The indie label does a lot of work and I'm not sure it's earning it

Something I keep turning over: indie gets used to mean small budget, no publisher, creative freedom, or some mix of all three depending on who's talking. A game can have publisher backing and still feel more genuinely independent than something self-funded but built entirely to chase a market. The label is doing real work to signal something, but what it signals keeps shifting. Does the origin story actually matter if the result speaks for itself?