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[PompiPompi]

Many indie game developers have the dream of making a living out of making games. But making a profit isn't so easy.
You can always sell direct from your website, but that is the hardest way to make a profit in the short term.
Then there are things like Humble Bundles and portals.

There are issues with using these portals and bundles, both practical but also principal.
In principal, I feel a bit furious about people who try to make a big profit on the back of other peoples' hard work. This isn't only true for indie portals and bundles, but also in some of the normal workplaces out there.
For instance, getting a low salary while your boss and company make millions out of your work.

I don't like the fact that indie portals such as Desura(and others) take 30% out of your profit. Isn't it a bit greedy? They are just the delivery guys, they didn't work on the game for years. I think of it as if the pizza delivery guy will take 30% of the price of the pizza instead of taking a tip(in addition to the salary, for instance).

You can argue that these portals bring value. They are bringing you customers, so it's not like they don't invest anything. Still, I think it's ironic, because they get customers because of the games they put in their portal.
What prevents Desura take 70% from you once they become as big as steam?

I think you shouldn't put games in portals that take more than 5% because of principal. But also because of practical reasons. If you put your game in such a portal, it will become more and more influencial, and then you will even be more dependant of this portal in the future.

However, selling on your own website and indievania is hard. Although not impossible.
I am undecided about App stores such as google play. What do you think about them?

The thing is, the approach I am taking now is just work in a full time job, and make games as a hobby. This way my income does not depend on the games I make and I can put or not put it anywhere I want.

What about Appstores? For some kind of a reason I think it's ok to put your game in an App store, because google is too big to care about indie games. So they won't shape the indie scenes and press like those portals, bundles and super indies.

I know this has been discussed many times before, but I am more looking to see where would you put your game for sale assuming your income comes from another source, but with the desire to make a profit from games as well.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

your 5% rule actually makes no sense because even if you sell it *on your own site* the e-commerce service providers are going to take about 10% (for handling the credit card transaction, etc.). even if you just use paypal, paypal itself takes around 5%. so asking portals like steam and desura to take 5% instead of 30-40% is asking for too much

i think 30% is fair. at least it's not 70%, like big fish games is rumored to take. at least it's not 80% to 90%, like traditional publishers take. compared to those, 30% is pretty fair

[Alec S.]

From what I've seen, portals such as Steam are much more effective at distributing games than selling direct.  The 30% seems pretty worth it.  It also gives the portal incentive to actually market your game.  Steam and Desura have a vested interest in seeing as many games sold on their service as possible.  It's like a retail store.  You are paying them to sell you game for you, to have it displayed on a shelf rather than selling it out of the back of your car.

[GeoffW]

your 5% rule actually makes no sense because even if you sell it *on your own site* the e-commerce service providers are going to take about 10% (for handling the credit card transaction, etc.). even if you just use paypal, paypal itself takes around 5%. so asking portals like steam and desura to take 5% instead of 30-40% is asking for too much

i think 30% is fair. at least it's not 70%, like big fish games is rumored to take. at least it's not 80% to 90%, like traditional publishers take. compared to those, 30% is pretty fair

I agree that 30% is reasonably fair.  Remember that they do provide infrastructure such as the store, download, user accounts and the ability to re-download games later.  Having said that, e-commerce providers such as FastSpring actually do most of that as well.

Where is does get a bit more exploitative is the casual portals, which from what I can tell often take more than 50% of your money.

[PompiPompi]

Oh ok.
But Indievania took something like 10% of my sale(including the paypal fees), so 30% is a lot. How is it "fair" exactly?
What do I gain from it and what do the portal gain? The portal is gaining a lot more than the developer does for a lot less of work and in addition it takes a fat cut of about 20%.
The portal gets traffic and customers because of the GAMES, because of the simple fact that people can't be arsed to look for games and they rather just go to a familiar place that looks for games for them.
The thing is, if you put your game in a portal you make it stronger. And then it attracts even more customers, and then you are even more dependant of it.
Maybe it's an unsolveable issue.
Though indievania seems like something really good in this respect.

Edit: Well you know what it reminds me? It kind of reminds me how the first kings came to be. At first they just picked some guy to lead the city in case of war with tribes. After the war was over, he got back to work at his carpentery or something.
But after a while, and when the wars became more often, this guy turned into a permanent king. And slowly this king became more and more powerful until there was nothing you could do to overthrow him.

[Alec S.]

The thing is, if you put your game in a portal you make it stronger. And then it attracts even more customers, and then you are even more dependant of it.
Maybe it's an unsolveable issue.

See, I don't see how this is a problem.  The more games, the more customers come to buy the game and the more the developers make money.  They also do work that promotes the game on their service.  There's a lot of infrastructure that goes into making Steam run smoothly and be user friendly enough to promote people buying games.  Featuring games on the front page, sorting them into genres, displaying screenshots and trailers and metacritic ratings, running sales which greatly increase the longevity of games, and lead people to consider games they might not have bought at first (I don't think Paradox games, for example, would be able to survive without Steam).  You're getting what you pay for.

[PompiPompi]

Steam might be a lot of work to maintain, but it's still fractional of the amount of work developers put in all the games that steam sells.
Does steam really increase sales for everyone? Or is it just controling the PC  games market?
Will people stop looking for games if steam stopped working?
Are the discounts really good for your company? Or is it that you let steam drop your price and attract more customer to THEIR portal so in return they will promote your game because you don't have any direct traffic?
Why do steam starts to cry like a baby because of Windows 8? Is it because MS is going to take a cut from their pie by having an App store? Isn't it good that there will be more portals and app stores?

Bottom line, is steam good because it bring you sales? Or is it bad because it takes you all the traffic and without steam people might actually look for games.

[Alec S.]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/Steam_sales_How_deep_discounts_really_affect_your_games.php

I agree that there should be competition (and there is.  Desura and GOG, although they don't have nearly the strength of Steam).  However, I think digital distribution platforms that act like stores rather than as tools to handle transactions are overall beneficial.  I would much rather make $10000 and give up %30 of it than $100 and keep it all for myself.  You're basically paying a percentage to (a) make your game more convenient for people to find and play and (b) spread your game to a wider potential audience.

[eld]

I'm mainly interested in what codergames has to say about this conspiracy!

[PompiPompi]

eld, it's not a conspiracy, just being practical.
Alec S., the thing is, you don't only give 30% of your profit, you also give them content. You drive traffic to steam with your game, instead of driving traffic to yourself and make yourself known.
Steam bring SALES, but the content\games drive traffic to steam.
Let's say you make a really good game and people want it. Let's say you don't put it on steam and you put it on indievania instead. Wouldn't that make indievania more competitive? Wouldn't you benefit from this increased competition in the long run?

You credit steam so much for bringing you sales, but what I say is that people like you should be credited for bring steam traffic in the first place.

[Alec S.]

It isn't just about games, it's about infrastructure.  Steam and Desura are more professionally presented services, and thus more likely than other services to build an audience.  This is partially because they take a 30% cut, rather than just enough of a cut to cover transaction fees and bandwith (which, on it's own, would likely be more than 5%).  Steam is such an effective platform as it has both mainstream games and indie games.  Not only that, but it treats them more or less as equals.  It doesn't hide away the indie games on hard to find areas, or market them less.  The fact that Steam is currently the most prominent digital distribution service for games shows that they know how to sell games.  They are better at selling games than the competition, and thus you give them 30% to sell your game.

[PompiPompi]

Of course you need money to create a good infrastructure, you need money for almost anything. But the 30% cut is a lot more than just to cover these costs.
If steam is the number one portal, and it is the most proffessional and the most costly to maintain, how come Desura take 30% just like steam?
Also, good services can be because of good design, not necesseraly money.
For instance, Amazon's App store is a lot more well designed than Google Play and I don't think Google is lacking of fundings.

I am not saying they shouldn't cover their costs, I am just saying 30% is a lot even considering the costs.
Maintainence costs are not of the same order of magnitude as profit from games. So the profit only grows non linearly the more games they sell.

Maybe now you (or someone else) are happy because steam got your game and you make a good living out of it.
But what if one day they won't accept your next game? What if it will become more crowded out there and your games which used to be enough for steam won't cut it anymore for them?
What will you do if steam doesn't accept your next game? Can you afford it, or do you assume you are eternally in their favour?
Do you have any alternative?
Steam becomes more and more powerful, and you become more and more dependant of them. You glorify them, but I am not impressed. Their biggest asset is their brand\name, not the infrastructure. This brand was built partially thanks to the games people put there.
But you gain nothing from this brand they have built. Nothing.
It's like the most expensive asset in the world is actually the Apple trademark or something like that.

[Alec S.]

I'm not saying that I don't think there shouldn't be competition, I'm just saying that taking a 30% cut isn't unreasonable.  5% is absurdly low, and I doubt you'd find that in even the most bare-bones service.  I think BMTmicro takes ~10% and that's just a service to handle online transactions.  You'd still be selling directly from your site and thus not benefiting from any pre-existing userbase, thus the only people who will buy your game are those who you have marketed to directly and led to your site.

A relationship with a digital distributor is symbiotic.  If your game is on Steam, then, yes, you do benefit from the brand name.  People shop on Steam.  It's much more convenient for them than shopping on the internet as a whole.  If someone already knows about your game, then, yeah, maybe they'll go to your site and buy a copy.  But if your game is on steam, someone could see it, look into it, find it interesting and buy it.

Desura likely takes 30% as it is trying to provide a similar level of service as Steam and that's becoming an industry standard sort of number.

[PompiPompi]

"Industry standard" is a meaningless reasoning companies like to use.
Kind of like "market salary", "procedures" and all those things that someone decides arbitrarly and they let you assume it has very good reasons they can't explain right now while hiding it behind formality.
Why not say "That's what most people are willing to blindly accept these days, and assuming we have good reasoning for this arbitrarly set number".

The only thing you benefit on steam is sales. You don't gain traffic, you don't improve your own brand.
What steam gain is: traffic, sales and improving their brand.
The thing is, if steam stops selling your game, you can't generate new sales because you didn't get any traffic or improved your brand.
If you stop selling games for steam, they still got their brand and the traffic you helped drive to them.

In short what I am trying to argue is that it is bad for indie games to support steam in the long run.
Maybe not go as radical as to not support any portal at all, but maybe try to give an edge to the competition. Especially Indievania which a lot of big indies seems to not care about.

Another thing, if you make a really desirable game, you will cap your profits by putting it on steam. Aka Minecraft, although that is an extreme example. What if Notch sold his game on Steam?

[Alec S.]

Minecraft is an extreme example and really bad to use as a personal model for success.  It's like saying "why should I put this money into a business, when I could use it on lottery tickets.  That guy who won the lottery sure lucked out doing that"

You keep saying "traffic", but I'm not sure what you're trying to get at.  The sort of money you'd get from people visiting your site is peanuts compared to the money you can get from a successfully marketed game.  The traffic you should be concerned about is how many people end up at a place where they can buy your game.  The amount of traffic a strong digital distributor can bring in that regard is orders of magnitude larger than the amount of traffic your game would bring them.  And, yes, you do improve your own brand.  The only way to improve your own brand is to sell games.  The more games you sell, the more people will recognize your logo/splash screen/whatever.  If you make a game that sells tons of copies, it doesn't matter if they were sold through steam or your own site, it will mean that there are now people interested in what you have to offer, and game news sites will be more likely to cover your next game.

[Muz]

You shouldn't really expect to make money off games. A game developer will make less money for his skills than he'd expect to get out of a career in software development.

You're making stuff that almost everyone can live without. I haven't bought a game in the last 2 years, and the ones I'm still playing are the ones I bought before that (as well as the new free games).

If you expect to make money, I think Spiderweb Software's bottom feeder model is perfect. Just work persistently at it. Charge low prices. Stop caring about the money and think more about the fans. Get more fans. Improve your product until it becomes something unique.

That's what Notch did. Minecraft was a shitty game for a really long time, but after a lot of long, persistent work, it made a hell lot of money. Also, you have to note that Minecraft did have a guy dedicated to business development long before they made any money.

If you want money, join software development and advertising and produce something people actually want to buy. My company takes almost 100% of what I produce (which is maybe $5k-20k a month at present), but I'm fine with that because they were willing to stick with me when I was producing -$1k a month for them and they've given me a hell lot more training and equipment that I could get if I went indie. But like anyone working in software development can agree with.. it's sort of a volunteer thing. Software developers are rare and valuable enough that they can work anywhere, so even big companies like Microsoft treat them with nearly the same respect they treat senior management.

If you really feel that they're cheating you, then start your own portal. You'll realize how much more work they put into it then. There's the matter of getting contacts, building a reputation, getting competent people. If it were easy, trust me, everyone would be doing it. In fact, the whole game portal market is already oversaturated, by lazy people who do want to make quick money.. but they're losing out to the really hardworking ones like Desura who stay ahead.

If you start brand new, you'll have no reputation. A portal gives you that reputation boost. I know a friend who made about many many times as much profit when he put his game with Big Fish. Of course he markets his games elsewhere as well, but Big Fish adds a lot of value via marketing and an existing connection to the people that he wants to sell the game to.

They are not simply "the delivery guys". They handle a wide array of things that are just abstracted out. Like PayPal takes a significant amount from people, but most of that money is literally because they can be trusted to hold a credit card number, rather than the effort of processing it.

Bundles work too because a lot of those games are just not worth the price individually. I'd pay maybe $3 for an individual game, because most games are shit. But I wouldn't sign on to paypal to just to pay for a $3 game, not worth the time, and if there were 10000 others like me, you'd make maybe $20000.

But if you sell me four games at $20, I'd probably buy that, because if one of those games suck, I have 3 others. And it's worth taking the time to pay for it. It also earns you a lot more than if you were selling your game at $3, with PayPal taking 1/6 of that. With a bundle, a 10% cut, and 10000 others like me, you'd make maybe $45000.

You'd also have to consider the economies of scale here -- marketing 100 games takes less than 10 times the effort of marketing 1 game. This also applies to experience; so you'd be hiring out the experience and reputation who has more experience and reputation than you'd have in your lifetime if you did everything by yourself. (This is in the case of something like Big Fish which does take a more hands on approach)

And if you still don't want to 'sell out', at least hire a business guy full time. You can spend a hell lot of time marketing your games, or you can pay someone to do it for you. And if you STILL insist on doing everything yourself, you better have a really good game.


tl;dr: Those companies are doing the kind of boring shit you'd have to spend years doing otherwise.

[Oddball]

Alec S., the thing is, you don't only give 30% of your profit, you also give them content. You drive traffic to steam with your game, instead of driving traffic to yourself and make yourself known.
Steam bring SALES, but the content\games drive traffic to steam.
Let's say you make a really good game and people want it. Let's say you don't put it on steam and you put it on indievania instead. Wouldn't that make indievania more competitive? Wouldn't you benefit from this increased competition in the long run?

This actually benefits everyone on Steam. Yes you drive traffic to Steam, but so does every other Steam developer. These now become potential customers for you. And until you make a bigger game than Half Life 1/2, Portal 1/2, Team Fortress 1/2, and L4D1/2 combined, Valve will always have brought more traffic to Steam than you. I'd say they've earned that modest %.

[PompiPompi]

My hunch is still that when you aim for steam you are aiming low. You would make more money on the short run, but I think you are still losing on the long run.
And yes, that also means you need to make a really great game or with a really good selling point. But if you are not making this kind of game, you ARE aiming low.
I think it's the "Good enough" syndrom. You are doing something that is just barely good enough to make a living, because you don't really want to be bothered with making a huge long term effort.
As I said at the beginning, my assumption is that you have another source of income, such as a "real job". So you don't need to worry about starving and can think of the long run.

Personally, I will try to make a game without selling it on portals(except indievania) because money is not a consideration and I really think I will gain a lot more this way, especially as a learning experience.
It's also more fun XD
I also like the idea of having a good game you can't get on steam.
(Feels like making a difference)

[randomshade]

My hunch is still that when you aim for steam you are aiming low. You would make more money on the short run, but I think you are still losing on the long run.

I doubt that is true for the vast majority of developers. You've already mentioned Minecraft which has obviously given Notch/Mojang a huge and direct fan base for future titles, but I think a more realistic case study would be Spiderweb/Positech. They have been selling games for many years directly and have solid fan bases, but when the opportunity to get on Steam was available they took it. Why? More revenue.

If it takes you 10 years to build up a fan base that can match using Steam, it seems awfully silly to not use them imo.

BTW, Indievania is a cool thing (and the guy who built it, Lee, is a good guy) but there have been several attempts at more or less similar things in the past. I can't remember any of their names...(but Steam is still here.)

[eld]

As I said at the beginning, my assumption is that you have another source of income, such as a "real job". So you don't need to worry about starving and can think of the long run.

And let your boss take all your hard work and only give you a month salary for it?!

But the story is true here too, people cannot just conjure up a months salary on their raw talent alone, the people that take all the money from the product you worked on for them have their own invaluable skills they used to build their company with, and unless you want to learn all those skills on your own and build your own network of contacts you're better off paying the premium and be better off for it.

Personally, I will try to make a game without selling it on portals(except indievania) because money is not a consideration and I really think I will gain a lot more this way, especially as a learning experience.
It's also more fun XD
I also like the idea of having a good game you can't get on steam.
(Feels like making a difference)

The reality is: it's nearly always more profitable to sell your game via a platform such as steam, it's the same reason why big publishers sell their games on consoles where the console manufacturer will take a big cut.

Even free to play games that were originally not on steam and had a good following would end up doing even better when launching their games on steam.

big publishers like EA is thinking a bit like you do though, but see how a big bumpy ride it is even for a big and wealthy publisher and the requirements of a killer product to sell with it.