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[eclectocrat]

Another thing to consider is the contracts that portals will "lock" you into. I was going to go with Desura for selling my game, but I'm not comfortable with some of the terms. In particular, most portals will prevent you from selling at a price lower than the price they sell for, and while not a big problem for conventional sales models, it might cause a bit of conflict if you've got multiple platforms and/or "pay what you want" sales.

[TeeGee]

I said selling in portals is likely beneficial financially in most cases. And even if I don't like portals, I can sell my first game via portals, and after having more fans, sell the next game directly.

You won't have more fans, the portal will. They will be portal customers, used to using that portal's client. If your next game isn't on their favorite service, it may as well don't exist for the majority of them. Damn, even me -- I don't think I ever visited a website of any of the indie games I got on Steam. I don't even know who created them in some cases. I just got them, because they looked nice and were in a sale.

That's a very interesting point which I've heard others express. But I don't quite understand it and maybe you can help me with that.

If people are coming to your site and you are pointing them to one of these services for purchase, is that necessarily a bad thing? I mean they are coming to your site for its content and so I'd think they'll continue to do that for news, posts, etc. On the other hand there will be people who find out about your game on those distribution platforms, a percentage of whom will probably seek your website in order to find out more. That should be increasing traffic.

Okay, let me try to explain:

- People don't come to your website and then buy the game through - say - Steam. Some do, but the vast majority only finds about the game on Steam, likely through a sale. They don't know or care who made it.

- Most portals disallow any links to your website, so the amount of traffic "leaked" is very small.

- Portal customers are used to their client and like to keep all their games in the same place. Even if they learn about you, they are unlikely to buy your next game unless it's also on their service of choice. This pretty much means you are not independent anymore. You are at the mercy of this particular service.

- Portals undercut you in price, convenience and integrity. They don't care for your profit in particular, only their general volume of sales and new customers. They can offer sales, bundles and promotions that you couldn't. Why would I buy the game from you for $15, when I can get it from Steam's sale for $5.99?

- Majority of portal sales come from discounts, sales and bundles. Portals also generally tend to feature a lower price than what you could ask directly. Then there's the percentage you give them. This means that you need more sales to get the same amount of money as you would get from a single copy sold directly. Which means that your game needs to have mass market appeal, otherwise you just won't drive enough volume.

- If you sell directly, and only directly, all the money goes to you, every single customer has to know about you, and you build a dedicated fanbase. It means less money initially, but sometimes it's better to have 1000 dedicated people that will buy your next game, place pre-orders, or support you if you decide to use Kickstarter. And with each consecutive game, that fanbase grows. At a certain point, you can even go portals and still retain your brand (like Ed McMillen or Cliff Harris).

- Portals are top-10 driven. The most popular games sell shitloads of copies, less popular ones are buried quickly and may end up earning less than if you sold directly.

If you want to see the dangers of over-relying on portals in action, it's good to look at what happened in casual games. At first it was: "Sell directly, then maybe also publish on the portals". Then, the portals started growing, introduced sales and download clients, and it became: "Publish on the portals, and maybe sell directly". Then, BigFish Games started offering crazy discounts, the most accessible client, and the biggest customer base, so it became: "Get on BigFish, and then maybe other portals". Now it's: "Get on the BigFish's top-10 or die". And BFG is able to offer royalties as low as 30% to developers, as they get enough content anyway. Similar process happens in hardcore games right now, only you have to replace BFG with Steam.

That said, portals are a necessary evil, have their benefits and can make for a viable business or even be a better choice in some cases. It's just important to understand what exactly you are getting into and weight it against the benefits. A simple rule of thumb: if you are making a mainstream game with mass-market appeal, like Super Meat Boy or Defense Grid, portals can make you a lot of money. They have a ton of customers, and you are likely to appear in the top-10s, get best promotions, and such. If your game is something really niche, like a visual novel, Dwarf Fortress or Spiderweb Software's RPGs, go direct, ask for a more reasonable price, and build a fanbase. Your game won't get into the top-10s, and you won't get enough sales to balance out the portal's lower price/percentage anyway.

Hope it helps.

[Paul Eres]

yeah, the casual game thing is the perfect analogy here. steam is following the same path big fish games did in a lot of ways -- for instance daily sales, a new game a day, really low prices, coupons and special systems where you can basically get games for free, and so on

steam hasn't yet raised their royalty rate to 70%, and started charging the developers hosting fees and other fees, but i expect that sort of thing in the next few years

[Oddball]

The downside is simple - loosing your direct traffic and building someone else's business instead of yours. I'm not saying you shouldn't publish on portals, but it's something to keep in mind. If the game is very niche and may not sell well on the mainstream distribution channels, it may be better it to keep it to your website and build a dedicated fanbase.

Then you need to drive the customers who bought from the portal to your website. It's not that hard to do from within your game. You just need something within the game that will drive them to visit the site. It could be as simple as having extra content downloadable from your site with an option in your game to 'download more levels'. Now the portal is working to drive traffic towards your site instead of acting as a barrier to it. Besides, how many of these portal users would have found your site on their own anyway. It's not like they made a conscious decision to go to the portal instead of your site.

[Moczan]

Dungeon Defenders manage to drive players from Steam to their site, at least a bit. Even for such things as patch notes you need to visit their forums, they also have a marketplace system on their site.

[Hima]

Teegee, you make me realized why I don't like Portals. It feels I'm not connected to the developer, and is probably one of the reason why I don't buy from Steam anymore, unless it's a retail game or games from big companies.

To me, what separate Indie from those big guys is that I feel connected to the developers when I support them. I bought games from Big Fish as well, and it sadden me when I found the game I like, but I couldn't find anything about the developer on the internet - they don't even have theirown site! If I like the game, I want most, if not all, of the money I spend to reach the developer. Steam make me feel like I'm not really supporting them - especially all those indie bundle sales.

Having said that, I also understand the importance of portals. Also, there are some people who are already attached to the portal, so much that they won't buy your game if it isn't available on said portal.

The downside is simple - loosing your direct traffic and building someone else's business instead of yours. I'm not saying you shouldn't publish on portals, but it's something to keep in mind. If the game is very niche and may not sell well on the mainstream distribution channels, it may be better it to keep it to your website and build a dedicated fanbase.

It could be as simple as having extra content downloadable from your site with an option in your game to 'download more levels'. Now the portal is working to drive traffic towards your site instead of acting as a barrier to it.

Funny that I've seen the reverse version of this. Buying it directly get you nothing but the game, while buying it through Steam get you an exclusive content. I wonder if there's anything in Steam contract that prevent you from doing this, or is it entirely just that developer's choice.

[TeeGee]

Then you need to drive the customers who bought from the portal to your website. It's not that hard to do from within your game. You just need something within the game that will drive them to visit the site. It could be as simple as having extra content downloadable from your site with an option in your game to 'download more levels'. Now the portal is working to drive traffic towards your site instead of acting as a barrier to it.

That's a good point. Forums, patches, DLC and extended versions are good ways to get at least some traffic boost from the portals. Still, you are just directing some of their audience to check your website, not building a dedicated direct customer base. You still need to release your further titles on the portal to sell them.

It's also getting increasingly tricky to do such things -- portals aren't stupid. When I used to work on casual games, we did something like that for one of our titles. Our direct sales plummeted when portals started lowering their prices, so we started to offer level packs for our most popular game. Available only on our website, but working even with the portal build. It wasn't possible to include a link in the game, but we hinted that they are out there if someone is willing to search.
It worked in a way -- people did come to our website and bought the expansions. Still, our overall direct sales continued to go down (even after cutting our prices in half to at least match the BFG a bit), and eventually even the most dedicated fans bought our titles only from BFG. BFG also never forgave us for doing this trick, and any mention of doing something similar in the future would result in them threatening to take the game down or reject it (another nice perk of leaving your business in someone else's hands). In the end, despite pretty much all our games being very successful, the company decided to move away from casual games. The market just became too shitty and boiled down to making cheap clones of what currently sells on BFG. Of course, it doesn't mean the same thing will happen with hardcore games anytime soon, but it's headed in that direction.

But again -- portals can be good, and for some games are the best way to find a massive audience. Just make sure you know what you are doing and that you aren't skipping building direct traffic simply out of laziness.

Besides, how many of these portal users would have found your site on their own anyway. It's not like they made a conscious decision to go to the portal instead of your site.

Yeah, this logic works for mass-market games. As I said, if you are making something in a genre that's popular within the mainstream audience, then selling it on the portals is a good idea. They'll put it in front of thousands of gamers who would otherwise never find about your title.

Niche gamers are more used to actively looking for their games -- reading reviews, finding them through specialized websites or communities, or simply through word of mouth.

[Oddball]

Yeah, this logic works for mass-market games. As I said, if you are making something in a genre that's popular within the mainstream audience, then selling it on the portals is a good idea. They'll put it in front of thousands of gamers who would otherwise never find about your title.

Niche gamers are more used to actively looking for their games -- reading reviews, finding them through specialized websites or communities, or simply through word of mouth.

Well that's my point. You are talking about to different demographics who find their games in separate ways. By being on portals and having an active direct sales site you put your game in front of two different demographics. That can surely only be a good thing. It seems you got burned by BFG and are now equating your experiences as how all portals work. I don't see it that way.

[Poya]

Thanks TeeGee and others, this is great food for thought. I can see how in the long run you really want to build a customer base that associates your game with your website/brand and not a portal that is can change at any time.

Just to clarify (sorry if this is a dumb question), you as the developer have some form of control over the price of your game on these portals, is that not the case? I mean can the portal change the price or run a discount without confirming it with you? I understand that you probably want to stay competitive by pricing your game according to whatever else is being offered in that category...

[SolarLune]

On Desura, I'd imagine that you have control over the pricing, as there are free games as well as alpha-funded games there - there are also sales. It seems a bit more community-driven than Steam - I can post a comment that the developer sees on the same page, so it's almost like a game is a forum. Also, news about games show up on Desura (I think), so you can inform your fans easily (or with a video on YouTube, if they've subscribed to you).

Although, I haven't seen anything about Desura's terms of sale - does anyone know where those are?

EDIT: OnLive also has games in PlayPacks (that you don't have to purchase outright). In addition, a game by Digipen is up now (Be Good), so it seems like it might be at least an option for indie titles.

[Oddball]

You(the developer) choose the price on Desura, GamersGate, Indivania, and the Mac App Store. You also choose what sales to have and when they happen on all those apart from GamersGate, I don't actually know if GG have sales. Non of the portals that I've dealt with put your game on sale without contacting you first. I'm pretty sure the Steam sales are 'opt in' for the developer too, but not having experienced it I could be wrong.

[TeeGee]

Yeah, this logic works for mass-market games. As I said, if you are making something in a genre that's popular within the mainstream audience, then selling it on the portals is a good idea. They'll put it in front of thousands of gamers who would otherwise never find about your title.

Niche gamers are more used to actively looking for their games -- reading reviews, finding them through specialized websites or communities, or simply through word of mouth.

Well that's my point. You are talking about to different demographics who find their games in separate ways. By being on portals and having an active direct sales site you put your game in front of two different demographics. That can surely only be a good thing. It seems you got burned by BFG and are now equating your experiences as how all portals work. I don't see it that way.

No. I just worked on the games, never had to talk with BFG directly, the games were all successes, and I was on salary anyway. These were mainstream games too, so not putting them on portals would be a financial suicide. I'm just pointing out it's a double-edged sword, since I had the chance to make observations on how it works, and how it affects direct sales.

I disagree that portal and direct customers are two separate demographics, though. It's simply not true. Everyone has a Steam account these days, and people do look for cheaper deals on the stuff they want to buy. If I know about your game and have to choose between buying it directly or through a Steam sale, I'll pick the Steam version. This makes you have to compete with portals in price and visibility, and that's a battle you can't win. You are a small-scale producer, they are a volume seller. You are also contractually obliged to never undercut their prices in most cases.

But again -- since you are seeing my advice as something dictated by emotion and not experience -- yes, there's another side to it, too. Portals are a significant part of indie business and will become more significant as time goes. It would be stupid to ignore them because of some silly "stick it to the man" ideal. I'm listing their bad sides, because that's what Poya asked about, but I could probably write a similarly long list about the dangers of going direct-only. Stuff like: time required to get any visibility, the role of fame, how hard it is to have a smash hit without a mainstream portal's support, etc.

Business is business, and it's important to make decisions knowing all the pros and cons first. Taking us as an example: we're currently working on Cinders, which is a visual novel retelling of a fairytale, with strong feminist overtones. It's a niche game with no mass-market appeal and some mature content (as in: serious issues, not tits ). We're new to the visual novel genre, but the game made some nice splash in the VN community. Most gamers that could be interested in it, already are.

Going direct made it possible to build some traffic and overall recognition for our new studio. It also allows us to price the game reasonably at 20 bucks. If we went with Steam/BFG, we would have to lower the price to around $10, cutting our profits in half, and people would probably still wait for it to appear in a Steam sale, even our fans. And we wouldn't get many more players beyond what we already have -- a visual novel is hardly a top-10 material.

However, our next game is planned to be a sim/rpg mix, so something much more mainstream. We intend to put it on as many channels as possible and release an expansion on our website later, to counter-balance the loss of direct sales. So it's not a matter of following some "portals are evil" or "portals solve all problems" mentality, it's a matter of making informed choices that are best for you at the moment.

Also, I haven't posted this much on a forum since forever .

[Paul Eres]

yeah i sort of don't think those arguing in favor of always using portals realize how anti-developer some portals are. many of them refuse to let you even mention in your game that you have a site, let alone link to it. some require that you put the portal's logo in the game, not your logo. some don't let you mention any other games you worked on in your game. saying 'use portals to drive traffic to your site' is okay but when portals explicitly have rules to make sure you can't do that it's a problem

thankfully steam is more lenient here than most portals, but they could easily become less lenient in the future

[Paul Eres]

another thought: portals won't last as long as you will. presumably you want to be making games for decades. but portals seem to start up and die pretty frequently. reflexive is now gone, so is direct2drive (bought and merged with other services). steam one day may be gone, big fish games may be gone one day, and so on. so relying too much on portals is a short-term strategy, because eventually the portal might not be there anymore

portals also don't accept very controversial games. if you were making an erotic game for instance, with a lot of sex in it, chances are portals won't take it

[Oddball]

I've never dealt with a portal that required me to put their logo in the game, and they've all allowed me to link to my website on their store page as well as in the game. Maybe the casual portals try to lock you into their system, but the indie friendly modern portals are pretty open.

Either way my point isn't that portals are better than direct sales, my view is that combining portals and direct sales is better than having only one outlet.