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[King Tetiro]

Howdy folks, Tetiro here again. Well this is it. My university course is ending and so I must now fend for myself. Fortunately I have like I dunno 2+ months until I can start looking for a job with knowledge of results about what grades I got (Seriously uni, what the hell is up with that? Last year it was 1 month but now 2?)

Anyway, during my revision week, I've been putting the final touches on one of my smaller projects, the puzzle platformer Leon. And for some reason, it actually plays really well (If you were a GMC forum member, you'd know my hatred with platformers as I could never get the gravity to work perfectly).

So I've decided to sell the game. But unlike Android/iOS selling where you have the game sold on a market, I don't know how you would go about selling PC games.

So with this in mind, I decided to post a topic. Does anyone have any good sources, tutorials or tips on selling PC games? In particular, more towards the selling of it. I understand the marketing, development and all that lark. I just can't figure out how to sell the game. (Never really had to work this out before. Normally I just build games. Never selling them)

Appreciate all help you give
-Tetiro

[SundownKid]

You can either sell the game from your site using a payment processor (I signed up with Fastspring), or sell it from a portal like Indievania or Desura. Refer to the business section here for some links to potential sites.

[cliffski]

Excuse the slight blog spam, but I wrote an article pretty much answering this exact question that you might find worth your time:

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2010/10/21/how-to-sell-your-game-online-without-using-an-app-store/

[ubik]

The spammiest post you ever made is probably more useful than the entire catalogs of certain book companies.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Excuse the slight blog spam, but I wrote an article pretty much answering this exact question that you might find worth your time:

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2010/10/21/how-to-sell-your-game-online-without-using-an-app-store/

good article, but it's a shame articles like this even have to be written. how did we even come to this: indie game developers have lost the ability to sell games without having a ready-made store or portal to submit to

there's a whole mass of collective/community information on how to promote and sell your game from one's own website that may go down the drain if this keeps up and if it isn't written down

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i'd also add a few points to that tutorial

- don't use a shared host, use one that costs a bit more, otherwise your game will crash on launch day. make sure it has enough bandwidth, and no, "unlimited" bandwidth is not enough because it is a lie

- host the demo of the game on your own site, not some third party site. it's unprofessional to direct someone to download.com to download your demo

- to distribute your game, use an installer, not a zip file. it's okay to offer a zip file as a second option, but most people prefer installers, even though most technically oriented people prefer zip files

- don't use DRM, as it doesn't work anyway, but if your game shows up on a file sharing site (not a torrent site, but one of those sites where people upload directly, you can email them to get your game taken off of it. use the specific format they require (e.g. all the information about the game, your name/address, the link on their site, what external page links to it, etc.), you may have to do this repeatedly on the same site. you can't do anything about torrents usually though, so don't worry about them

- when you promote your game, focus on promotion methods that don't cost more than you'll get back from them. i'm not saying not to advertise at all, but many advertising methods cost more than they're worth. you need to track it, so that if you make a google text ad, you can track how many people actually bought the game from using that ad, and compare that to how much you paid for that ad. even if it just evens out, it's worth it, since it increases your customer base, but if it costs you significantly more than you get back (like 10x as much), it's not worth it

- when you design your site, make sure the demo download is on the first page, as well as the buy button; don't make them click lots of stuff to get to the game. make it hard to miss, because most people will only be on your site for about 30 seconds (if that), so you want to make sure that someone totally new to your site design and style can find everything on it in less than 30 seconds.

- have the place where people can sign up to the newsletter also be visible; possibly ask them if they want to sign up to the newsletter right after they download the demo. the newsletter is in a way the most important thing to build, because it's a list of everyone interested in your games and a way to contact them. every time you release a new game, its sales will be proportional to how good (not how big, but how good -- how many of its members are actual fans of your game) the newsletter list is

- work with other indie game developers who also sell games direct from their site; get to know a few of them so you can ask them questions, don't try to do it entirely without knowing anyone else who also does it. knowing others can help you in a lot of ways, such as doing affiliate sales of your game on their site if your game is similar to theirs

- copyright is automatic, you don't need to "copyright" your game. you also don't usually need a business license or an actual company registration, although this varies by country and even by state so do some research on this. you really can just start selling games immediately without doing any paperwork. you pay taxes as self-employment tax (if you live in the US; not sure about other countries)

[Klaim]

Those advices are really interesting to me too, thanks a lot.
Even if I know most of them I didn't exprience it yet and having everything listed like that is really good.

Maybe making it a website would be good. Some kind of 1 page FAQ about selling indie games?

[Evan Balster]

how did we even come to this: indie game developers have lost the ability to sell games without having a ready-made store or portal to submit to

Counterpoint:  Digital distribution via portals is, to the best of my understanding, the reason "indie games" as we know them have exploded in size, recognition and financial viability over the last five years.  It's not that direct website sales are in decline (though they are) as it is that portal sales are rapidly climbing.

That said, selling direct in addition to via portals, is a good thing.  But mind the disadvantages, primarily regarding payment processing and customer support.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i don't think that's true; indie games have always been big. they were once even bigger than they are now, back in the 80s and 90s, when pretty much every company was independent. they were also huge in the late 90s with shareware. they just weren't called indie games back then, they were called "shareware games" or "games" even though they were basically people making games in small teams and selling them on their own websites

i also don't think direct website sales are in decline, it's more that new developers don't bother to use it. but the ones who do still do pretty well (e.g. minecraft). those indies who use direct sales from their websites are still doing pretty well, i don't think they've reported any widespread/general reduction in sales? i think the reason is more that developers are just lazy, and are afraid of marketing, so they go to some big publisher to take care of the scary business aspects of it for them (and in exchange those publishers get a huge chunk of the money, and control over the contact information of a person's customers, and even a form of creative control because developers then try to make games that fit that portal/publisher's audience)

[nico]

how did we even come to this: indie game developers have lost the ability to sell games without having a ready-made store or portal to submit to

Well, humans aren't born pre-educated. New people entering a field tend to follow what they see, and the portals are very prominent right now. I absolutely agree that writing all this down into a guide would be a great thing.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yeah, the question was rhetorical