It’s fun when I see new developers who don’t even give a try to sell their games themselves, but just rely on a “online publisher”.
Sure there are advantages in using them: but why don’t you EVEN try ONE time to sell YOUR games yourself? it seems fun for me. For years developers complained about shark-publisher (of course not everyone is like that) and now that they have the possibility to sell independently, they don’t even try.
Is even more fun when they don’t make casual games but RPG/Strategy/Simulation titles. It is well known that you don’t really need a publisher in such cases because of the particular niche.
Good examples are Positech Games and their space/political simulations, Spidweb RPGs and well if I may, I could even include my small sport simulation 🙂
For me not even trying is absolutely silly. You can try and be a complete failure at marketing, Ok then you can give up. But how do you know if you don’t ever try??