2024 has been an absolute shitshow for the gaming industry, with catastrophic lows dominating the year and only a handful of wins, mostly courtesy of unassuming indie titles. Meanwhile, the AAA gaming scene keeps cranking out one colossal fuck-up after another, driven by a toxic cocktail of ideological activists running the show and corporate overlords shoving diversity and inclusivity mandates down everyone’s throats to inflate their ESG scores for extra investment.
Of course, this comes at the expense of creative freedom and common sense, while scaring off customers with godawful, man-faced “women” masquerading as protagonists.
As countless studios big and small churn out progressive garbage that lands to the sound of crickets, layoffs have skyrocketed, making this year one of the worst in gaming history from a commercial aspect. Ironically, the only titles turning a profit are from no-name indie studios like PocketPair’s Palworld or Game Science’s Black Myth: Wukong, which have metaphorically pissed on the graves of bloated disasters like Sony’s Concord, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad, Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, and especially BioWare’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
So, it’s no surprise the year wraps up with yet another indie gem stealing the spotlight. Enter MiSide, an anime “horror” game that launched on December 11th. Created by just two Russian devs at “AIHASTO Studio,” it features an alluring anime antagonist, MiSide, and has quickly become a hot topic.
Once again, an indie title reigns supreme over AAA gaming’s bloated budgets and preachy nonsense.
MiSide hooks players with a premise that taps into a man’s desire: a loving, devoted female companion. You, the protagonist, find yourself trapped inside your favorite video game with Mita, a seemingly sweet and innocent character who rapidly transforms into a terrifying psychopath “yandere” as you attempt to break free from the romantic simulation.
Simple? Damn right. Effective? You bet your ass. Most importantly, it’s blissfully free of ham-fisted moralizing or pointless diversity box-checking. Instead, MiSide delivers a quirky, engaging horror experience unburdened by the preachy nonsense plaguing modern AAA games. It’s pure entertainment, exactly how gaming should be.
To cap off the year, MiSide has blown everyone away, racking up a jaw-dropping 98% positive review rate on Steam from over 33,900 reviews. For an indie title crafted by just two people, that’s nothing short of incredible.
Even better? This $15 gem didn’t rely on bloated marketing campaigns, it’s all word of mouth and content creators showing just how goddamn wacky the game is through their own coverage, similar to last year’s Lethal Company.
On SteamDB, MiSide hit an impressive peak of 23,741 concurrent players and has maintained solid engagement since. Within weeks, it climbed to the 45th spot on Steam’s revenue chart, later punching its way up to 21st place, or 12th if you cut out the F2P freeloaders.
As of now, it’s holding strong in 37th place, outranking heavyweights like Metaphor: ReFantazio, Stardew Valley, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and even Factorio.
When stacked against other 2024 releases from big-name publishers and developers, MiSide wipes the floor with them, even large-scale RPGs currently discounted for the holiday season can’t compete in terms of recurring players. The game consistently pulls over 10,000 daily players on Steam, with peaks hitting ~19,000, easily outperforming a huge chunk of this year’s AAA disasters.
And the icing on the cake? MiSide’s publisher, IndieArk, has outshined most AAA publishers despite their multimillion-dollar budgets. IndieArk’s portfolio, which includes hits like Backpack Battles, Feed the Cups, and Traveller’s Rest, now boasts MiSide as its crown jewel.
With estimated ownership ranging from 716,000 (Gamalytic) to 1.05 million (VG Insights), MiSide might have raked in anywhere between $10.74 million and $15.75 million USD assuming every copy sold for the full $15.
Of course, with regional pricing in countries like China, Russia, Brazil, and Mexico, combined with Steam’s hefty cut, MiSide probably hasn’t broken the $10 million mark just yet. But honestly? That doesn’t even matter.
In the end, a game’s financial success isn’t about flashy revenue numbers, a game could sell millions and still result in a loss, it’s about whether it recoups its investment. And MiSide, developed by just two people, has done that and more, making a cold, hard profit that puts Ubisoft and the like to shame.
Now contrast this with the bloated AAA landscape, where studios burn through hundreds of millions of dollars over several years to churn out massive, soulless games stuffed with diversity and inclusivity nonsense, all sanitized to appeal to everyone except heterosexual men.
Look at disasters like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Square Enix’s Forspoken, and Volition’s Saints Row reboot, each a dumpster fire of unpolished, unfinished political propaganda that cost studios countless millions. Meanwhile, MiSide, created on what was likely the catering budget for a single Ubisoft meeting is absolutely crushing it.
Everyone loves a good underdog story after all.
Players aren’t begging for another so-called “groundbreaking” experience that doubles as a political soapbox. They’re not here for games that prioritize token representation over actual gameplay or story. What they want are games that are fun, games like MiSide. Developed with passion, creativity, and a focus on delivering something enjoyable, by gamers for gamers.
MiSide skips the corporate ESG quotas BlackRock demands and instead gives players exactly what they’ve been craving.
MiSide is proof of what gaming can be when developers prioritize creating enjoyable experiences for players instead of pandering to activists who wouldn’t buy their games in the first place. So here’s to AIHASTO, two developers who remind us that fun, creativity, and passion will always win out over hollow corporate virtue-signaling.
In an era where the AAA industry feels increasingly stale and out of touch with gamers, indie games like MiSide are a breath of fresh air. They prove that you don’t need billion-dollar budgets or corporate mandates to craft something memorable, or at the very least profitable.
What you do need is vision, dedication, and a genuine understanding of what players want, rather than centering your game design around creating repulsive characters with forced inclusivity and overly masculine features that attempt to blur between the lines of man and woman.
As the year draws to a close, MiSide stands as a shining example of how smaller teams or even solo projects can not only compete with the big names but utterly humiliate them. Here’s hoping 2025 sees more aspiring indie developers following their lead: ditching the propaganda, embracing the fun, and delivering games that gamers actually want to play.
