Portal customers email you for tech support.

[Mike Boeh]

Okay this is a pet peeve of mine, and it seems to be happening more often.

Customers from portals figure out who the actual developer of a game is, and then email them for tech support instead of going through the portal. This was another reason I change Cosmo Bots to Cosmic Bugs for the portals- I figured I wouldn't get any support requests. But now I am getting a fair amount of support for Cosmic Bugs.

So I do support them, but considering how little Retro64 actually receives for their sale, I definitely lose money from the time it takes me to do that support. How do you handle this?

[Hamumu]

Turn em into sales! I built my business on the people who found my site from my eGames releases (and often were asking for help).

Start by making a big FAQ page with answers to all the questions these people are always asking you, and when they contact you, just point them to it, cutting your burden, and maybe it wouldn't hurt if that page also mentioned offhand all the other fine Retro64 products (and Hamumu ones, just in case).

[James C. Smith]

Be very nice and helpful to these people. Now that they found you, and discovered you are a nice guy, maybe they will buy their next game from you.

Of course this strategy is less useful when you have few games to offer and more useful if you have a huge catalog of games. If you only make one game, and they already purchased it from Yahoo, then you don’t have much to gain.

[svero]

Wow.. I agree with both hamumu and James. In fact if the portals would let me I'd add a support link in all my programs. Best thing that could happen to you is those emails Mike! That's like.. free customers! Way more valuable than the sale of that one game or the time you spend supporting it.

[James C. Smith]

But I can also see how this would be very insulting. “You only pay me how much for each sale of my game on your portal? That’s it?!? And then I have to do the support on top of that?!?!”

[Mike Boeh]

I suspected those replies, and I agree of course. But I have been a little hesitant to ask the customer to buy the games from Retro64 directly, but I guess I should...

[JPGinLA]

Ditto to the above!

And, also add an auto responder with the faq of usual questions and answers so they receive the response as soon as they email you and you can ignore all but the unusual questions.

Even if you don't encourage sales of other games, or visits to your website to see the other stuff and updates, this is confirmation that customers and potential customers realize that the portal isn't the source of the game which leads to the conclusion that sales are likely coming straight to you as a result of the portals promotion! In fairness to the portals, I haven't ever heard them complain that they are losing sales because some customers go straight to the developer's site!

I'm pretty sure if you asked a portal rep if they want you to provide support to their sales, the answer would be "Yes." And I think they wouldn't mind you promoting your web address in the same support responses.

More of my 0.02!

-JPG

[Jack Norton]

It happened to me, and a customer was grumpy at me because my game hadn't that feature XXX that he wanted. I let him have the latest version from my site for free even if he bought a older one from a portal.
He discovered that all his wishes had been fulfilled in the latest version (that I couldn't include on portals since I update my games quite often), and now he is a subscriber of my newsletter :)

[cliffski]

It happened to me, and a customer was grumpy at me because my game hadn't that feature XXX that he wanted. I let him have the latest version from my site for free even if he bought a older one from a portal.
He discovered that all his wishes had been fulfilled in the latest version (that I couldn't include on portals since I update my games quite often), and now he is a subscriber of my newsletter :)

this happens to me a lot, only with store bought copies of Starship Tycoon.

[Jack Norton]

Just wanted to clarify: this is possible only because Reflexive allow me to see at least partially the email, so I can confirm that he really bought the game. Otherwise I'd say to him "sorry, you should have bought it from my site directly" :D

[otaku]

This has always been a huge bone of contention for me. I've faced this situation a couple of times, having to offer support for a game that in all essence made absolutely no money sold through a portal. Whilst I did everything in my power to help the customer out it basically came down to "Sorry, you didn't buy the game from us. Talk to the portal." when it became obvious the customer's problem couldn't be solved, we couldn't make them happy and they asked for their money back (under our 60 day money back guarantee). We had to refuse that last request too.

Moving forward in to the future where I no doubt will make use of portals again I have been pondering this very subject. To offer support or not to non-customers. Yes, you could turn them in to future customers and evangelize your other products to them. They have gone out of their way to find out who the developer is and contact you. It is not clear to me whether they will purchase their next game from you though, or whether they will just pick it up when it shows up on GamePass or some other discount.

I guess we need to identify the compelling reason of why they should buy from you -- perhaps you offer support? ;-)

Any opinions on "locking out" portal customers from making use of free upgrades and expansion packs that you give to your regular customers?

For quickly responding to e-mails I can reccommend FAQ Tool (http://www.faqtool.com/).

Just wanted to clarify: this is possible only because Reflexive allow me to see at least partially the email, so I can confirm that he really bought the game. Otherwise I'd say to him "sorry, you should have bought it from my site directly" :D

This too is also a huge problem. How the hell do you verify that someone legitimately purchased your game through a portal when their only evidence is "I really, really, really did buy it through XXXgames.com! Can you help me out?"

[James Gwertzman]

Why on earth would you want to "lock out" customers who buy your game from a customer? They are still your customers! They liked your game enough to buy it - and you want to punish them for it?

Instead, you should make it as easy as possible for portal customers to download free add-on content from your own website... as long as you get them to sign up for your newsletter... so that the next time you have a new game available hopefully a large number of those existing customers will buy directly from you.

[ggambett]

This too is also a huge problem. How the hell do you verify that someone legitimately purchased your game through a portal when their only evidence is "I really, really, really did buy it through XXXgames.com! Can you help me out?"
"Sure, please forward me the order confirmation email"

[Nexic]

It's happened a few times to me - and some of them ending up buying from me instead of the portal.

[JPGinLA]

This too is also a huge problem. How the hell do you verify that someone legitimately purchased your game through a portal when their only evidence is "I really, really, really did buy it through XXXgames.com! Can you help me out?"

Or, have your price end in $xx.99 and the portal in $xx.95 (or vice versa) so you can jut ask how much they paid and determine whence it came.

That's what we did eons ago.

-JPG

[Sybixsus]

If you think dealing with support requests from Portal sales is bad, try support requests from Warez customers. I've had people asking for assistance with features which are only available in the registered version ( 100% not possible in the demo ) and being fairly rude about it too. Fortunately, they vanish pretty quickly when you ask for their order reference number to verify their purchase. This was before any of our games were on portals of course. Still you have to admire their nerve.

I can totally understand why there would be a mental block with regards to supporting portal customers. Even more than the amount of time it takes ( and it does take a big chunk out of development time, in my experience ) is the principle involved. But I think the opportunity to show them the personal touch you get from the developer is worth something in the long term. Quite how I'll feel about this when more of our games hit more of the portals is another matter though. At the moment, I can still get work done between dealing with customers.

[Emmanuel]

Don't sell your games to portals if you don't want to support customers that buy your game through them, period. It isn't the customer's fault that they heard about your game from Bigfish instead of your own marketing. They couldn't care less that you make less on the sale, they paid the same amount as if they bought it from your site and they're entitled to full support. If the portal doesn't provide decent support, don't sell games there again.

Like Jack, I send the latest versions to customers that bought indirectly (haven't got to do that with Garden Golf yet, but I will if that happens). Heck, I even sent a special build to a couple of customers that wanted feature X that would take too much time to merge in the main game ;)
Emmanuel

[patrox]

You might want to create "light" version of your games for portals maybe ? that way you can sell add ons or a "deluxe" version that are not available on the portal.

pat.