This image from the article is so true it actually hurts. The number of times our company has had a conversation like this would boggle the mind. We are not even a mobile game. We are a free to play PC title and we still get this garbage.
It's interesting that publishers for Asia don't have this mindset. They are willing to actually put money up front, something that no non-asian publisher has ever offered us.
This may not be the best place to fanboy, but I wanted to say how much I REALLY appreciate your guy's model. It's been a total breath of fresh air in an environment that supports the absolutely worst trends in perverse incentives for free to play games; so just, thank you to you and all of your team.
Oh, Path of Exile! A coworker was chatting with me about how much he liked the DLC model for that game because it doesn't give anyone a purchased advantage, it's strictly cosmetic. He also said that this was the game that Diablo III should have been.
Your staff page[1] doesn't show anybody in business / marketing roles. How do you handle website production, forums, marketing, legal, etc without dedicated staff? Even with a small group making a game engine[2] we're finding that those issues that pretty much require a full-time person.
You get those shitty publisher terms because the publisher has no idea if your game will be good or not. Why would they commit to spending anything before they know what kind of revenue & retention your game will have?
If you release your game yourself to a limited market, prove it has good revenue & retention stats, then shop around for a publisher, you get much better terms.
We did release the game ourselves and generated good revenue and retention. I'm certainly not complaining about our current level of success.
The (non-asian) publishers still come out of the woodwork to offer you these kinds of garbage deals. We just don't take them. The fact that we were already successful is why these leeches turn up in the first place.
These "publishers" are essentially glorified and very expensive user referral programs.
This image from the article is so true it actually hurts. The number of times our company has had a conversation like this would boggle the mind. We are not even a mobile game. We are a free to play PC title and we still get this garbage.
It's interesting that publishers for Asia don't have this mindset. They are willing to actually put money up front, something that no non-asian publisher has ever offered us.