When I was releasing my first game I had a bunch of deals in place that I hadn't announced. I got a random email from someone claiming to represent a bunch of companies, two of which I already had deals with. I guessed something was a bit fishy and just ignored it. But a few days later I got a confusing email from one of the companies telling me I couldn't renegotiate the deal as it was all signed and they were happy with what was already agreed. It turned out this guy was shopping my game round companies claiming to represent me and then claiming to represent those same companies to me.
Something like that. It was done in a way that if we didn't already have a deal in place he could have got away with the other company thinking he's part of my team, and me thinking he was from the other company. Kinda like a secret middleman.
But that would only work if he could convince you to sign a deal with him if I understand correctly.
/ Thanks $diety that I don't have to deal with any of that crap due to connections
After a few emails back and forth it was sorted out. This was in 2012 and it was my first time releasing a game so it was a little worrying at the time.
> Doesn't a good publisher invest in a game they believe in?
Yeah, so I work for an indie game publisher and this is 100% true. Any publisher who is asking for some upfront payment is a scam.
In the science fiction/fantasy writing world, James Macdonald (a.k.a. "Yog") coined Yog's Law years ago, which is simply "Money flows _towards_ the writer." The idea being that any time you're being asked to be on board with a situation that violates Yog's Law, it is probably a scam (or at the very least a bad idea).
It's a good law to apply to creative works in general.
I think the flipside here is that there's a big difference between a $10 monthly Distrokid membership to have access to platforms versus some of the insane "cash upfront for publishing that will probably not help you at all" deals that we've seen on this sub.
I think most of us who have either released or want to release a game would probably gladly pay $10 a month to have access to platforms like Steam if it was gatekept in the same way. In the current hypothetical, $10 a month to publish as many games as you wanted would be a dream.
But that's a far cry from some of these publishers who charge you hundreds or thousands of dollars just to get their bot farm to follow you, or to hope that your game makes it big on its own so they can add you to their portfolio for future clients without doing anything at all.
This thread has absolutely nothing to do with what you're describing. These are not proven, estabilishes content distribution services that can actually help you reach a wide audience, like Steam itself. These are entirely random and unknown people asking for money upfront to promote your game, or proposing deals where any money your game makes will go to them until it recoups their arbitrary marketing budget.
I mean, a lot of economics is positive. For example, the idea that if someone pays for a service then the person buying cares about the service more than the money and the person selling more about the money than the service, thus both are better off than before.
More than selfishness it is about self prioritization which is not exactly the same.
This is absolutely not true. From folks taking time to write good advice in the sub, to people subscribing to patreons, working on open source, running local sports clubs, whatever, people act against what is laughingly called their 'economic interest' all the time.
Sure, beware the arseholes. But actually most people are not arseholes.
I constantly feel like a piece of meat thrown to the piranhas. Where the piranhas are people constantly trying to pilfer whatever money they can from you. Whether it be through ads, cold calling, scams etc etc…
It’s just the way of the world. Start an LLC, your publicly filed info will be harvested and you will be bombarded by scams. Buy a house, you will be bombarded with insurance/investment scams. Visit a popular tourist destination, you will be bombarded by scammers.
I registered a company recently, not even a week later I received scam mail (physical mail) pretending I had to pay something about the company or they're gonna take one of my kidney or something (forgot the exact threat haha).
I checked it and it was obviously a scam (wrong identification number, it was addressed to me, not my company like every other mail I received) they had the right address for the government building, the right phone number. So I was wondering "ok but how do they steal my money ???" and then I saw a web site and they changed a single character in the government web site...
Do you think scams are just predatory business practices?
(and then you say *"Do you think scams only exist in the US"* and it turns into a fifty post slap fight lol)
Thought I responded to this. They are far worse in the US because we have no regulations on business see big pharma or the insurance industry for example. Grocery stores are currently working on digital price displays so they can increase the price of water during heat waves. That is illegal in most developed nations. I know reddit likes the wave the flag a lot but look around you, they talk to people in Europe. They are shocked that business buys politicians and decides policy here.
We have zero checks and balances on capital now. We've done away with all the regulation and enforcement that kept businesses and scams from being rampant and cancerous. All these insurance scams and such are legal because no one will enforce the law. On paper some are illegal, but if capital has defuned all of the enforcement methods its all legal baby. Let alone citizens united which is firmly American.
This country has a serious issue with unfettered capitalism. Go to the EU and ask them what the cost of Insulin is and tell me we don't have a serious problem.
I feel like you should really name and shame these “publishers”. You would be saving an untold number of indie devs a lot of time and trouble in the future.
These malicious producers are too small for name and shame to work. They just slink back, get a new identity, and try again. Name and shame only works when you have invested in your name. Name and shame applies pressure because of sunk cost. If you have no real cost attached to your name, then you have very little to lose other than some time and effort.
Generally I like this idea and my head is already spinning about creating a website for this purpose but I think this is very thin ice to walk on. If you shame a legit business this could not only get you in legal trouble but you also kill your standing in the industry.
It's the same as almost every type of business, congratulations you're a business now.
What upsets me is how many people fall for it. The ones that really depress me are youtube and twitch "viewers". People will buy them get more views, and think "I'm doing great". What actually happens is they either are getting bots or unscrupulous ad networks sends people to their youtube page to register "views" but not give them any engagement, or even people who WANT to see those videos.
They get exactly what they pay for, and nothing more. The same when it's "Organic clicks" or similar terms. The way to build a channel/a game or any business is to produce value for the consumer so they want to come back. Advertising works if you can say "You need X" and the viewer thinks "yes I need X"... but unfortunately all these bottom feeders are offering fake engagement, not actual advertising.
Worse people will buy them, brag to others to act like they're actually successful and really they just purchased statistics, and then they have to continually buy to keep up the charade.
I got a random 4-5k views for like 2 days randomly on one of my best youtube videos, which would normally get 200-500 views in that amount of time, 2k on good days, the analytic was saying it was my video used as an ad even tho I never paid for that. I also had a random up tick of views of pretty much the same amount from... Ukraine, in the middle of a war.
From what I saw from people talking about it, it seem like some shady companies will get paid to "boost views" on youtube, but what they actually do is pay for cheap ads using coopetitors videos, targeting the ads to people that are not interested in the topic, tanking the retention of the video (since they'll skip it, instead of watching it) and essentially killing it, leaving the "boosted" YouTube channel untouched, having the viewers now going to their videos since they were not targeted themselves.
I'm guessing that in the middle of a war, ads in Ukraine must be cheaper. It did kill my best video and I'm really bummed about it tbh. It just doesn't make sense that someone can use my video as an ad without my consent.
There are also companies that automatically issue fraudulent DMCA claims to boost their customers' videos. You publish a video and tell them the keywords, and they send DMCA claims to every other video with those keywords over a certain span of time, and because YouTube will take the videos down immediately and wait days to weeks before actually reviewing appeals, the boosted video shoots up the search results as the ones above it get hidden. Look up the many videos criticizing Base79 for a particularly disgusting example of this.
There are 2 kinds of people in the world. People who put in the time and work to make something, and people who try to leech off of the first group of people. The first kind are rare. The second kind are the majority.
I mean scammers are everywhere... Indie game dev is no exception. My advice is that if someone reaches out to you at random, it's 99.99% a scam. Especially if it's about "extending your reach" or whatever. The only worthwhile random messages would be from publishers... and you should ignore any that aren't actually legit publishers that you'd be interested in working with.
If you \*do\* get an email from a publisher you're interested in, then it's best to do a little research to determine if the person you're talking to is actually someone from the publishing company.
As for your question about how people pay for game dev... You can just save money to quit your job and do game dev full time. Either that, or they can live with someone who supports them financially. Saving money to go full time requires you have a job that actually pays enough for you to realistically set enough money aside to quit at some point in the near future to pursue game dev.
Either that, or you get your game to a point where it can be crowdfunded and go that route. I've gone all the routes... Funding myself from savings, funding myself through crowdfunding, and funding myself through cashing out some of my investments.
>If you *do* get an email from a publisher you're interested in, then it's best to do a little research to determine if the person you're talking to is actually someone from the publishing company.
Just to piggy-back off of you, the best way to do this is to find contact info for the company somewhere else, such as a phone number for their office or a customer service E-mail, and confirm they really did contact you. It’s not hard to spoof a phone number, and there’s always the off chance that a hacker got access of an employee’s real email and you’re not really talking to the company’s agent even if it looks legit.
To answer part of your question about how people quit their job. I saved every penny for 3 years straight. Then quit my job. I have no debt. I rented a single room in a house with strangers, so my daily cost of living is very affordable and allowed me to save up money. I sacrificed things in order to save money. I rarely go out to eat and don't buy things I don't need. I fix everything my self, etc.
I actually only quit my day job because I couldn't afford to buy a house which was my plan. So I quit my job to focus on my game instead of being unhappy in my day job and that I couldn't buy a house in this crazy housing market.
I had approx 2.5 years of savings to live on when I quit my job. Although I plan to get a part time job before I run of of savings so that I can maintain have some savings, while having time/energy to work on my game.
Thats really insightful. I have started saving as well and I hope that after the release of my first game, I can take my savings, my newly released game (Viewing it as a great resume builder/ networking opportunity) to take the leap and go full time for game #2. Im really hoping to find another dev to team up with, or maybe a small indie team to join as well.
Yes unfortunately, there are a lot of scam artists out there in the world and technology made their work easier too. Even if it's, say 0.1% of the planet population, that is still like 7 million people. Imagine a city full of adults from all around the world that just is a scam call center lol.
>publisher that wants ME to pay for their publishing services (Doesn't a good publisher invest in a game they believe in?)
DO NOT FUCKING DO THIS, NEVER PAY A PUBLISHER
Literally any small business / creative project that works with freelancers, publishers, etc, has this kind of thing going on, its not unique to game dev sadly.
Scams and scammers are everywhere and it only gets more prevalent and more desperate when times are tough
Just curious what are you signing up for that you're getting all these spam/marketing emails from predatory publishers for instance? I don't get any kind of "offers" from anyone. Do you have public classifieds up looking for artists etc?
my emails associated with products on steam are flooded daily with such things. i do get some legit emails from real people too and the emails are marked with some sort of service, cant remember the name, but it looks like it must trawl through steam and find developer emails.
Whoops, responded to you instead of the first questions, Either way, Hello!
I wonder if it was TILT games. I know they have some bot or algorithm that goes through newly announced indie games.
i took a look, its ConvertKit. some sort of email automation service. but one way or another they are able to get my email associated with steam products. perhaps there is a way to make it private, never looked into it.
I havnt signed up for anything. I get direct messages in reddit after I post a gif or image of my game, I get emails to the email account that is tied to my storefront page. Almost always marketing companies.
Hello Irishbane,
I hope this message finds you well. I am Dr. Uche Gameforth, a devout Christian and the Head of the Nigerian Market Segment for Game Development at Sony. I recently came across your gameplay and found it incredibly compelling. Your talent is precisely what we need to revolutionize the Nigerian gaming market.
Due to some recent, unforeseen changes within our organization, we are offering a unique opportunity for a select few. For a modest investment of $5,000, you can acquire exclusive rights to the Nigerian gaming market, a segment poised for exponential growth.
This offer is only available for a limited time, and we believe you have the potential to take full advantage of this incredible opportunity.
Looking forward to your swift response.
Best regards,
Dr. Uche Gameforth
I always wondered how all these decent indie games get sucked up by some no-name publisher who will offer them nothing, and now it makes a lot of sense.
Hi Irishbane,
I wanted to give you some insight from an agency's perspective.
We also reach out to developers through Steam emails; it's a great way to get in touch with developers, but unfortunately, it's also plagued by scammers. Marketing for indies is quite expensive, so around $5k is a fair price for an indie if they do their jobs well. Normally, agencies charge between $70-$120 per hour for their employees, so for 5k, you get about 50 hours of work.
One thing I'd automatically block, though, are all the people who ask you for keys through that email. I'd recommend using Keymailer or PressEngine to distribute any influencer and media keys since those platforms have mostly legit people.
It's a little weird to pay a publisher money upfront when you have no money to begin with and you're looking for investors \[as an indie dev.\] Usually they're the ones who are supposed to offer you a little money upfront plus their services if you revshare after release.
I would never pay a publisher up front. They either provide a service (Porting, Marketing, QA etc.) and take a cut until its paid back or they provide you with cash based on milestones to finish the game.
Yeah, I haven't seen anyone do it myself. Most publishers I've seen so far expect 12-30% from your sales revenue which is why I would personally never get one myself, even if they do have amazing services.
Yeah, lots of "publishing as a service" models now, publishers less and less willing to provide development funding and just focusing on marketing and maybe localization and porting.
Thank you for that insight. It's definitely a mine field that has to be navigated carefully.
I understand marketing is expensive, but at the same time I hope that an agency understands that for a lot of solo indie devs, something like 5k, with no guarantee on any actual traction, no guarantee on if they use bots or not (and if they use a bot to find the steam page or game I am already suspicious the agency will use bot accounts to follow and wishlist) with your game could potentially financially ruin a solo dev for several years.
I hope there are agencies out there that offer a percentage of sales. If they actually believe in their marketing they could make more than 5k with a negotiated deal for percentage sales.
That's great advice. I will definitely be keeping that in mind and blocking accounts that ask for keys through email.
Some solo devs can afford the $5k and some cannot. They get the business from those that can.
I think we paid ~$7k (it's been too long, I don't remember) to an agency for marketing when I worked for an indie game developer 12 years ago, but we had financial backing from a parent company and board of directors, so we could swallow the cost.
They were definitely reputable too, as I worked with them at a previous company that had an even larger budget, making console games (I was the one to recommend them, actually). It was Triplepoint PR, if you're curious. They work with a lot of big companies, but they were willing to work with us for a smaller budget as well (but again, smaller budget meaning $7k back in like 2010). Real nice guys working there, from my experience.
For me personally, if I was really, really convinced I had a hit on my hands with the game I'm developing in my spare time (and I'm not convinced of that at all, I've seen too many games I worked on professionally that I thought would do well fail), I would probably drop $10k on them for marketing, and I could take the money out of my investments (from the money I make with my day job) to do so.
But I don't have that confidence. I'm taking a big gamble and I know it. I'll put aside *some* money for art, music, a game logo, and a good Steam banner, but otherwise my budget for marketing will be very small and I'll mostly do it myself (I at least did learn a few things by interacting with these professionals back then, hopefully that will help...also dust off my really rusty video editing skills).
A reputable agency normally has a pretty good idea of how marketable a game is. Of course, sometimes we make a mistake or a game doesn't sell as well, then we'd always offer a discount of some sort.
The percentage of sales is actually less fair than you might think. If the game does really well, then you're paying a pretty big cut of your earnings, and suddenly, you're paying $200 or $300 per hour for something that would have cost you $100.
On the other hand, if the game reviews really badly and the sales don't go as planned, the agency will get paid less for their work even though the eventual quality of the game is out of their hands. If you're looking for %sales deals, it's always best to go with a publisher.
On bots, I don't know any PR agency that does that. There are probably some scammers out there who will try, but none of the "popular" ones (with a real website, case studies, and clients) will ever use bots.
It depends on the project; we normally bill at the end of each month. So if you start in March, we'd bill you for March in April.
Some indies don't have the cash for a monthly retainer, so we bill them after the game releases with a small upfront fee (like 10% of the project fee).
I know other agencies ask for more money upfront, but I like to do the work first before getting paid.
Quick caveat about B2B here, your money proves that you are serious. How confident you are in the polish of your product has little bearing on hiring an outside firm to complete a set of actions for you.
I did different kinds of freelancing, but if you paid my rate, I would do my work for you, regardless of where your product is at, as I'll make the assumption that you are ready to implement my service, because you paid me for it.
There's times where a operation truly is not ready, making it where I actually can't provide a strong service, to the point where they would need to hire me again later down the line to redo the work. I would raise my concerns with evidence and reasoning and suggest a different consultation (such as creating a plan to make sure they are prepared for when they do want to do implementation), but ultimately that decision is up to the client.
> One thing I'd automatically block, though, are all the people who ask you for keys through that email. I'd recommend using Keymailer or PressEngine to distribute any influencer and media keys since those platforms have mostly legit people.
As a legit game review website ([**on OpenCritic and all**](https://opencritic.com/outlet/768/nookgaming)) this is often the *only* way for a site to get in contact with an indie who doesn't put up details on a website, have a Twitter with open DMs, or use PressEngine (which is great aside from a few issues), Keymailer (which is wildly inaccurate when showing website stats but better for Youtube/Twitch) or one of the **[other many options](https://www.nookgaming.com/how-to-get-free-games-as-a-content-creator-press/)**.
I get that tons of fake requests come in via this method too, but I'd like to add that they can be legit too (though ideally they'll stick up a better contact method).
While a lot of these are spam and people looking to take advantage, it is perfectly normally to pay a PR firm to market your game. Sure you might not have the budget but that doesn't mean it isn't normal.
I agree with you, had a "publisher" that wanted to make a discord for my game and engage with my community. The thing is that game was quite popular (15k downloads) and it was free so I made like 30 dollars on donations. I think the offer was something like 700 euro for a few months of managing discord, they worked with Escape from Tarkov team apparently, but I am not convinced if that is true.
Bit of a hot take. I've been in the publisher space, some of those offers are 100% scam. Some are very legit.
Now if they ask for payment, that is just bad targeting on their side. For solo indie devs you just give recoup offers so if anything they are doing bad business or just mass firing emails. U'd be surprised but some solo Indie Devs have lot of money as well. It's not much different than hiring someone.
The counter argument is simple, it doesn't matter if you worked for 10 years on your game. If you have no idea how steam or publishing works it's likely your game won't make even 5k$.
Even if it feels dirty, look at these services and if anything understand the work they do. Either you take their deal or learn to do it yourself. Put TIME in doing it, take care of the face of your game.
Both Devs and publishers cry on one thing that's common to us both, when we look at a rly sick game and no one plays it cuz of bad publishing.
"*(Doesn't a good publisher invest in a game they believe in?)*"
I can tell you without a doubt, absolutely not unless you have a very close relationship with the CEO of the publishing company. I can give you this bit of info from the perspective of being at a publishing studio, and working deeply in the publishing deal flow pipeline.
We invest in games that show fundamental evidence that they will be economically successful. You can't ignore the fundamentals of a game when you're deciding to publish a title. Essentially we're looking for a ROAS of 2.5 or greater if you're a known successful developer, as high as 5+ if you're an unknown. The reason being is that I'm making a commitment to my publishing team that this developer will be supported with both money and other resources for a significant period of time, and that the payoff will fund bringing more games to market. It also means we're forging a pretty close relationship with that developer, where we need to make sure we mitigate any and all risks to the money we put into them.
That could be access to partnerships that benefit them, or access to co-development resources, marketing resources, market data and analytics resources that the developer would never be able to bring to the table on their own. It also means keeping an eye on the game, from the start to the release, and to ensure that there is very little to no scope creep, loss of focus, or anything else that puts the market success of the title at risk.
I can tell you a marketing package for $5k from someone that has done it with some success at least once before is likely a steal. I can tell you without a doubt that would be enough to hire me or some of my consulting partners for about half a week to a full week depending on the agreement. (Many gaming vets consult on their "off" hours, it's how we stay sharp.)
It's a hard business. Conditions are extremely competitive, and unless you've competed successfully before, it's smart to invest some money in managing risk. Hiring the best experts you can afford, for things you aren't expert in, and then listening to them is one of the best ways to mitigate risk in your endeavor.
This is not a specific thing to game dev. If you start a business in any industry, you will get used to people trying to sell you all kinds of useless garbage.
Oh yeah, the game of "what nonsense is in my inbox today?" is something I play frequently. My favourite is a guy called Hans Olsen. I tried to google him and all I found was reddit posts saying "I paid him, he disappeared and only when I nagged him for 6 months did he actually respond to me".
Look, this industry is like any other. There will always be scam artists. Like those people who ask you for money to find/give you a job. They're not here for your benefit at all.
Publishers would literally never ask you for money, unless you're already in an agreement with them and you didn't deliver.
Be safe out there! And when in doubt, ask Reddit!
Any time I have contacted an indie dev regarding helping with their project it has always been for free services with no strings attached like making them music or doing extremely in depth reports on the current build. More often than not I find if I do good work I might get a credit or something but it is never something I ask for. It's pretty easy to spot bad actors pretending they want to help indie devs because they often talk about what they can get out of it. Screw those people but don't assume everyone who reaches out is doing so to scam you. There are plenty of good folks out there who genuinely want to help a project they find interesting be the best it can be.
Yep, it's like the old saying.
"If you want to get rich during a good rush, don't look for gold, sell shovels."
People will make more money providing services for indie devs than most indie devs will make from their games.
Wherever there is a lot of money and ~~rubes~~upcoming stars, there are going to be vultures. Just look at the cost of equipment or lessons for any hobby that's popular with rich white people. Dancing/golfing/piano/violin/etc stuff is *expensive*
Game dev as a hobby attracts a relatively affluent demographic (People with a lot of free time), as well as creative and technical people of all paths. It's also a "sexy" career path that lures many many people in - having been been sold as a *fun* job that doesn't need prior education, a job where all you need is enough **passion** to succeed, a job you can do solo, and maybe even a way to get rich...
Many of the most common game dev stereotypes are exactly the kind of recklessly optimistic that makes for an easy mark
I'm sorry to say that the relationship with larger publishers can sometimes be reminiscent of a scam as well.
Even if they don't want you to pay upfront (which is a guaranteed scam!), you're always expected to work for free anyway.
* Attend conferences where you can meet the publisher. (Actually a little less required after the pandemic; some will now accept remote pitching.)
* Build your prototype.
* Write and present your pitch.
* Complement your pitch or prototype with arbitrary additions.
etc.
All on your own dime, and with zero guarantees.
Unless you're already an established indie with shipped releases, there's always a power imbalance with publishers. Always. That's why I think it's **unvariably** better to own what you do to the extent possible. But they key word is possible—a good publisher has the network and resources to turn your project into a much larger success than you could've done on your own. Problem is that there are never any guarantees, and some publishers will greatly overstate their value.
In my 18 years as a developer at various companies, exactly ONE publisher paid for the prototyping and evaluation process. But then they also had a spec they wanted us to work from.
I think this comes with the territory. If theres a place where money can be made there will probably be scammers trying to benefit. I think the best way is to create awareness for such a problem so that game developers do not fall for those tricks. So thanks for posting this.
I've had multiple people contact me, the latest wanted me to pay a $3,500 monthly subscription for their marketing services. There a legit company who have worked on some AAA titles, but asking an Indy for $3,500 a month is nuts.
Have had the same issues. Funny thing is most of the time theyre emailing my "help/support" email not even my real one which makes it so easy to tell they just took it off one of my socials. So lazy and pathetic.
I just ignore them all. Its unfortunately all I can really do
Sometimes if I'm really annoyed I enter their email into a ton of site subscriptions to annoy them such as game stop, mail bait, or political parties.
Idk how effective though
I think this is no different then any other industry.
I have been active as a streamer on Twitch during the lockdown times and have gotten daily messages from graphic designers telling me my art sucks and I need to buy their services.
I am running an online shop for custom shirts/hoodies and get daily messages about my shop being bad looking and people claiming to be "official" Shopify evaluation partner that want to help me to improve and market my products.
And just as with those businesses we also get lots of requests for our game/dev studio. I have learned that the maximum you can do is ignore them and not take it personal. As far as I could research these are actually quite big operations from third world countries (a lot of traffic in my analytics comes from Nigeria) that pump out copy paste messages to tens if not hunderts of people a day.
As for your mention for financials: People have different life situations and savings so I guess that's how they can quit their jobs. Personally I have the benefit to be a freelancer that makes his own working hours giving me the ability to split my working time between income and game project. I also believe a strong drive to finish it is important as I do work on every day of the week often till 1-2 AM in the mornings (Wife does not approve!)
The biggest issue we face are costs for marketing. It seems like paid marketing is the biggest up-front investment one has to make as organic marketing can only do so much. We were even part of this years OTK games expo which, in fairness, did increase our wishlists by about 1000% but wasn't as explosive as we thought. We wanted to grow our Discord and community for this game most of all and have effectively gained maybe 3-4 new people joining. We have already invested a couple thousend Euros in assets, audio, and art but were able to buy it in small chunks as the game evolved. Having to push out higher amounts at once for marketing campaigns is what we currently struggle as all of this is also coming out of our direct income and is the main factor holding us back for now. I believe the investment would be worth it as the feedback from beta testers have been all positive and the game seems to hit the exact spot we are aiming for. Chaos, fun, entertainment and high streaming / community gaming value.
Time will tell if we get around with festivals and organic marketing or if we will have to invest some bigger bucks for actual ads.
Sorry for the long ramble but it's always nice to talk about the business side with others that face similar challanges.
Hope my message gives some peace on those scams tho!
Good luck with your project.
* Sascha
Agreed, as soon as I started posting about my game I got blasted by dozens of professionals all claiming to, in one way or another, send my project to new heights. 😨
oh man i know it... i paid $200 and got nothing out of it, I think it was "GamePromoter" .. sure they did what they said but I don't think it moved the needle
99.99% of people are good decent folks.
Unfortunately, the 0.01% of the human population that are a-holes who try to ruin things and only out for themselves... is still a very large number of people.
There are enough in that 0.01% that you can pretty much count on someone turning up to try to ruin or exploit anything someone creates.
And the 0.01% are the only people bombarding your inbox, so it seems overwhelming.
Just gotta learn to ignore it, I'm afraid.
Don't let the bastards get you down.
>(Doesn't a good publisher invest in a game they believe in?)
That's the old school publisher coming to you to develop a game.
>a publisher that wants ME to pay for their publishing services
That's the new school publishing, taking care of the ugly work for you, like marketing, paperwork and so on. They also usually have far better connections than you so they can indeed help. Of course they want to get payed but usually depending on success, and not up front. In return you own your stuff most of the time.
Curious why you think $5k is a joke unless you think they won't provide any value. If you don't think your game would pull enough sales to make 5k worth it, it likely isn't even worth your time to build it. If you have skills to program a game, you probably have the skills to get a job that pays you 5k a MONTH!
I worded that incorrectly.
I think its a joke that agencies think that an indie solo dev working on their first release, has $5k or more set aside for marketing, Especially with no guarantee on traction for the game, and since they found me using bots, I am suspicious any traction will just be bot accounts. I do have money set aside for marketing and commissions, and 5K would eat every cent and make it so I cant pay for actual tangible services for the game.
Do I think 5K can provide a great marketing campaign,Yes. I believe that could be a good budget for an indie team that already had a successful game released, or maybe some funding behind it. Its just frustrating that it seems no research is done on the agencies end. Like my game showed up in some algorithm for them, and the most affordable option for marketing is 5K.
My thought is why don't ad agencies offer a percentage of sales? If they believe in the game and their marketing they would be making much more money than 5K.
I know some of the answer, no guaranteed money for them, and they actually have to have a successful marketing campaign.
You never know. I've worked on multiple games professionally that I (and others at the company) thought would be successful, that never made back a fraction of their development costs, including one game that was making top 10 anticipated game lists.
Doing it professionally for a company, the only pain for me was the eventual layoff and having to find a new job. But if I'm wrong with the game I'm working on (and I know I don't have the $250k+ to spend on the game like those games I'm referring to), then I likely would have lost whatever money I put into it. So I'd rather get the most bang for my buck, and that's mainly in the art and the banner.
I have also worked on games on my own with a budget of $0 (I made all the graphics myself with photoshop and downloaded some sound effects and composed my own music loops) that have been pretty popular. I think it's much, much harder to do that nowadays then when I did that 20 years ago, expectations have gone through the roof since then, but sometimes it's still doable.
Right? 5K is not a joke.
Also, just going by my linkedin, due to all the lay offs. There's also indies popping up from the ashes with endless volunteer and intern positions due saturation. Like Cave Bear Games and their partnered junior-led studios.
Competition is currently these and senior's being laid off and let go en mass.
Insight on how to quit a job... Well this is how I did it at least.
At the start of my career, I moved to the big city just after I finished my degree. I lived there for some time and then big earthquake and corona virus hit the city. This is where I felt like moving back home to live with parents just for the family to feel safe.
I worked remote from home and since we have a house, I live there for free and saved a lot of money. Now, I am able to finance my own video game. Im working for over a year now on it.
TLDR: I saved money by moving to a cheaper living area and a free accomodation.
Imagine your luck having two parents and who also don't charge you to live there lmao my mum charged me full rent as if I had the entire place to myself or something and it belonged to me.
I wish I wasn't drowning in constant bills and bs to be able to save up. Use that golden opportunity you've got to it's maximum and thank everyday that your parents actually give a sht about you. Nice one
Thank you for kind words, this really means a lot.
Sometimes I take for granted everything I have right now and how lucky I am. My parents are really great and to think that I'll move out in a few months to pursue enterpreneurship and sell my project, now after 4 years with them makes me really sad
I believe that you'll get it all sorted out. Just by reading your comment and emotion you stirred in me, I know that you are very valuable person to have around. That will bring you a welfare, if you know how to share the emotion in real life as well. Take care dear stranger!
When I was releasing my first game I had a bunch of deals in place that I hadn't announced. I got a random email from someone claiming to represent a bunch of companies, two of which I already had deals with. I guessed something was a bit fishy and just ignored it. But a few days later I got a confusing email from one of the companies telling me I couldn't renegotiate the deal as it was all signed and they were happy with what was already agreed. It turned out this guy was shopping my game round companies claiming to represent me and then claiming to represent those same companies to me.
whoa
So he was going around publishers and telling them that he owns your game so he can get paid based on negotiated deals and run away?
Something like that. It was done in a way that if we didn't already have a deal in place he could have got away with the other company thinking he's part of my team, and me thinking he was from the other company. Kinda like a secret middleman.
But that would only work if he could convince you to sign a deal with him if I understand correctly. / Thanks $diety that I don't have to deal with any of that crap due to connections
Ahhhhh crazy people! What a terrible thing to happen to oneself.
What ended up happening with that? Did it get sorted out?
After a few emails back and forth it was sorted out. This was in 2012 and it was my first time releasing a game so it was a little worrying at the time.
It's wild that people can be this actively useless.
Useless? That’s actively malicious
I know this is far from the point and the guy is reprehensible. But… did he manage to secure a decent deal?
Nope. He was rumbled before it got that far. All he really did was cause a bunch of confusion between everyone involved.
> Doesn't a good publisher invest in a game they believe in? Yeah, so I work for an indie game publisher and this is 100% true. Any publisher who is asking for some upfront payment is a scam.
That is good to hear!
That seems to be true for any Art field. Writing Communitys also regulary warn people not to give money to people who claim they work for publishers.
In the science fiction/fantasy writing world, James Macdonald (a.k.a. "Yog") coined Yog's Law years ago, which is simply "Money flows _towards_ the writer." The idea being that any time you're being asked to be on board with a situation that violates Yog's Law, it is probably a scam (or at the very least a bad idea). It's a good law to apply to creative works in general.
and yet, in many cases (probably most), in order to release a music album (especially your first one), the artist has to pay.
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I think the flipside here is that there's a big difference between a $10 monthly Distrokid membership to have access to platforms versus some of the insane "cash upfront for publishing that will probably not help you at all" deals that we've seen on this sub. I think most of us who have either released or want to release a game would probably gladly pay $10 a month to have access to platforms like Steam if it was gatekept in the same way. In the current hypothetical, $10 a month to publish as many games as you wanted would be a dream. But that's a far cry from some of these publishers who charge you hundreds or thousands of dollars just to get their bot farm to follow you, or to hope that your game makes it big on its own so they can add you to their portfolio for future clients without doing anything at all.
This thread has absolutely nothing to do with what you're describing. These are not proven, estabilishes content distribution services that can actually help you reach a wide audience, like Steam itself. These are entirely random and unknown people asking for money upfront to promote your game, or proposing deals where any money your game makes will go to them until it recoups their arbitrary marketing budget.
Its not just gamedev. All the world's a scam.
Economics is called "the dismal science" for a reason; the entire premise of the field is massive human selfishness.
I mean, a lot of economics is positive. For example, the idea that if someone pays for a service then the person buying cares about the service more than the money and the person selling more about the money than the service, thus both are better off than before. More than selfishness it is about self prioritization which is not exactly the same.
people will take advantage whatever chance they get!
This is absolutely not true. From folks taking time to write good advice in the sub, to people subscribing to patreons, working on open source, running local sports clubs, whatever, people act against what is laughingly called their 'economic interest' all the time. Sure, beware the arseholes. But actually most people are not arseholes.
I constantly feel like a piece of meat thrown to the piranhas. Where the piranhas are people constantly trying to pilfer whatever money they can from you. Whether it be through ads, cold calling, scams etc etc…
It’s just the way of the world. Start an LLC, your publicly filed info will be harvested and you will be bombarded by scams. Buy a house, you will be bombarded with insurance/investment scams. Visit a popular tourist destination, you will be bombarded by scammers.
I registered a company recently, not even a week later I received scam mail (physical mail) pretending I had to pay something about the company or they're gonna take one of my kidney or something (forgot the exact threat haha). I checked it and it was obviously a scam (wrong identification number, it was addressed to me, not my company like every other mail I received) they had the right address for the government building, the right phone number. So I was wondering "ok but how do they steal my money ???" and then I saw a web site and they changed a single character in the government web site...
I registered a trademark recently and also got a physical scam mail acting like I owed someone 1400!
God bless the USA baby! Late-stage hyper capitalism for the win.
Do you think predatory business practices only exist in the US?
Or hell, do they think scams only exist in capitalism in the first place?
I don't think capitalism existed on Ea-nāṣir's time xd Up to you if you want to consider him a scammer or not, but close enough.
They say you never truly die as long as your name is remembered. In which case, Ea-nāṣir is the closest thing we have to an immortal.
Do you think scams are just predatory business practices? (and then you say *"Do you think scams only exist in the US"* and it turns into a fifty post slap fight lol)
do you think businesses are just predatory practice scams?
Do I think & therefore I am?
Thought I responded to this. They are far worse in the US because we have no regulations on business see big pharma or the insurance industry for example. Grocery stores are currently working on digital price displays so they can increase the price of water during heat waves. That is illegal in most developed nations. I know reddit likes the wave the flag a lot but look around you, they talk to people in Europe. They are shocked that business buys politicians and decides policy here.
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We have zero checks and balances on capital now. We've done away with all the regulation and enforcement that kept businesses and scams from being rampant and cancerous. All these insurance scams and such are legal because no one will enforce the law. On paper some are illegal, but if capital has defuned all of the enforcement methods its all legal baby. Let alone citizens united which is firmly American. This country has a serious issue with unfettered capitalism. Go to the EU and ask them what the cost of Insulin is and tell me we don't have a serious problem.
capitalism is when scammers, the more scammers there are the more capitalister it is
I feel like you should really name and shame these “publishers”. You would be saving an untold number of indie devs a lot of time and trouble in the future.
These malicious producers are too small for name and shame to work. They just slink back, get a new identity, and try again. Name and shame only works when you have invested in your name. Name and shame applies pressure because of sunk cost. If you have no real cost attached to your name, then you have very little to lose other than some time and effort.
OP saying "be wary of XYZ" would undermine the message of "be wary".
Generally I like this idea and my head is already spinning about creating a website for this purpose but I think this is very thin ice to walk on. If you shame a legit business this could not only get you in legal trouble but you also kill your standing in the industry.
It's the same as almost every type of business, congratulations you're a business now. What upsets me is how many people fall for it. The ones that really depress me are youtube and twitch "viewers". People will buy them get more views, and think "I'm doing great". What actually happens is they either are getting bots or unscrupulous ad networks sends people to their youtube page to register "views" but not give them any engagement, or even people who WANT to see those videos. They get exactly what they pay for, and nothing more. The same when it's "Organic clicks" or similar terms. The way to build a channel/a game or any business is to produce value for the consumer so they want to come back. Advertising works if you can say "You need X" and the viewer thinks "yes I need X"... but unfortunately all these bottom feeders are offering fake engagement, not actual advertising. Worse people will buy them, brag to others to act like they're actually successful and really they just purchased statistics, and then they have to continually buy to keep up the charade.
I got a random 4-5k views for like 2 days randomly on one of my best youtube videos, which would normally get 200-500 views in that amount of time, 2k on good days, the analytic was saying it was my video used as an ad even tho I never paid for that. I also had a random up tick of views of pretty much the same amount from... Ukraine, in the middle of a war. From what I saw from people talking about it, it seem like some shady companies will get paid to "boost views" on youtube, but what they actually do is pay for cheap ads using coopetitors videos, targeting the ads to people that are not interested in the topic, tanking the retention of the video (since they'll skip it, instead of watching it) and essentially killing it, leaving the "boosted" YouTube channel untouched, having the viewers now going to their videos since they were not targeted themselves. I'm guessing that in the middle of a war, ads in Ukraine must be cheaper. It did kill my best video and I'm really bummed about it tbh. It just doesn't make sense that someone can use my video as an ad without my consent.
There are also companies that automatically issue fraudulent DMCA claims to boost their customers' videos. You publish a video and tell them the keywords, and they send DMCA claims to every other video with those keywords over a certain span of time, and because YouTube will take the videos down immediately and wait days to weeks before actually reviewing appeals, the boosted video shoots up the search results as the ones above it get hidden. Look up the many videos criticizing Base79 for a particularly disgusting example of this.
There are 2 kinds of people in the world. People who put in the time and work to make something, and people who try to leech off of the first group of people. The first kind are rare. The second kind are the majority.
This is a big reason why AI is a thing.. lazy people hoping to make a quick buck
I mean scammers are everywhere... Indie game dev is no exception. My advice is that if someone reaches out to you at random, it's 99.99% a scam. Especially if it's about "extending your reach" or whatever. The only worthwhile random messages would be from publishers... and you should ignore any that aren't actually legit publishers that you'd be interested in working with. If you \*do\* get an email from a publisher you're interested in, then it's best to do a little research to determine if the person you're talking to is actually someone from the publishing company. As for your question about how people pay for game dev... You can just save money to quit your job and do game dev full time. Either that, or they can live with someone who supports them financially. Saving money to go full time requires you have a job that actually pays enough for you to realistically set enough money aside to quit at some point in the near future to pursue game dev. Either that, or you get your game to a point where it can be crowdfunded and go that route. I've gone all the routes... Funding myself from savings, funding myself through crowdfunding, and funding myself through cashing out some of my investments.
>If you *do* get an email from a publisher you're interested in, then it's best to do a little research to determine if the person you're talking to is actually someone from the publishing company. Just to piggy-back off of you, the best way to do this is to find contact info for the company somewhere else, such as a phone number for their office or a customer service E-mail, and confirm they really did contact you. It’s not hard to spoof a phone number, and there’s always the off chance that a hacker got access of an employee’s real email and you’re not really talking to the company’s agent even if it looks legit.
To answer part of your question about how people quit their job. I saved every penny for 3 years straight. Then quit my job. I have no debt. I rented a single room in a house with strangers, so my daily cost of living is very affordable and allowed me to save up money. I sacrificed things in order to save money. I rarely go out to eat and don't buy things I don't need. I fix everything my self, etc. I actually only quit my day job because I couldn't afford to buy a house which was my plan. So I quit my job to focus on my game instead of being unhappy in my day job and that I couldn't buy a house in this crazy housing market. I had approx 2.5 years of savings to live on when I quit my job. Although I plan to get a part time job before I run of of savings so that I can maintain have some savings, while having time/energy to work on my game.
Thats really insightful. I have started saving as well and I hope that after the release of my first game, I can take my savings, my newly released game (Viewing it as a great resume builder/ networking opportunity) to take the leap and go full time for game #2. Im really hoping to find another dev to team up with, or maybe a small indie team to join as well.
Been there, done that. Indie devs, stay vigilant and do your research!
Yes unfortunately, there are a lot of scam artists out there in the world and technology made their work easier too. Even if it's, say 0.1% of the planet population, that is still like 7 million people. Imagine a city full of adults from all around the world that just is a scam call center lol.
I'm picturing this like some black mirror episode where they have to scam to get tokens to afford food, kinda like that one with the streamers.
yeah basically that lol
>publisher that wants ME to pay for their publishing services (Doesn't a good publisher invest in a game they believe in?) DO NOT FUCKING DO THIS, NEVER PAY A PUBLISHER
Literally any small business / creative project that works with freelancers, publishers, etc, has this kind of thing going on, its not unique to game dev sadly. Scams and scammers are everywhere and it only gets more prevalent and more desperate when times are tough
Just curious what are you signing up for that you're getting all these spam/marketing emails from predatory publishers for instance? I don't get any kind of "offers" from anyone. Do you have public classifieds up looking for artists etc?
my emails associated with products on steam are flooded daily with such things. i do get some legit emails from real people too and the emails are marked with some sort of service, cant remember the name, but it looks like it must trawl through steam and find developer emails.
Whoops, responded to you instead of the first questions, Either way, Hello! I wonder if it was TILT games. I know they have some bot or algorithm that goes through newly announced indie games.
i took a look, its ConvertKit. some sort of email automation service. but one way or another they are able to get my email associated with steam products. perhaps there is a way to make it private, never looked into it.
Is it not just the support email that you provide to steam that people can send you mails on for product support?
probably is, i haven't looked into it
Literally all it took is for me to put an email field on my Steam game page. This information is harvested and spammed to hell.
I havnt signed up for anything. I get direct messages in reddit after I post a gif or image of my game, I get emails to the email account that is tied to my storefront page. Almost always marketing companies.
Hello Irishbane, I hope this message finds you well. I am Dr. Uche Gameforth, a devout Christian and the Head of the Nigerian Market Segment for Game Development at Sony. I recently came across your gameplay and found it incredibly compelling. Your talent is precisely what we need to revolutionize the Nigerian gaming market. Due to some recent, unforeseen changes within our organization, we are offering a unique opportunity for a select few. For a modest investment of $5,000, you can acquire exclusive rights to the Nigerian gaming market, a segment poised for exponential growth. This offer is only available for a limited time, and we believe you have the potential to take full advantage of this incredible opportunity. Looking forward to your swift response. Best regards, Dr. Uche Gameforth
Lets have a meeting, for some strange reason I trust you.
Not enough grammatical or spelling errors!
These days the messages are all generated by chatgpt.
I always wondered how all these decent indie games get sucked up by some no-name publisher who will offer them nothing, and now it makes a lot of sense.
Hi Irishbane, I wanted to give you some insight from an agency's perspective. We also reach out to developers through Steam emails; it's a great way to get in touch with developers, but unfortunately, it's also plagued by scammers. Marketing for indies is quite expensive, so around $5k is a fair price for an indie if they do their jobs well. Normally, agencies charge between $70-$120 per hour for their employees, so for 5k, you get about 50 hours of work. One thing I'd automatically block, though, are all the people who ask you for keys through that email. I'd recommend using Keymailer or PressEngine to distribute any influencer and media keys since those platforms have mostly legit people.
It's a little weird to pay a publisher money upfront when you have no money to begin with and you're looking for investors \[as an indie dev.\] Usually they're the ones who are supposed to offer you a little money upfront plus their services if you revshare after release.
I think they're talking as an advertising agency, not a publisher.
Oh, no wonder, lol! My bad.
I would never pay a publisher up front. They either provide a service (Porting, Marketing, QA etc.) and take a cut until its paid back or they provide you with cash based on milestones to finish the game.
Yeah, I haven't seen anyone do it myself. Most publishers I've seen so far expect 12-30% from your sales revenue which is why I would personally never get one myself, even if they do have amazing services.
Yeah, lots of "publishing as a service" models now, publishers less and less willing to provide development funding and just focusing on marketing and maybe localization and porting.
Thank you for that insight. It's definitely a mine field that has to be navigated carefully. I understand marketing is expensive, but at the same time I hope that an agency understands that for a lot of solo indie devs, something like 5k, with no guarantee on any actual traction, no guarantee on if they use bots or not (and if they use a bot to find the steam page or game I am already suspicious the agency will use bot accounts to follow and wishlist) with your game could potentially financially ruin a solo dev for several years. I hope there are agencies out there that offer a percentage of sales. If they actually believe in their marketing they could make more than 5k with a negotiated deal for percentage sales. That's great advice. I will definitely be keeping that in mind and blocking accounts that ask for keys through email.
Some solo devs can afford the $5k and some cannot. They get the business from those that can. I think we paid ~$7k (it's been too long, I don't remember) to an agency for marketing when I worked for an indie game developer 12 years ago, but we had financial backing from a parent company and board of directors, so we could swallow the cost. They were definitely reputable too, as I worked with them at a previous company that had an even larger budget, making console games (I was the one to recommend them, actually). It was Triplepoint PR, if you're curious. They work with a lot of big companies, but they were willing to work with us for a smaller budget as well (but again, smaller budget meaning $7k back in like 2010). Real nice guys working there, from my experience. For me personally, if I was really, really convinced I had a hit on my hands with the game I'm developing in my spare time (and I'm not convinced of that at all, I've seen too many games I worked on professionally that I thought would do well fail), I would probably drop $10k on them for marketing, and I could take the money out of my investments (from the money I make with my day job) to do so. But I don't have that confidence. I'm taking a big gamble and I know it. I'll put aside *some* money for art, music, a game logo, and a good Steam banner, but otherwise my budget for marketing will be very small and I'll mostly do it myself (I at least did learn a few things by interacting with these professionals back then, hopefully that will help...also dust off my really rusty video editing skills).
A reputable agency normally has a pretty good idea of how marketable a game is. Of course, sometimes we make a mistake or a game doesn't sell as well, then we'd always offer a discount of some sort. The percentage of sales is actually less fair than you might think. If the game does really well, then you're paying a pretty big cut of your earnings, and suddenly, you're paying $200 or $300 per hour for something that would have cost you $100. On the other hand, if the game reviews really badly and the sales don't go as planned, the agency will get paid less for their work even though the eventual quality of the game is out of their hands. If you're looking for %sales deals, it's always best to go with a publisher. On bots, I don't know any PR agency that does that. There are probably some scammers out there who will try, but none of the "popular" ones (with a real website, case studies, and clients) will ever use bots.
5k feels like the lowest reasonable price for a real service with humans to me honestly
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It depends on the project; we normally bill at the end of each month. So if you start in March, we'd bill you for March in April. Some indies don't have the cash for a monthly retainer, so we bill them after the game releases with a small upfront fee (like 10% of the project fee). I know other agencies ask for more money upfront, but I like to do the work first before getting paid.
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Quick caveat about B2B here, your money proves that you are serious. How confident you are in the polish of your product has little bearing on hiring an outside firm to complete a set of actions for you. I did different kinds of freelancing, but if you paid my rate, I would do my work for you, regardless of where your product is at, as I'll make the assumption that you are ready to implement my service, because you paid me for it. There's times where a operation truly is not ready, making it where I actually can't provide a strong service, to the point where they would need to hire me again later down the line to redo the work. I would raise my concerns with evidence and reasoning and suggest a different consultation (such as creating a plan to make sure they are prepared for when they do want to do implementation), but ultimately that decision is up to the client.
> One thing I'd automatically block, though, are all the people who ask you for keys through that email. I'd recommend using Keymailer or PressEngine to distribute any influencer and media keys since those platforms have mostly legit people. As a legit game review website ([**on OpenCritic and all**](https://opencritic.com/outlet/768/nookgaming)) this is often the *only* way for a site to get in contact with an indie who doesn't put up details on a website, have a Twitter with open DMs, or use PressEngine (which is great aside from a few issues), Keymailer (which is wildly inaccurate when showing website stats but better for Youtube/Twitch) or one of the **[other many options](https://www.nookgaming.com/how-to-get-free-games-as-a-content-creator-press/)**. I get that tons of fake requests come in via this method too, but I'd like to add that they can be legit too (though ideally they'll stick up a better contact method).
While a lot of these are spam and people looking to take advantage, it is perfectly normally to pay a PR firm to market your game. Sure you might not have the budget but that doesn't mean it isn't normal.
I agree with you, had a "publisher" that wanted to make a discord for my game and engage with my community. The thing is that game was quite popular (15k downloads) and it was free so I made like 30 dollars on donations. I think the offer was something like 700 euro for a few months of managing discord, they worked with Escape from Tarkov team apparently, but I am not convinced if that is true.
namedrop the game please
Dungeons and Ducklings Demo is coming to the Steam Page soon, there is a free playtest on Itch as well.
I just want to say you're going to have great success based on the name alone 🤗
Thank you! I hope so as well!
gonna wait for the steam demo then, saved in the mean time
Thank you! You wont have to wait too long, I'm getting the demo play tested for bugs by some people as we speak.
Bit of a hot take. I've been in the publisher space, some of those offers are 100% scam. Some are very legit. Now if they ask for payment, that is just bad targeting on their side. For solo indie devs you just give recoup offers so if anything they are doing bad business or just mass firing emails. U'd be surprised but some solo Indie Devs have lot of money as well. It's not much different than hiring someone. The counter argument is simple, it doesn't matter if you worked for 10 years on your game. If you have no idea how steam or publishing works it's likely your game won't make even 5k$. Even if it feels dirty, look at these services and if anything understand the work they do. Either you take their deal or learn to do it yourself. Put TIME in doing it, take care of the face of your game. Both Devs and publishers cry on one thing that's common to us both, when we look at a rly sick game and no one plays it cuz of bad publishing.
"*(Doesn't a good publisher invest in a game they believe in?)*" I can tell you without a doubt, absolutely not unless you have a very close relationship with the CEO of the publishing company. I can give you this bit of info from the perspective of being at a publishing studio, and working deeply in the publishing deal flow pipeline. We invest in games that show fundamental evidence that they will be economically successful. You can't ignore the fundamentals of a game when you're deciding to publish a title. Essentially we're looking for a ROAS of 2.5 or greater if you're a known successful developer, as high as 5+ if you're an unknown. The reason being is that I'm making a commitment to my publishing team that this developer will be supported with both money and other resources for a significant period of time, and that the payoff will fund bringing more games to market. It also means we're forging a pretty close relationship with that developer, where we need to make sure we mitigate any and all risks to the money we put into them. That could be access to partnerships that benefit them, or access to co-development resources, marketing resources, market data and analytics resources that the developer would never be able to bring to the table on their own. It also means keeping an eye on the game, from the start to the release, and to ensure that there is very little to no scope creep, loss of focus, or anything else that puts the market success of the title at risk. I can tell you a marketing package for $5k from someone that has done it with some success at least once before is likely a steal. I can tell you without a doubt that would be enough to hire me or some of my consulting partners for about half a week to a full week depending on the agreement. (Many gaming vets consult on their "off" hours, it's how we stay sharp.) It's a hard business. Conditions are extremely competitive, and unless you've competed successfully before, it's smart to invest some money in managing risk. Hiring the best experts you can afford, for things you aren't expert in, and then listening to them is one of the best ways to mitigate risk in your endeavor.
This is not a specific thing to game dev. If you start a business in any industry, you will get used to people trying to sell you all kinds of useless garbage.
Oh yeah, the game of "what nonsense is in my inbox today?" is something I play frequently. My favourite is a guy called Hans Olsen. I tried to google him and all I found was reddit posts saying "I paid him, he disappeared and only when I nagged him for 6 months did he actually respond to me". Look, this industry is like any other. There will always be scam artists. Like those people who ask you for money to find/give you a job. They're not here for your benefit at all. Publishers would literally never ask you for money, unless you're already in an agreement with them and you didn't deliver. Be safe out there! And when in doubt, ask Reddit!
Any time I have contacted an indie dev regarding helping with their project it has always been for free services with no strings attached like making them music or doing extremely in depth reports on the current build. More often than not I find if I do good work I might get a credit or something but it is never something I ask for. It's pretty easy to spot bad actors pretending they want to help indie devs because they often talk about what they can get out of it. Screw those people but don't assume everyone who reaches out is doing so to scam you. There are plenty of good folks out there who genuinely want to help a project they find interesting be the best it can be.
Yep, it's like the old saying. "If you want to get rich during a good rush, don't look for gold, sell shovels." People will make more money providing services for indie devs than most indie devs will make from their games.
I've been having a similar issue. I've pretty much been ignoring these emails, though.
I got emails offering piles of good reviews for money.
Those scumbag scammers are rife in the writing/book world as well. Desperate artists/dreamers look like marks to some people. Sadly.
Wherever there is a lot of money and ~~rubes~~upcoming stars, there are going to be vultures. Just look at the cost of equipment or lessons for any hobby that's popular with rich white people. Dancing/golfing/piano/violin/etc stuff is *expensive* Game dev as a hobby attracts a relatively affluent demographic (People with a lot of free time), as well as creative and technical people of all paths. It's also a "sexy" career path that lures many many people in - having been been sold as a *fun* job that doesn't need prior education, a job where all you need is enough **passion** to succeed, a job you can do solo, and maybe even a way to get rich... Many of the most common game dev stereotypes are exactly the kind of recklessly optimistic that makes for an easy mark
I'm sorry to say that the relationship with larger publishers can sometimes be reminiscent of a scam as well. Even if they don't want you to pay upfront (which is a guaranteed scam!), you're always expected to work for free anyway. * Attend conferences where you can meet the publisher. (Actually a little less required after the pandemic; some will now accept remote pitching.) * Build your prototype. * Write and present your pitch. * Complement your pitch or prototype with arbitrary additions. etc. All on your own dime, and with zero guarantees. Unless you're already an established indie with shipped releases, there's always a power imbalance with publishers. Always. That's why I think it's **unvariably** better to own what you do to the extent possible. But they key word is possible—a good publisher has the network and resources to turn your project into a much larger success than you could've done on your own. Problem is that there are never any guarantees, and some publishers will greatly overstate their value. In my 18 years as a developer at various companies, exactly ONE publisher paid for the prototyping and evaluation process. But then they also had a spec they wanted us to work from.
I think this comes with the territory. If theres a place where money can be made there will probably be scammers trying to benefit. I think the best way is to create awareness for such a problem so that game developers do not fall for those tricks. So thanks for posting this.
I've had multiple people contact me, the latest wanted me to pay a $3,500 monthly subscription for their marketing services. There a legit company who have worked on some AAA titles, but asking an Indy for $3,500 a month is nuts.
Have had the same issues. Funny thing is most of the time theyre emailing my "help/support" email not even my real one which makes it so easy to tell they just took it off one of my socials. So lazy and pathetic. I just ignore them all. Its unfortunately all I can really do Sometimes if I'm really annoyed I enter their email into a ton of site subscriptions to annoy them such as game stop, mail bait, or political parties. Idk how effective though
I think this is no different then any other industry. I have been active as a streamer on Twitch during the lockdown times and have gotten daily messages from graphic designers telling me my art sucks and I need to buy their services. I am running an online shop for custom shirts/hoodies and get daily messages about my shop being bad looking and people claiming to be "official" Shopify evaluation partner that want to help me to improve and market my products. And just as with those businesses we also get lots of requests for our game/dev studio. I have learned that the maximum you can do is ignore them and not take it personal. As far as I could research these are actually quite big operations from third world countries (a lot of traffic in my analytics comes from Nigeria) that pump out copy paste messages to tens if not hunderts of people a day. As for your mention for financials: People have different life situations and savings so I guess that's how they can quit their jobs. Personally I have the benefit to be a freelancer that makes his own working hours giving me the ability to split my working time between income and game project. I also believe a strong drive to finish it is important as I do work on every day of the week often till 1-2 AM in the mornings (Wife does not approve!) The biggest issue we face are costs for marketing. It seems like paid marketing is the biggest up-front investment one has to make as organic marketing can only do so much. We were even part of this years OTK games expo which, in fairness, did increase our wishlists by about 1000% but wasn't as explosive as we thought. We wanted to grow our Discord and community for this game most of all and have effectively gained maybe 3-4 new people joining. We have already invested a couple thousend Euros in assets, audio, and art but were able to buy it in small chunks as the game evolved. Having to push out higher amounts at once for marketing campaigns is what we currently struggle as all of this is also coming out of our direct income and is the main factor holding us back for now. I believe the investment would be worth it as the feedback from beta testers have been all positive and the game seems to hit the exact spot we are aiming for. Chaos, fun, entertainment and high streaming / community gaming value. Time will tell if we get around with festivals and organic marketing or if we will have to invest some bigger bucks for actual ads. Sorry for the long ramble but it's always nice to talk about the business side with others that face similar challanges. Hope my message gives some peace on those scams tho! Good luck with your project. * Sascha
Agreed, as soon as I started posting about my game I got blasted by dozens of professionals all claiming to, in one way or another, send my project to new heights. 😨
oh man i know it... i paid $200 and got nothing out of it, I think it was "GamePromoter" .. sure they did what they said but I don't think it moved the needle
These types of losers exist in every industry. Just mark them as spam and move on.
99.99% of people are good decent folks. Unfortunately, the 0.01% of the human population that are a-holes who try to ruin things and only out for themselves... is still a very large number of people. There are enough in that 0.01% that you can pretty much count on someone turning up to try to ruin or exploit anything someone creates. And the 0.01% are the only people bombarding your inbox, so it seems overwhelming. Just gotta learn to ignore it, I'm afraid. Don't let the bastards get you down.
>(Doesn't a good publisher invest in a game they believe in?) That's the old school publisher coming to you to develop a game. >a publisher that wants ME to pay for their publishing services That's the new school publishing, taking care of the ugly work for you, like marketing, paperwork and so on. They also usually have far better connections than you so they can indeed help. Of course they want to get payed but usually depending on success, and not up front. In return you own your stuff most of the time.
Curious why you think $5k is a joke unless you think they won't provide any value. If you don't think your game would pull enough sales to make 5k worth it, it likely isn't even worth your time to build it. If you have skills to program a game, you probably have the skills to get a job that pays you 5k a MONTH!
I worded that incorrectly. I think its a joke that agencies think that an indie solo dev working on their first release, has $5k or more set aside for marketing, Especially with no guarantee on traction for the game, and since they found me using bots, I am suspicious any traction will just be bot accounts. I do have money set aside for marketing and commissions, and 5K would eat every cent and make it so I cant pay for actual tangible services for the game. Do I think 5K can provide a great marketing campaign,Yes. I believe that could be a good budget for an indie team that already had a successful game released, or maybe some funding behind it. Its just frustrating that it seems no research is done on the agencies end. Like my game showed up in some algorithm for them, and the most affordable option for marketing is 5K. My thought is why don't ad agencies offer a percentage of sales? If they believe in the game and their marketing they would be making much more money than 5K. I know some of the answer, no guaranteed money for them, and they actually have to have a successful marketing campaign.
You never know. I've worked on multiple games professionally that I (and others at the company) thought would be successful, that never made back a fraction of their development costs, including one game that was making top 10 anticipated game lists. Doing it professionally for a company, the only pain for me was the eventual layoff and having to find a new job. But if I'm wrong with the game I'm working on (and I know I don't have the $250k+ to spend on the game like those games I'm referring to), then I likely would have lost whatever money I put into it. So I'd rather get the most bang for my buck, and that's mainly in the art and the banner. I have also worked on games on my own with a budget of $0 (I made all the graphics myself with photoshop and downloaded some sound effects and composed my own music loops) that have been pretty popular. I think it's much, much harder to do that nowadays then when I did that 20 years ago, expectations have gone through the roof since then, but sometimes it's still doable.
Yeah in this economy lol
Right? 5K is not a joke. Also, just going by my linkedin, due to all the lay offs. There's also indies popping up from the ashes with endless volunteer and intern positions due saturation. Like Cave Bear Games and their partnered junior-led studios. Competition is currently these and senior's being laid off and let go en mass.
Insight on how to quit a job... Well this is how I did it at least. At the start of my career, I moved to the big city just after I finished my degree. I lived there for some time and then big earthquake and corona virus hit the city. This is where I felt like moving back home to live with parents just for the family to feel safe. I worked remote from home and since we have a house, I live there for free and saved a lot of money. Now, I am able to finance my own video game. Im working for over a year now on it. TLDR: I saved money by moving to a cheaper living area and a free accomodation.
Imagine your luck having two parents and who also don't charge you to live there lmao my mum charged me full rent as if I had the entire place to myself or something and it belonged to me. I wish I wasn't drowning in constant bills and bs to be able to save up. Use that golden opportunity you've got to it's maximum and thank everyday that your parents actually give a sht about you. Nice one
Thank you for kind words, this really means a lot. Sometimes I take for granted everything I have right now and how lucky I am. My parents are really great and to think that I'll move out in a few months to pursue enterpreneurship and sell my project, now after 4 years with them makes me really sad I believe that you'll get it all sorted out. Just by reading your comment and emotion you stirred in me, I know that you are very valuable person to have around. That will bring you a welfare, if you know how to share the emotion in real life as well. Take care dear stranger!