Dodgy Affiliate/Portal Practices - Should I Succumb?

[AVataRR]

A full day hasn't passed since I released my first game and I've already received an offer for it to be posted on a portal. I wouldn't have any qualms about it if one of the conditions didn't seem so dodgy. They want me to make a custom build with absolutley no links to akatsuko.com. I can understand why they'd want that, lest the user bypass them and buy direct. But cutting all references to the original developer seems so dodgy.

Is this normal practice? Does anyone have any advice as to what I should do?

[ManuelFLara]

Usually all you have in the portal-friendly version of a game that mentions the original developer is their logo (and usually side by side with the portal one), but never a website URL or link. So yes, it's normal practice.

[Sharpfish]

Firstly - can you give the portal name? That will tell us if it's a legit portal (worth the time) or just some mass game links site pretending to be a portal (with zero traffic).

Secondly - it is standard practice for portals to request you to remove links to your site - though I am sure you can leave in your company name/credits as the developer just not the URL (which works for everyone believe it or not - portals would fail if everyone went to the developer instead, if they fail - they don't have the MONEY to attract traffic and then everyone looses).

[svero]

No decent portal will allow you to link directly to your site since that undermines their key value - traffic. Almost all portals will allow you to leave your company name and logo in the game though, so long as the company name isn't also a domain name. It's not dodgy it's just business sense. A company isn't going to spend 10's or even 100's of thousands of dollars advertising a website and then sell or show something to their customers that could leach traffic away.

[patrox]

from a http://www.asharewarelife.com/
"The large game portals give the illusion of giving a large volume of sales, except they don't actually. The typical game sold in the large portals sells next to nothing."

My suggestion would be to only accept if you receive an advance, else they will make little efforts to promote your game. ( that won't even pay for your time to remove your logos and place theirs... )

pat.

[Savant]

"The large game portals give the illusion of giving a large volume of sales, except they don't actually. The typical game sold in the large portals sells next to nothing."
I'm living proof of this. :P

[svero]

from a http://www.asharewarelife.com/
"The large game portals give the illusion of giving a large volume of sales..."


What's the illusion exactly? A lot of portals return 10's or even 100's of thousands in sales royalties to developers for games that do well. Especially if you add them all up. There are quite a few sites now that have decent traffic and sales as well. Sure some games don't make the cut, but the same is probably true of the solitaire titles that failed to compete with Pretty Good Solitaire and didn't make as much money as Tom did with his game. Does that mean nobody should try shareware?

[Jack Norton]

I think it means that 95% of titles on portals will make less than 100$/month and the remaining 5% from 1k$ to 10k$/month... :)

[princec]

95% of portals are successful, and 95% of developers fail :)

Cas :)

[Savant]

Yeah, it's the old 1% of the games make 99% of the money.

[Ricardo Vladimiro]

(...)and 95% of developers fail :)

Or stop trying.

[svero]

I think it means that 95% of titles on portals will make less than 100$/month and the remaining 5% from 1k$ to 10k$/month... :)

I've had games in the past on Real and other sites that haven't been big hits, but which have returned much much more than 100$ to me. Even a game that isn't a top seller can make quite a few bucks on the portals when you combine them.

[AVataRR]

Firstly - can you give the portal name? That will tell us if it's a legit portal (worth the time) or just some mass game links site pretending to be a portal (with zero traffic).


It's: http://www.gamexzone.com/

The bad english on the support page isn't very encouraging. But I can see Xeno Assault II as one of the listed titles. I remember Nexus raving about having great portal sales. And I'm thinking maybe it isn't so bad afteral. Then again, this might not be the portal he was talking about.

[Bmc]

you know I've seen games that bomb on places like real, and they made more than 100$ so....

you guys are the same people who were saying months ago that no small team could ever be successful in the casual market by making clones. that the barriers of entry were far too high etc...

well Emmanuel and a number of others proved you wrong.

The simple fact of the matter is you don't really understand the audience you are trying to target.

Just an example, within 10 seconds of playing Dr Germ I found something problematic.
I went to change to windowed mode and I got an alert that said I needed to restart the game for this to take effect. That is just bad. People expect more than that. It should (like just about every other game) do it automatically.

[Jack Norton]

well Emmanuel and a number of others proved you wrong.

Hmm what are those others? :)
Anyway, I'm not saying that better you give up with portals. I just said that many (and I mean MANY) games on portals sells 100$ or less. And not even bad games, just "normal". The production value has risen incredibly.

[Bmc]

Hmm what are those others? :)
Anyway, I'm not saying that better you give up with portals. I just said that many (and I mean MANY) games on portals sells 100$ or less. And not even bad games, just "normal". The production value has risen incredibly.

the rainbow web guys and Invadazoid are 2

I don't think any new game on a big portal like Real will only sell 5 copies in it's first month, no matter how bad it is (and if it's that bad it won't make it on in the first place)

[princec]

the rainbow web guys and Invadazoid are 2

I don't think any new game on a big portal like Real will only sell 5 copies in it's first month, no matter how bad it is (and if it's that bad it won't make it on in the first place)
I reckon I could manage :)

Cas :)

[Jack Norton]

the rainbow web guys and Invadazoid are 2

I don't think any new game on a big portal like Real will only sell 5 copies in it's first month, no matter how bad it is (and if it's that bad it won't make it on in the first place)
The fact is that Real usually is much more strict (hard to get into)... so yes, a game IF appears on Real will sell more than $100.

[Bmc]

The fact is that Real usually is much more strict (hard to get into)... so yes, a game IF appears on Real will sell more than $100.

well that all comes back to designing for the market

[James C. Smith]

...seem so dodgy. They want me to make a custom build with absolutley no links to akatsuko.com.


As others have pointed out, this is a very standard practice. I don’t see anything dodgy about it. It is just logical. To clarify, the real problem is that you sell game(s) on your web site. If you had a web site that didn’t have anything for sale, and didn’t link to any sites that sell games, then you may be able to get an exception to allow you game to link to your site.

My point is, taking web links out of your game is reasonable not just because it is a “standard practice”. You are not being forced to do this just because they have power and you don’t and everyone else went along with it. You are expected to do this because it would be unreasonable not to. Why would a portal with a valuable customer base want to direct traffic to your site where people can buy the game directly from you? It would be unreasonable to expect them to do this.

This is a logical and fair business arrangement. I don’t see anything ‘dodgy’ here.

Don’t get me wrong, this frustrates me to no end. I wish my games could link to my website. There is a lot of very valuable content there that players of my game would love to see. I really wish the portals would let me have Ricochet Lost Worlds link to RIcochetLostWorlds.com. But I totally understand why they don’t let me do it. They would be fools if they did let me.

[princec]

That's why my games leave a little "cookie" from wherever they were first downloaded from that can never be overridden by subsequent installs. No matter where they go later to buy the game, the first site that got the download gets the money. Why the portals are incapable of using this simple mechanism is beyond me. It's like Sainsburys carefully removing the wrappers from Heinz Beans and placing their own Sainsburys Beans wrappers on the tin as if we're all going to shop direct from Heinz from our beans having bought them in the supermarket. Get real, portals. We buy games from portals because they're all in a cluster, and we trust the portal not to rip us off, and because it's convenient - same reason we buy food in the supermarket these days. And any genuinely interested user will just google your site up anyway. Why make it hard for them? I just don't get this mentality from the portals at all. All it does is foster suspicion and create extra work.

Cas :)

[svero]

I think it's much more than just where the sale of a particular game ends up. It's to do with traffic in general. If I released 5 games on Realarcade that did fairly well and all the games had links to my site for whatever reason, I could effectively use that to take away real's customers for the future sales as well. If my site was better than Real's in some way people might even forgo Real in favor of shopping on my site in the future. My site doesn't compete directly with real the way bigfish does, but imagine mcf huntsville released on realarcade with links all over it to bigfish promotions. Obviously not a good position for Real to be in.

[soniCron]

By the same token, however, Walmart doesn't stop developers linking to their own sites. Of course, the downloadable world moves a lot faster than retail, so that's really apples and oranges in so many ways.

[Bmc]

it's called leaking traffic, and with the amount of money spent on marketing, and all the legal hassles of email marketing it's the last thing in the world they would ever want to do.

[AVataRR]

Meh, this portal politics is too much for me. I don't want to end up spending more time trying to get my game sold than actually making a good game. Good games sell themselves anyway, so I'll just keep working towards getting my games to a point where they can be successful by themselves.

[soniCron]

Meh, this portal politics is too much for me. I don't want to end up spending more time trying to get my game sold than actually making a good game. Good games sell themselves anyway, so I'll just keep working towards getting my games to a point where they can be successful by themselves. If we are to assume what you say is true (which it's not, but I'll humor you), then that doesn't change the fact that you still have to get it in front of as many eyes as possible. This kind of attitude is what separates successful developers from failures.

[steve bisson]

what the hell man !!!!! :D unless you started this thread to get more attention to your game i dont undestand it...

zuma and other great games are on that portal...if you want to have another outlet for your game then just do what they ask you to do ! :) no worries to have here .


I don't want to end up spending more time trying to get my game sold than actually making a good game.

well build your games so its very easy to adapt them to portal's requierements then :P then you can make good games and spend very little time trying to sell them.


This kind of attitude is what separates successful developers from failures.
True !... shape up avatarr and hurry up and sell as much as you can before someone clone it ;)

[Jack Norton]

What he says IS true. Good games sells themselves.
The problem is that nowadays to have a game that sell itself, you should come out with something comparable to Doom when it went out some years ago :D

[AVataRR]

Yeah, sorry to be such a nub Steve. :{ This kind of came as a surprise to me and my first instinct was to resist. After you shouted at me on msn, I'm beginning to change my mind. >_< I guess it's just some links.. I can still have my logo and I can put my URL in the readmes... Still have to make a stupid custom build though... ugh...

Jack, it doesn't neccessarily have to be as spectacular as Doom was in the early 90's. I know Mount & Blade from Taleworlds is doing very well and that's the ugliest 3D game I have installed. What's more, M&B isn't even done yet! It just has to be fun.

[jankoM]

AVataRR: Don't forget to ask our friend Alexa for an oppinion on this particular portal -> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=www.gamexzone.com
and compare (button below graph) to bigfishgames/reflexive/real...

//later: I have finally found how to link to comparisons directyl: http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=379&h=216&r=6m&y=r&u=gamexzone.com/&u=bigfishgames.com

[princec]

The problem is that the portals are like giant clumps of poo floating in space. They have massive gravity, attracting eyeballs. The more eyeballs that are attracted to them the more gravity they get, and so on. What I still don't understand is why they think that once someone has found a portal that they'd want to go elsewhere to all these stupid piddly little indie sites to find games. It doesn't make sense. Traffic leakage? Bullshit! All it's doing is starving innovation in the industry and forcing us to write games to portal specs. Even if I get Titan Attacks on a portal what good is it going to do the rest of my games that they won't touch if all references to Puppygames are removed? Or more laughably, if references to Puppygames remain, but you have to manually fecking search for Puppygames? It's a joke. It's like intensive farming - you get a bit more food in the short term but screw the ecosystem till there's only one plant growing all over the bloody world.

Cas :)

[Fabio]

AVataRR: Don't forget to ask our friend Alexa for an oppinion on this particular portal -> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=www.gamexzone.com
and compare (button below graph) to bigfishgames/reflexive/real...

//later: I have finally found how to link to comparisons directyl: http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=379&h=216&r=6m&y=r&u=gamexzone.com/&u=bigfishgames.comExtremely interesting. Technically, how does Alexa & Co. gets this info?

[AVataRR]

The problem is that the portals are like giant clumps of poo floating in space. They have massive gravity, attracting eyeballs. The more eyeballs that are attracted to them the more gravity they get, and so on. What I still don't understand is why they think that once someone has found a portal that they'd want to go elsewhere to all these stupid piddly little indie sites to find games. It doesn't make sense. Traffic leakage? Bullshit! All it's doing is starving innovation in the industry and forcing us to write games to portal specs. Even if I get Titan Attacks on a portal what good is it going to do the rest of my games that they won't touch if all references to Puppygames are removed? Or more laughably, if references to Puppygames remain, but you have to manually fecking search for Puppygames? It's a joke. It's like intensive farming - you get a bit more food in the short term but screw the ecosystem till there's only one plant growing all over the bloody world.

Cas :)

Oh man, talk about being pulled in every direction. Now I'm back in the no camp. >_< I think take the weekend off and worry about this again on Monday. Viva la revolusoin Cas!

[princec]

If you want to make money ignore me.

Cas :)

[AVataRR]

I'd like to make money eventually, but I mainly depend on my maths tutor gig and parents for income. I haven't got any kids yet (YET?! I hope I'm not tempting fate!) so I don't have too many expenses. ^_^

[princec]

In that case you're in the perfect position to write the games you want to write, and two fingers up at the portals. Good luck!

Cas :)

[Bmc]

if you are still depending on your parents for income, you must still be in school.

make the game you want, worry about business later... because chances are you aren't ready yet anyways.

[svero]

Even if I get Titan Attacks on a portal what good is it going to do the rest of my games that they won't touch if all references to Puppygames are removed? Or more laughably, if references to Puppygames remain, but you have to manually fecking search for Puppygames? It's a joke.

Well putting a game up on a portal that someone has spent money to build an audience for does not preclude you from doing the best to get your own sales with your own version of the game. Its not an either or situation.