Why Independent Games Matter - Reign Of Blood

The games industry is dominated by large corporations, and for players who invest significant time in online worlds, that matters more than it might initially seem. This page covers why independently operated games offer something that corporate-owned titles rarely can, what the history of the industry tells us about who to trust with our time, and why independence has been central to Reign Of Blood since the beginning.

What Is An Independently Operated Game?

An independently operated game is one owned and run by an individual developer or small team without corporate backing, investor funding, or obligation to external shareholders. The people running the game make decisions based on what is good for the game and its community rather than what satisfies a board of directors or meets a quarterly earnings target. There is no acquisition waiting in the background, no parent company that could decide to shut things down, and no financial pressure that exists independently of whether players are actually enjoying themselves.

Independent games exist across every format and genre, but they are particularly significant in persistent online games - the kind where players invest months and years of their time building characters, histories, and communities. In those games, the question of who owns and operates the world you are investing in is not a minor detail. It is one of the most important things you can know before you commit.

What Corporate Ownership Does To Games

Corporate ownership does not automatically make a game bad. Some large studios produce excellent games, and size brings resources that independent developers cannot always match. But corporate ownership introduces a set of incentives and pressures that tend to work against the long-term interests of players, particularly in persistent online worlds.

The most fundamental problem is that corporations answer to shareholders rather than players. When a game's financial performance falls below expectations - not necessarily because it is failing, but because it is not growing fast enough - the corporate response is rarely to invest more in the community. It is to cut costs, extract more revenue from existing players, or shut the game down entirely. Players who have invested years in a corporate-owned world have no meaningful say in any of those decisions.

Acquisitions compound the problem. A beloved independent game gets acquired by a larger company, often with reassurances that nothing will change. Those reassurances rarely hold. The priorities of the acquiring company gradually reshape the game, the original developers move on, and the community that formed around a specific vision finds itself playing something increasingly different from what they signed up for.

The Shutdown Problem

The most dramatic consequence of corporate ownership in persistent online games is the shutdown. When a company decides a game is no longer worth running - for financial reasons that have nothing to do with whether players are enjoying it - the game simply stops. Servers go dark, worlds disappear, and years of investment by the community are erased overnight.

This has happened repeatedly throughout the history of online gaming. Games with large, active, passionate communities have been shut down because they did not fit a corporate portfolio, because a parent company needed to cut costs, or because an acquisition made their continued operation inconvenient. The players affected had no warning that felt adequate and no recourse after the fact.

For players in persistent online worlds, this is not an abstract risk. It is something that has happened to communities very much like theirs, and it will happen again. The question is whether the game you are investing your time in is owned by someone for whom shutting it down is a viable business decision.

We cover this issue in depth, especially in regards to vampire games, in our Vampire Wars & The History Of Online Vampire Games article.

What Independent Operation Makes Possible

Independent operation removes the structural pressures that push corporate games in directions that damage player experience. Without shareholder obligations, there is no pressure to extract more revenue from a community that is already engaged and happy. Without quarterly targets, there is no incentive to compromise a long-term model for short-term gains. Without the possibility of acquisition, there is no scenario in which an outside party inherits control of the game and reshapes it according to different priorities.

Independent developers also tend to have a different relationship with their communities. When the person running the game is also the person who built it and has been operating it for years, the community is not an audience to be managed - it is the reason the game exists. Decisions about the game's direction and future are made by someone who is genuinely invested in the outcome rather than accountable to people who have never played it.

This does not mean independent games are perfect. Small teams have limited resources, development can be slower, and the absence of corporate infrastructure brings its own challenges. But the incentives are aligned with players in a way that corporate ownership rarely achieves, and that alignment tends to produce games that feel different - more honest, more community-focused, and more worth trusting with your time.

The Track Record Speaks For Itself

The persistent online games that have run the longest are overwhelmingly independently owned and operated. The pattern is consistent enough to be meaningful. Corporate-backed games launch with larger budgets, more marketing, and faster initial growth - and then disappear when the numbers stop working. Independent games launch smaller, grow more slowly, and keep running because the person operating them wants them to keep running.

That track record is the most honest indicator available to players deciding where to invest their time. A game that has been independently operated for a decade or more has demonstrated something that no launch promise or corporate reassurance can replicate - that it is built to last, that the people running it are committed to it, and that the community which has formed around it is valued rather than merely tolerated.

Reign Of Blood - Independent Since 2006

Reign Of Blood has been independently owned and operated since it launched in 2006. There is no corporate parent, no investor funding, and no shareholders to answer to. Every decision about the game - its development, its future - is made by the same independent developer that built it, accountable to the community that plays it rather than to external financial targets.

The game has to be financially viable to keep running, and optional purchases exist to make that possible. But the model has remained consistent and honest for nearly two decades because there is no structural pressure to make it otherwise. Many players tell us that playing a vampire game that is not chasing quarterly profits feels genuinely different - less extractive, more trustworthy, and more worth investing in for the long term.

Reign Of Blood has outlasted corporate-backed competitors, survived the social gaming boom and bust, and continued to develop and grow through nearly two decades of independent operation. That is not luck - it is what happens when a game is built and operated by people who care about it for its own sake rather than for what it can return to investors.

If you are looking for a persistent online vampire world you can trust to still be here in five years, create your vampire and join a community that has been building its history since 2006 - independently, continuously, and without any plans to stop.