A New Free game and Program Each Day

[Storm]

Hi Guys,

It's been a while so forgive me if this post is in the wrong forum section.

Have any of you seen the site Giveaway of the Day (http://www.giveawayoftheday.com)? - They give away (hence the name!) a free program and a free game each day. These programs and games are not freeware, it's something you have to pay from around 20$ and up if you had to buy them.

Todays game is Snowy: The Bear's Adventures

Yes there are restrictions: You have to install the program within 24 hours, there is no support etc. but still some great programs.

Just so there are no misunderstandings: I am in no way affilliated with the site www.giveawayoftheday.com, I'm just happy I stumpled across this site!

[whisperstorm]

Anyone know if there's spyware or other stuff installed? Seems too good to be true...

[ChrisP]

Good question. The users get a free game out of it, the game developer gets publicity, but what do the site operators get? Do the developers pay them or something? It's not very clear.

[lennard]

"Do the developers pay them or something?"

Is that sarcasm? I'm not sure why a developer would give away their software on somebody elses site. GGOTD at least gets the ad revenue (and bandwidth is cheap these days).

[lennard]

Just read some user comments who are PO'd because the games are actually just trial versions... Reading the site you really don't get that at all.

[ChrisP]

No, no sarcasm... I'm genuinely curious. How does the site even manage to break even, let alone turn a profit? Where's the income stream?

It says on the About page: "We will pay the software publisher for the Giveaway license". So they're paying not only for hosting/bandwidth, but also for the products themselves. I'm not convinced that ad revenue alone would be enough to cover that - especially since I don't see any ads on the site anyway.

[Storm]

Just read some user comments who are PO'd because the games are actually just trial versions... Reading the site you really don't get that at all.

I downloaded Time Breaker for my son, and it contained the full 150 levels..

[JoKa]

Maybe these people have downloaded games which had passed the 24 hour limit for the full version? If I get this right, the games will stay listed, but return to trial state once the discount time is over.

[Philippe]

I think so too, and I think this is how they get their revenue - after an app's freebie day has passed, they probably act as an affiliate while the app is still listed on the site.

(Edit: scratch that, I've just checked out an older app and an older game, and they link to the developer, but the link does not seem to contain any affiliate ID)

[FlySim]

My guess is that they intend to make money from advertising. Worked OK for YouTube (well at least the founders just got $800 million).
May have trouble finding enough decent games to give away...

[Exylex]

My guess is that they intend to make money from advertising. Worked OK for YouTube (well at least the founders just got $800 million).
May have trouble finding enough decent games to give away...

they get money from "director accounts" too.

[AJirenius]

I actually believe in that idea of advertising.
After the 24h day is over you get lots of advertising time as the games still there and lots of people are coming in to download the game of today. Many of them who missed the day before might just click the link for your trial version as well.

Also if the kids like the game there is no chance that that father can reinstall the computer without later on buying the game you made ;)

well.. at least I believe it a little...

[JoshuaSmyth]

Seems like a pretty good idea to me.... especially if you are about to release a sequal...

[mrkwang]

Only 1st. 24 hours it's FREE, after that, full price again. Personally I d/led several games from that site(around 10 or more), works as full game exactly.

This is most important thing. Time Limit is based on Install, NOT Download.

And that site is advertising other games from same publisher / distributor. This could be good for some company, which has some other games to advertise & some older games which doesn't sell very well.

[Pogacha]

What comes to my mind is people saying:
"What stupid I was ... paying for those games when they were here for free. It has no sense to pay, I just have to wait for my game" ... and after a year: "what's the hell, there are only crap games in the world".
Your sales: 0
Players happiness: -3

[Pogacha]

Sorry for double post.

[Sybixsus]

I think Pogacha has a point. Many people have always said that putting freeware games on a shareware site was kinda pointless because the crossover between people looking for free games and people prepared to pay for games was quite small. A site like this is surely going to build up a large regular audience of people looking for anything so long as it's free ( assuming they can keep finding stuff to give away. ) It just seems to me as though it's liable to bring you a large amount of low value traffic.

[Bad Sector]

If there are one sale per 100 free games per person than all they have to do is to bring 100 visitors each day for one sale per day and make sure these visitors stay there (or for each visitor leaving, someone else comes).

Having 100 visitors each day there is an easy thing to do, since they provide quality games for free. Actually it's easy to do much more than that - which is required in order to be able to maintain the site and pay the developers for the free games.

Well, at least that's how it looks to me. I may be wrong :-P.

[JoshuaSmyth]

It's hard to determine what the long term effects of such a site would be...

But I think the important part is that the end-user doesn't end up choosing the game they get for free.

It will bring more people in contact with the indie game scene. Educate them about all the other games out there, and then they can buy the games that they really want to play, rather than the ones offered for free. I could wait for years for democracy to appear on the site (with no garantee that it ever will) or I could just buy it now for $20.

Broadcast TV vs DVD sales anyone?

[Grey Alien]

I would have said that it's a great list building idea, but then I discovered you don't need to enter an email address to download a game!