>>263863 (OP)
In the ancient days before the Internet, what would now be called "Indie" games were shareware vidya distributed as demos in game magazine CDs/Floppies with a mailing address to the developer in case the user wanted to send monies to get a copy of the full game.
This was to bypass the cost of traditional game publishing by many a small developer, if they got enough shekels/too many mail orders a partnership with a publisher for a proper boxed release store was in the realms of possibility.
When Windows 95 the Internets emerged the shareware model remained in use for some time but saw competition in the form of "freeware", fully free games uploaded to and shared over the early Interwebs.
Shareware ultimately faded due to small-time devs either being absorbed by/becoming dependent on hungry publishers wanting in on the rapidly growing PC gayman market, growing too large to be considered "small" anymore or pivoting into esoteric dotcom branches such as german flash-based strategy MMORPGs with microtransactions.
This worked for a time due to the 1995-2006 gayman industry producing scores of absolutely baller AA games despite publishers starting to Jew it up as time went on, but at the eve of the 7th generation enough discontent with the publisher-heavy vidya market had brewed to create the "Indie" label for paid games that were neither classic freeware nor "traditionally" published games.
Sadly with few exceptions these games unlike their shareware ancestors did not operate on a free as in freedums mail-order scheme but were rather dependent on M$, Soyny, Kiketendo and Valve's respective storefronts for distribution and marketing via proxy gayme journos and search+sale algorithms.
With the advent of freemium faggotry the "Indie" label lost much of its meaning as the majority of games released from 2010 onward lacked both a physical release and publisher in their entirety, yet due to advances in fibre infrastructure and MTX payment processing weren't limited to a "niche" like prior "Indie" games both demographically and financially.
Nowadays the term is typically attributed to games developed by "small studios" or any game put out by non-mainstream sub-AA developers that gets algorithmic acclaim.