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The most profitable way to buy one of your games for your company?

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I saw you always send us to Gamersgate so as we can download your games... But if I buy them online, I'd prefer that the entire money spent goes back to you, and Gamersgate will of course take a rather important fee... Why don't you have a proper download page? It's not complicated, as even Ageod as its own links within its website (and ALL the money goes in their pockets, which is actually the only consolation to me for not getting a boxed edition...).


Is Gamersgate owned by your company? I'm begging that's not the case! So what's wrong?
 
I really like the trend of lately to provide games cheaper as digital download.

What I can't understand is why the base prices need to be the same (or even higher) as those in the retail stores. It should be possible to lower them to at least half since that's the share taken by retail stores who need to pay rents and salaries.

From what I know about the retail a lot off the money also needs to go to physical production and distribution, not needed at all for digital downloads.
 
Yeah, he's right. And digitalisation is the reason why you slowly stop to edit boxed editions of your games, even though most of your fans prefer it by far.

So you get a good split from every download channels... But this split is much (or even just sightly) higher if I buy it through Gamersgate, right?
 
Fastsnake said:
So you get a good split from every download channels... But this split is much (or even just sightly) higher if I buy it through Gamersgate, right?
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Steve Perlman broke it down for retail games.

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In my interview with GG CEO Theo Bergquist he broke down the digital distribution part of it.

Coming from an independent background of Paradox, how many Independent developers are you currently working with and do you have plans to reach out to more?

- Currently we have more than 200 partners and over 1800 games for sale. Independent developers are an important factor for us and we’ve always seen them as our kin. The more games we can add, even if it’s from small independent developers, the better. Also, it’s a good source of revenues for them. I mean, they get 70% of the revenues within 30 days! That’s way higher than what they would get if they were to go through physical retail.
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I've heard that 70% going back to the publisher/developer number before, although I can't remember which digital distributor it was.

So as Fredrik says, buying through digital distribution is the best way to support Paradox.
 
Alex_brunius said:
What I can't understand is why the base prices need to be the same (or even higher) as those in the retail stores. It should be possible to lower them to at least half since that's the share taken by retail stores who need to pay rents and salaries.

From what I know about the retail a lot off the money also needs to go to physical production and distribution, not needed at all for digital downloads.
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I guess there are contracts with the retailers that th egames cannot be sold cheaper than the in-store price (RRP) for a certain period of time. Otherwise, almost everybody (a couple of hardcore fans excluded) would buy online and the retailers wouldn't have a reason to stock the games. The reason why publishers agree to this is that every bit of shelf space is a bit of advertisement and might win some customers.
 
Interesting...

Very interesting M. Qikdraw, thanks a lot! Hope you're on the dole anymore.

(I've just seen on your website that EU: Rome is less than 5$ in a concurrent site, whereas I just bought it 15€ on Gamersgate... Hell!)

Further in your interview, I've read:

Recently Steve Perlman, of OnLive, talked about the anatomy of a $60 video game, which focused on retail versions of video games. With your comment that developers get 70% of the revenue from digital game sales, could you perhaps break that down into an anatomy of a digital distribution $60 video game?

- 70% of $60 is $42, so if a publisher sells a game at GamersGate for $60, they get $42 right in their pocket, before returns, reserves, mark downs, etc. GamersGate gets $18 dollars. In roughly 90% of all cases publishers pay separately for DRM which usually is a small percentage of revenue.
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About Steve Perlman and what the CEO of Gamersgate both said... there is a share for publishers but... Nothing for developers! :confused:
So what's the deal, publishers give a part of their shares to the developers or what?

And concerning digital sells, publishers have to split their gains for "returns, reserves, mark downs, etc.", but what are they exactly (I guess returns are maybe for developers)?

Thank you for the information.
 
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Fastsnake said:
Very interesting M. Qikdraw, thanks a lot! Hope you're on the dole anymore.
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If you mean am I still unemployed? Yup. :( But hopefully not for long, in a few months I'm moving, so I hope to find work there.

(I've just seen on your website that EU: Rome is less than 5$ in a concurrent site, whereas I just bought it 15€ on Gamersgate... Hell!)
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Yeah, thats happened to me a time or two before too. Which is why its best to check out the other sites for the best deals. Personally, I only use GG and D2D, but if something is on sale at Steam, I know its usually gonna go up on sale in another digital distributer soon (if not previously). The only negative aspect of our game sales page is both the guy that puts it together (Cliff) and I tend to justify 'saving' money by buying deals. :rofl:

About Steve Perlman and what the CEO of Gamersgate both said... there is a share for publishers but... Nothing for developers! :confused:
So what's the deal, publishers give a part of their shares to the developers or what?
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That $42 for the Publisher would be split up with the Developer as well. Of course the publisher will take a fee for publishing the game as they are providing a valuable service to the developer, what the cut is I have no idea. You'd have to ask some of the Paradox Publishing guys about that, if they'll tell you. :)

And concerning digital sells, publishers have to split their gains for "returns, reserves, mark downs, etc.", but what are they exactly (I guess returns are maybe for developers)?
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Returns are if a store 'buys' 20 copies of a game, but only sells 15, they can return it. I'm not sure of the exact process on how that works (do they return it to a 3rd party distributer they got it from or direct to the publisher?), the video game store I used to work for never had to return anything. Again, the Paradox Publishing people would be able to tell you far more than I would on that one.

Thank you for the information.
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Your welcome for the little info I can provide. :)
 
Qikdraw said:
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Yeah, thats happened to me a time or two before too. Which is why its best to check out the other sites for the best deals. Personally, I only use GG and D2D, but if something is on sale at Steam, I know its usually gonna go up on sale in another digital distributer soon (if not previously). The only negative aspect of our game sales page is both the guy that puts it together (Cliff) and I tend to justify 'saving' money by buying deals. :rofl:
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I don't know what you're talking about...it's saving in BULK...that's the key!

Really...

:rofl:
 
Digital Distribution is just better for everybody. No pollution from making the disc, publishers get more money, the middlemen cut out, better deals more often, and no losing your disc or having it scratched.

edit: My 1000th post. :D
 
Fastsnake said:
Yeah, but it turns out to be disadvantageous for shops specialized in video games. So they will all close. So it will increase the unemployment rate to 4 or 5 percent.
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I think that depends on how you view "unemployment". Is "unemployment" simply the lack of an identified "job", or does it include having a "job" that is of no great use to the rest of humankind? And does it exclude those who are doing something useful to others even though they might not be registered as "employed" doing it?
 
Fastsnake said:
Yeah, but it turns out to be disadvantageous for shops specialized in video games. So they will all close. So it will increase the unemployment rate to 4 or 5 percent.
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Or they could start working with digital games instead? Someone have to do that too. I think they will co-exist for many years more though.
 
Fastsnake said:
Yeah, but it turns out to be disadvantageous for shops specialized in video games. So they will all close. So it will increase the unemployment rate to 4 or 5 percent.
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Actually as this will improve income for game companies and digital game publishers it means that they will hire more programmers, advertisers &:c instead - which seems to be about the same amount as the ones that loose their jobs that worked in game shops.

Before people thought that the sewing machine would put people out of buisness, so the French even went around destroying the sewing machines they could find.

Though the boosted cheapness of clothes opened up for larger clothing industries that needed more salesmen and so on.
 
Remember PC games don't pay for platform.
 
Fastsnake said:
Yeah, but it turns out to be disadvantageous for shops specialized in video games. So they will all close. So it will increase the unemployment rate to 4 or 5 percent.
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Video game retailers account for 5% of employment? ಠ_ಠ
 
Autonomous said:
Video game retailers account for 5% of employment? ಠ_ಠ
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Probably not, but, to be fair, they don't need to. If employment in video game shops were 4-5% of the current unemployment total, that would increase unemployment by 4-5% if they all lost their jobs.

Of course, whether you consider even this scenario plausible is open to question.
 
Alex_brunius said:
What I can't understand is why the base prices need to be the same (or even higher) as those in the retail stores.
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If the games were cheaper as downloads - a lot of people would not buy hardware copies (but download instead) and thus the retailer would make less money. The result would be that the large retailers would refuse to sell the game.
Without games on the shelfes, Paradox would sell less games to the occational gamers and get less publicity on in all.

This is just a matter of time (until the game retailers are dead), but meanwhile the price will be the same for hardware and download.
 
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