5 replies to this topic

[Peggles]

Hi everyone. I'm completely new to the Game Maker forums but I've been using Game Maker on and off for years.
I'm wondering this: do you sell your games in any way? If so, where and how do you do it?

I myself have never sold any game (or even published them for free) that I've created. The reason is probably because I didn't believe they had quality enough.

I was looking around for places where indie developers could distribute/publish their simple (or complex) games at, but didn't come up with much.
Just a bunch of websites where you could upload your games for others to download for free.

So, I decided to create a web-based platform (a website) where people can register for free, upload their games for free and decide the price for others to purchase and download it (they may set it to 'free' as well).
The person who created and uploaded the game would get 70% of the money when someone buys it (much like Apple's app store) transferred to their linked PayPal account.

What are your thoughts on this? Is this a service you've been looking for, or something you'd find useful for publishing your games? Do you use a similar service already?

[Yopenatal]

I haven't finished a game and if I did, I'd probably sell it for a dollar.

Edited by Yopenatal, 29 May 2012 - 07:54 PM.

[FAAAEBS]

I tried selling my games at the very early begginings of my website, but then i realized it wasn't worth it because no one was buying it, so now i use AdFly, which still gives me money!

[Dangerous_Dave]

I sell games on Apple's Mac App Store (games made using GameMaker for Mac, and hopefully soon games made with GM Studio). The money hasn't been as good as some other's have had on the same store, but I've covered my costs at least. It's been a fantastic learning experience.

The main thing I've learnt is that you need to sell somewhere where there are already buyers unless you want to put in effort, which doesn't sound fun to me (edit in response to below post...). In this case I'd say Mac App Store and on Windows, Desura. They are very different markets, though, so a game that does well on one wont necessarily do well on the other.

[hpapillon]

or people can, y'know, sell it on their own websites. where they build up their own customer bases. It's hard work, but extremely valuable hard work.

The only reason people agree to sell through anything OTHER than their own direct sales is because those other options come with easy access to an existing customer base. You get onto a 'big' store and people will automatically look at your game. That doesn't end your marketing work, but it certainly helps.

The last thing anybody needs is yet another indie 'marketplace' that has no customers in it. If you expect people to give you any cut of sales at all, you HAVE to provide them with some service in exchange. Do you have an existing site with millions of visitors a month? You have something to offer. Do you have a huge marketing budget to spend bringing in visitors to your new site? You have something to offer.

... do you have nothing but an idea for a site that you hope to set up and sit back and let other people do all the work of marketing so that they can pay you extra for the privilege of having to do everything themselves? Then you have less than nothing to offer.

(Okay, that's not totally fair. If you're at least providing quality file hosting free, then it's not less than nothing. Still not very much though.)

Edited by hpapillon, 30 May 2012 - 02:30 AM.

[Peggles]

Awesome insights, hpapillon. I haven't really thought about it that way. I've already set up the system, mainly as a hobby project but also as a way to provide some sort of value to people who want to distribute their games.
All your points are valid, and I see how it would be hard to get that customer base without, like you said, spending a lot of money on marketing. All I saw in my service was a way for people to host their games for free, and possibly earn money from it when someone does buy their game. Perhaps, as you said, it isn't enough value for people to actually use it.

One of the reasons I did create such a service, was because I didn't find a lot of websites to host indie games, but since I've joined this forum I have gotten links to quite a few of them. And they all seem to be run by more than just one person (hence more resources).

I've learned a valuable lesson actually...always thoroughly check the market I'm targeting, before trying to provide value