Game success isn’t luck, and it’s far from impossible to predict how successful a game will be so long as you actually do your research prior to bringing your game to market. At the same time, success isn’t based on chance (with some rare exceptions), it’s usually the direct product of effort put into marketing a product that itself has sufficient effort put into it’s development.
The indie scene will be fine. Most of the major indie games had six digit budgets anyway.
Edit:
Firstly, it’s not the 80s any more, things have changed in the last forty years.
Also, if you care to do your research, you’ll find iD’s first games were all brought to market with the assistance of publishers (in fact, every single game they’ve ever released has been). Dizzy was published by Codemasters, as were most of the early Oliver Twin’s games.