This study thoroughly looks at how the prices and activity of players of popular indie games on Steam changed after COVID-19. It uses data from SteamDB, which has lots of info about game availability, sales, prices, activity of players, followers, positive and negative reviews on Steam and Twitch viewers. The goal is to deeply analyze how indie game makers and publishers set their prices and reactions of players to games which release date start from period before, during and after COVID-19. The focus is on how they changed their pricing models due to big shifts in market demand and consumer behavior because of the pandemic and how players reacted to these price changes in the context of wage cuts and layoffs. Reactions of players can be tracked not only by the statistics of the maximum or average online in the game, but also by the number of positive and negative reviews, because in difficult times it was important for players to correctly distribute their available funds and not to become disappointed in game and not to let other players become disappointed
By studying these changes, the aim is to find out how the indie game industry responded to tough times and new chances in the digital entertainment world. Since the study is being conducted in the post-COVID-19 period, it is also aimed at helping developers choose the right strategy when pricing their new Indie games or changing the prices of their existing Steam Indie games.
The main objects of research are indie games because this genre is one of the most popular in SteamDB, and to create such games requires less costs, therefore their price is acceptable for the average player.