Regarding Alawar

[Nexic]

As some of you may know, I recently talked about my latest game Xeno Assault 2, in these posts I have made negative comments about Alawar, and exclusive publishing in general. It is still my belief that exclusive publishing is overall, not the best way to go for people who ultimately want to make a shareware business, but my words were wrong and one sided.

In my posts I mentioned that I had received very low sales from Alawar, for my game Xeno Assault. This is true, my sales were very much worse than I had expected. However this was mainly down to the games very low conversion ratio. It is true that Alawar did not do a huge marketing campaign for this title, however, they are a business. And you cannot expect a company to market a game that would not make a decent return on investment in marketing.

During the development of Xeno Assault, I was unhappy with amount of time it took for Alawar to release the game. However that time was spent making the game signifcently better. I feel actual time spent making additions and improvements were worth it, but I believe the time spent in correspondence with Alawar was a waste. I cannot really blame Alawar for this, it is a natural thing that will occur when two entities work with eachother over the internet.

In general Alawar were always kind and friendly. Since working with them I have had many concerns and problems, and they have always tried to sort them out, or explain them to me.

Despite me not receiving many internet sales for Xeno Assault, Alawar are still making me a fair income, in the form of retail sales. Mainly flat fees coming from publisher that I would otherwise not have come into contact with. Even if your game was a bad seller, like Xeno Assault, an exlcusive deal with Alawar could still provide a few nice lump sums every now and then.

Overall, I didn't do well with Alawar, but this doesn't necessarily mean that it would work out this way for you, and your game. There are other people on this forum, who have had a good experiece with Alawar. There will always be winners and losers with any form of business agreement, and I just happened to be a loser.

Also, since talking to Alawar about this, they have told me that they are happy to negociate percentages, and possible cancelations of contracts, if the developer is unhappy. In my case, we may come to an agreement about Xeno Assault 1, as both of us are not earning much from it's sale.

I would like to note that this public apology has not been made because Alawar has threatened me with legal action, but because I have heard that my words have already caused several developers to stop working with them. It was never my intention to damage their business in such a way, and I now feel very bad. I didn't realise that my words would have such a large impact on Alawar, but they have.

If you are someone who has questions about Alawar, please feel free to email or private message me.

-Neil Yates

[Fantus]

Cool stuff Nexic, this clears things up. It's funny (in a ironic way) you mentioned that some developers stopped working with Alawar, because the whole thread made me more interested in Alawar.

[ManuelFLara]

That's a nice gest from your part. An iced glass of water that was needed to end with the heat of that thread :)

[bentlegen]

A toast to professionalism!

- ben

[Andy]

Retro, Svero, Dan, guys - is it just me or we really in huge demand for the place where we can discuss some staff separately from portal's representatives and their advocates?

What do you think about starting some poll - the first in these forums - and check what another developers think on issue?

PS Nexic. Good luck to you and your business.

[tentons]

is it just me or we really in huge demand for the place where we can discuss some staff separately from portal's representatives and their advocates?
There's always email, but why wouldn't you want public discussion? I think we're all better off knowing what happened and how it ended. Not only that, but there's a historical record of it now, which I think is fascinating in itself. Adding secrecy probably won't improve your business significantly.

$.02

[Andy]

There's always email, but why wouldn't you want public discussion?

I'll explain. There are amount of developing guys who is just starting - some of them are very talanted and addicted. And I want to help them to not repeat our mistakes and mistakes of another guys. You?

That's why we really need something private enough but open for such guys. I vote for princes' opinion now - let we make it on the introduction basis - should work I suppose.

[James C. Smith]

I don't see why it would need to be private. For example, if you want to list reason to not give a game to Reflexive for non-exclusive distribution I wouldn’t object. Of course, if I thought some of your reasons were false I would probably try to correct them and everyone would assume that my view was biased and take my comments with a grain of salt. If you list valid reason, we may try to correct them. But most likely, I would agree that the reason you list are tradeoffs that must be made and leave the decision up to the developer to decide if the benefits outweigh the coasts.

We should be able to have open discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of specific distribution channels and use e-mail for anything that is too specific to post publicly.

[MrPhil]

I would like to note that this public apology has not been made because Alawar has threatened me with legal action, but because I have heard that my words have already caused several developers to stop working with them. It was never my intention to damage their business in such a way, and I now feel very bad. I didn't realise that my words would have such a large impact on Alawar, but they have.
Very decent of you Nexic and I just wanted to applaud your professionalism.

Open discussion allows for more points of view which I find more valuable. Treating one another with respect builds trust and in the long run more cooperation and we are all better for it.

[Andy]

I was going to mention specifically your reaction when you see any opinions or recommendations connected to your portal James. You should agree that representatives of another portals are no so kind some times.
To not give to developer a chance to share HIS PERSONAL OPINION that EXCLUSIVE agreement with some portal doesn't worth and to attack him here in DEVELOPER's forums after that - I suppose this is something overwhelming -don't you suppose so?

Without fair opinion of developers on results of their own work and their collaboration with different partners what would be the value of these forums? Not everything in indie game business connected to technical aspects only.

Again - I just ask the owners of forum to organize a poll connected to the problem. Let everything goes by the way how it would be voted.

[arcadetown]

Open discussions are very beneficial to all and this recent discussion proves it works. Would it be fair for someone to arbitrarily decide who can comment or even have access to "inside" information? Simply remember all comments are public requiring a certain level of discreetness and professionalism.

I could see reasons for exclusive arrangements in the retail world. I would flat out question anyone asking for exclusive arrangements in the online world. There are very few, if any, outlets that could do the author a true service there.

[Andy]

Brian, but ones just don't let to talk to anothers some times - no?

[Ivan Oilfield]

This open forum is a good thing.

I came across this thread through a google search.

The whole essence of what I read here, is the reason you do shareware games. Freedom to distribute your games on your terms. Meaning, you have the abbility to walk away from the deal making at anytime, once you agree to the deal you have to live with it and move on.

Otherwise you would have sold your house and moved to work for EA!!

Thank god you're out there doing it.

Alejandro.

[Mike Boeh]

I don't see why it would need to be private. For example, if you want to list reason to not give a game to Reflexive for non-exclusive distribution I wouldn’t object. Of course, if I thought some of your reasons were false I would probably try to correct them and everyone would assume that my view was biased and take my comments with a grain of salt. If you list valid reason, we may try to correct them. But most likely, I would agree that the reason you list are tradeoffs that must be made and leave the decision up to the developer to decide if the benefits outweigh the coasts.

We should be able to have open discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of specific distribution channels and use e-mail for anything that is too specific to post publicly.

As I have said in other posts, I think, overall, the Reflexice the best portal in terms of technology and fairness. However, I have a complaint! The charging for bandwidth. Is there another "portal" that does that?

[Ricardo C]

However, I have a complaint! The charging for bandwidth.

Do bandwidth costs come out of Reflexive's 60% comission, or is the developer billed additionally for it?

[Mike Boeh]

Do bandwidth costs come out of Reflexive's 60% comission, or is the developer billed additionally for it?

The developer is billed additionally for it...

It could be that other places deduct it from the net profit too, and just don't itemize it. I don't know...

[KNau]

Wow, that's really lame. I've never heard of anyone doing that before.

So basically their pitch is "We have a mid-level popular site, list your game with us so we can dump operating expenses to you and collect most of the money for ourselves." Hilarious! I love the publishing biz!

[Mike Boeh]

The developer is billed additionally for it...

It could be that other places deduct it from the net profit too, and just don't itemize it. I don't know...

To clarify, the bandwidth charges are deducted from the gross... So I guess the developer only pays for 40% of it technically.

EDIT: I was just informed that this policy/process is going to change.... So never mind...

[Jack Norton]

However, I have a complaint! The charging for bandwidth. Is there another "portal" that does that?
I agree too. Just got the report and the download fee was just too high. I could almost pay 50% of my server with that money, and didn't had 1200Gb of download for sure :D
I am happy that's going to change, that is my only complain about Reflexive (apart for that, they're very good!).

[Mike Boeh]

Yes... My favorite part of reflexive is how they work with their affiliates. You still get your normal commission even if it's an affiliate sale.

[arcadetown]

Regarding Reflexive, have to agree about the bandwidth charges but from the affiliate end. Was really steamed after got 1st month's report serveral weeks later. I somewhat understand why because of their isp, need for extreme reliability, and so forth. But the high bandwidth charges forced us to take all sorts of funky measures to make all downloads happen here instead of there. Bandwidth is dirt cheap these days and it really doesn't make sense.

That said it's a pretty cool system. After all the tuning now our users would barely know they are involved with their games here.

[James C. Smith]

Regarding Reflexive’s royalty payment structure: The way I see it, the customer is the one who pays for the bandwidth and the other cost of good sold which include a credit card processing fee charged by the merchant account at about 3%. Then the money that is left over is split between the developer, the affiliate, and Reflexive. Of those three, Reflexive gets the smallest share which is only fair since we are just the middle man aggregator. Over a year ago we were paying $3.75 per GB for download traffic. Several months ago it was reduced to $1.5 per GB. Last month it we negotiated it down to $1 and this month it just got dropped to $0.50 per GB. We anticipate it will go down significantly again in a few months.

[gpetersz]

I appreciate this forum. My first game will be finished in some months, but
I am here to see what the others (already indie pros) doing and get all
the tiny info that might help my way.

[wazoo]

Yes I'm one of the "new gen" guys here as well who is just starting out, but am really interested to soak up any words of wisdom that the gurus care to dole out during their busy schedules.

(And I always thought that the programming side of things was hard....the business side can be far more treacherous!! *grin*)