industry’s economics, and that ambiguity remains important.

So his view is best read as a governing principle rather than a foolproof public test. It tells audiences what to ask: Was the studio able to make the game it intended to make? Did a separate entity have the authority to steer or decide creative matters? But it does not guarantee that outsiders will always have enough information to answer confidently.

A debate that affects more than an awards category

The immediate flashpoint may be an awards nomination, but the language used around indie games can shape how work is understood. Labels influence expectations about resources, risk, authorship, and the kind of support players believe a studio has. They can also decide which games are considered for categories intended to recognize smaller or independent creators.

That makes sloppy definitions less harmless than they appear. If the standard is simply “any outside involvement means not indie,” it can erase meaningful distinctions between a studio that hires promotional help and a studio whose project is directed by a larger entity. If the standard is only “small team equals indie,” it can overlook whether that team has meaningful decision-making power.

Buckley’s answer is compact: “Creative control is king.” It is not a magical solution to every edge case, especially where business arrangements are private. But it is a more revealing starting point than asking whether a studio received help at all.

For players, the practical takeaway is to resist using indie as a catch-all synonym for either “tiny,” “cheap,” “self-published,” or “unknown.” Those descriptions may sometimes be true, but none settles the issue. A better conversation distinguishes financial backing from creative ownership, promotional support from decision-making authority, and audience size from studio autonomy.

Those distinctions will only become more important as games are made through increasingly varied partnerships. The industry may not arrive at one definition everyone accepts. Still, Buckley’s argument provides a useful baseline: assistance should not outweigh authorship, and marketing support is not the same thing as surrendering the creative wheel. For another look at the structural pressures shaping games business conversations, see our coverage of why Steam’s established user base makes the PC storefront battle difficult to shift.