hpapillon

Not to mention that it's pretty unrealistic to assume that someone's currently-nonexistent first commercial project is going to be able to make it into a major store (which is pretty much what Steam is. It is NOT an open market.) Telling everyone to send their games to Steam is not really a helpful suggestion.

The best places to sell games depends quite a lot on what sort of games they are. What market are you targeting? How does your product compete with similar offerings? How large is your game? How expensive? What graphical styles are you using? Etc, etc, etc.

Otherwise the simple answer is "On your own website" because pretty much whatever you make, as long as it's legal, you can at least TRY to sell it yourself

I only drop by these parts occasionally because I haven't really been using GM anymore - I wandered off to something cross-platform years ago so I could collaborate properly with my linux geek friend.

I keep meaning to look at the new HTML5 stuff but... so very busy.

Building your own site obviously requires more advertising work on your part, but it also gives you more control over your future. Most things released into crowded store marketplaces vanish without a trace, so you may STILL have to do advertising work, while getting less of the profits. This isn't to say that those stores are bad options, but that you have to consider how to work within their confines and make the most of what exposure you will get from them.

However, that's all second-hand. I haven't done anything with the low-price app market, so all I know about it is what I overhear from other devs passing news around. From what I hear, the *big* money in apps these days is in-app purchasing, but shooting for the big money isn't always the best goal when you're a scrappy startup.

I'm confused how you're managing to miss the option of "Just sell your game."

You don't need an appstore.

You don't need a publisher.

You can just sell games.

Using illegal graphics for a school project would go badly. Sure, in general people often get away with it because no one's paying attention, but when you're doing something for a grade for someone who will be looking at it closely...

You're supposed to be fan-making something anyway, right? Fan-made graphics sound like exactly what the class is looking for.

It's standard for casual portals. There's not a lot of competition in the casual market anymore. If you're making particular kinds of games, you go with BFG or you pretty much cannot make back your investment.

That sort of thing is never a *complete* rule, of course, there are always exceptions, but for the most part that's how it goes. It's a crap rate, but it's the best you can get and even with that crap rate most people will make a lot more money selling through BFG than on their own.

That sort of percentage is absolutely not standard in so-called 'hardcore' portals or appstores, although developers often fear that it might become such eventually.

(As for the original question, I have games on BFG and made decent money with them years ago, but I'm not really doing things with them anymore because I've moved in a slightly different direction.)