Discussion about indieshop

[Cypherior]

We have planned to set up an internet-based shop for independent material(music, games, movies etc). Our idea is to transfer the material only via internet and we wouldn`t be handling any CDs or any other concrete material. This means that customers will download the material straight from our servers in the proper file format(i.e. music in mp3 files, games in installers or compressed etc). We are not planning to use any copy protection system by ourself(game developer can of course generate somekind of a cd-key or similar system).

Now we have got to that point in our plans that it is time to find out your intrest in this kind of a service. The payment-system would be based on comissions. At the moment we have planned that the producer of the material would get about 60-70% of the net income. The price of the product will be desided by the producer. The basic idea is to keep the payment system simple and easy to understand.

We are trying to design the service as cheap and low-risk as we can. Our small group consist of few students(The University of Tampere, Business studies) and we understand the importance of low risk. Therefore we will not take any costs for adding your material to be sold on our web shop. The comissions would be paid every month and the payment method can be decided separately with every producer(we would prefer paypal which is secure and easy to use).

We would be very intrested in having your material to be sold in our service. We were wondering that would it be possible to have your material to our web shop if we decided to start this kind of an internet service? All comments, questions and notifications are more than welcome!

you can also email us!
Kimmo.Liimatainen@uta.fi

[digriz]

I could be mistaken about what you're describing but it sounds like an affiliate system. There are many examples of this that are relevant to the shareware/indiegamer market. Have a look at

www.reflexive.com
www.plimus.com
www.esellerate.net
www.regnow.com

You could easily sell the games affiliated from these sites without having people apply to you. You decide which games you want to host and sell.

[theshadowfan]

Most portals have their own security code installed in the game. Being on multiple portals means that your game is protected in many ways. Personally I wouldn't be interested in a portal that didn't protect my game.

[bignobody]

digriz is right. I use Plimus for exactly what you describe, and they only take 10%. What are you going to do that is worth me giving up another 20-30%?

[Cypherior]

Hello,

Very good comments.
Digriz:
Our idea is to try to combine also other indieproducts to the shop. Im not sure but I guess those sites don`t give those products to be sold on their affiliates own netshops. And we are also trying to get skills in networking/gathering resources.

theshadowfan:
I didn`t quite follow there. Some portals that sell indie games install their own cd-key(or similar) to the product itself? Do they generate a unique code for all the games or? Of couse we could pack those games in .zip files and use password but I think it doesnt help anything. Please explain that again, I`m a bit slow :>

bignobody:
The commission amount can be set to each product or developer separately. Also the size of the game has to noted. There is no use for selling game so that we get 2 dollards for using 1gb of our bandwidth. I know that usually these games aren`t too big. If we get this thing running, we would have a wider customer base because we have more products for similar basis(enterntainment).

Please comment if you have anything in your mind! All comments are more than welcome!

ps. Are there any other indepenent game developer communities/forums around?

[theshadowfan]

theshadowfan:
I didn`t quite follow there. Some portals that sell indie games install their own cd-key(or similar) to the product itself? Do they generate a unique code for all the games or? Of couse we could pack those games in .zip files and use password but I think it doesnt help anything. Please explain that again, I`m a bit slow :>


After a portal accepts a game, the developer usually has to send over a copy that does not include the install files. I can't go into specific details as every portal is different. But yeah cd-keys could work. Using a password on zip files isn't worth the effort.

[lennard]

Somebody asked what you would do for the remaining 30% which I didn't quite understand, affiliates typically earn 20-40%. Rusty Axe products are available at BMTMicro and pay 40% of gross, BMT also handles all the billing making trust issues and contract needs between each vendor and yourself moot. Feel free to host any of them and contact me if you want to offer special incentives or if you need graphics for the games.

[Cypherior]

After a portal accepts a game, the developer usually has to send over a copy that does not include the install files. I can't go into specific details as every portal is different. But yeah cd-keys could work. Using a password on zip files isn't worth the effort.

Hello theshadowfan

Is it possible that you could put some portal link for example, i need to check this method out. Thank you for pointing this out.

[anttti]

some portal link for example

Portals are pretty much listed here: List of Portals (http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=2720).

-antti