I stumbled on this site. I want to know more options to digital publishing my games without the use of steam, ps4, xbox, wii, android, ios. I want more options
GOG seems pretty good. Is it free publishing? How hard is it to get a game up? The competition seems harsh. A lot of big name games.
I think you should still concentrate on steam. Other portals will follow but ideally you need to concentrate first on one site so you can get charted etc. If people purchase from lots of different places on launch, it will dilute any online charts which can get more people to see your title.
As indie you should focus on Steam (obviously), GOG and Desura in my opinion. Sure, Steam is far bigger than them, but fewer sales does not equal no sales. The way I plan it for my game is to release a Steam version with Steamworks (achievements, cloud saves, etc.) and a DRM-free version on Desura and GOG.
It seems like a good idea, because there are people who value Steamworks and don’t care about DRM, and there are people who don’t care about achievements, cloud saves, etc but shun DRM.
Getting on Desura shouldn’t be a problem, considering that it was an indie friendly platform even before Steam.
GOG seems to be another story though. If I browse the storefront of GOG it, unlike Steam and Desura, lacks the really shitty indies. I don’t know whether they have quality control for sure, but it looks like it.
Keep in mind that GOG is a 100% DRM-free store.
Combine this with the fact that Unity makes it easy to support Windows, Linux and Mac at the same time, and you should be able to cover a wide part of your desired target audience.
I’ve never released any software on Good Old Games, (still developing stuff) but I have an extensive personal library on their service. I’ve always loved old games, and have been playing dated titles for the better part of two decades.
One important thing to note is that GoG is DRM-free, and that is basically a requirement of their service. If you want to release a game on there, you are basically providing the internet with a version of your game with zero DRM protection. (extremely easy to pirate and distribute on torrents)
It doesn’t really seem to have harmed GoG themselves, their service seems to be doing quite respectably, and many developers seem to be able to make money through them. I know I’ve spent quite a bit of money on GoG, and will probably spend more. But it is something to consider.
Personally, I intend to release some of my eventual software on GoG, but that’s me.
What if you’ve got retro graphics?
I don’t think the graphics are significant. Also, I don’t agree that you should focus down on just one site. Getting more sales from more sites is good. It’s far more important to get promotion from the site you’re launching on than it is to attempt to manipulate charts. Besides, GoG is not nearly as chaotic as Steam Greenlight. If you aren’t talking to GoG with a finished or near-finished product, they aren’t going to let you release on their system.
I don’t understand early access. If a majority of your sales come early, then you’re going to be less motivated to finish because you’ve potentially already passed your peak sales.
At least, I assume that’s why so many games drag on so slowly after release.
It’s not a terrible idea, Minecraft proved that even a software’s alpha stage can be worth money to some people.
But it is getting abused rather badly in Steam at the moment, with a lot of lesser developers charging for experiences that should realistically be treated as free alphas/betas. (and in many cases, over-charging for it) Your game should at least be in a largely playable state, and entertaining before you start asking for money. A lot of the current early access flood is just capitalizing on what amounts to little more than student efforts. Experimenting is good. But expecting other people to pay you for throwing stuff at the wall is not.
It’s a great concept in theory.
As @RichardKain said, look no further than Minecraft. After all, running out of money before you’re able to finish a game is a huge problem for indies without massive backing. Before Steam, Desura picked this up and started “Alpha Funding”. Look at Project Zomboid (a really good game) for an Alpha Funding success story.
The biggest flaw those kind of systems have is that the players buy them, hoping that the game will be worth its money at some point in the future. It’s pay and pray.
Besides this, it’s ripe for exploitation. A lot of the really crappy Early Access games seem like the developer ran out of motivation, but still wanted to make some bucks off his unfinished game. Nobody would buy a crappy looking, clearly unfinished game unless they believe that this will be improved upon. Just slap an Early Access label on it and you’re good to go.
Before Valve stepped in and forbid it, a lot of the Early Access marketing was basically promising you the world and explaining how awesome those games will be in the future, instead of explaining you why you should give them money right now. This kind of reinforces my theory.
GoG was not a publishing platform, they got deals to sell relatively dead games but that probably isn’t enough to keep them afloat and Steam/HB often sell many of the games that they offer anyway which is always the preferred platform to get the games anyway… So they started doing Indie titles recently and shift gears, trying to appeal to a wider audience.
I guess it could be a cool niche, but I wouldn’t target them specifically over Steam or something.
Technically, they’ve always been a publishing/distribution platform. It’s just that they initially and prominently targeted older titles. Just because the content is older doesn’t change the function of what they were doing. Also, a major push for GoG is the DRM-free nature of their platform. For quite a few gamers, this is a major distinction, and a possible point in GoG’s favor. Some gamers are picky about the DRM on their downloadable games, and insist on being able to have fewer constraints on digital offerings. GoG is one of the few distribution platforms that provides this.
Steam is generally considered to be the “big” one, so I would agree that you wouldn’t focus on one over the other. But as I already stated, I think that getting your game on as many storefronts as possible is the best approach. When you’re a smaller developer, more storefronts means more potential customers. An extra storefront could possibly tack on another 30-40% of your total revenue. Even a 20% increase would make distribution on a platform like GoG worthwhile.
@TheSniperFan @RichardKain I can see the positives, but I watch an awful lot of Jim Sterling so you can’t blame me for being cynical 
It is being totally abused which is too bad. At this point I would never pay for early access on Steam unless I definitely knew for sure it was a game I would buy no matter what. I think early access should be unpaid alpha/beta and that’s it, discourage developers from scamming people this way and allow it to be used to gather word of mouth and playtest feedback.
@Tomnnn I used to watch him too too, so I understand where you’re coming from.
That’s what I meant by »in theory«. It would be good, but people exploit the hell out of it and that’s why we can’t have nice things. 
…Unless you’re making something icky like a game that’s about sex. If your game is about brutally murdering innocent people while they beg for their lives (something like Hatred, for instance), Steam will happily sell it, but if your game is about pleasure and love and sexuality and all that nasty gross stuff then take that crap elsewhere. That kind of garbage has no place in polite society, let alone gaming, which is only for kids.
This has been a pubic service announcement.
@Ony I wonder what would stand more of a chance on steam…
Anna Nicole Smith simulator
Hatred middle & high school annihilation DLC
^ not even going to go there.
GoG isn’t only for old or indie games either. Seems that they may be pushing into newer stuff. I got a promo code with my new video card to get Witcher 3 for free when it’s released. I had to redeem the code through NVidia who then gave me a redemption code to use on GoG. I used the code there and now Witcher 3 shows up on my shelf with (soon) on it and says it will be available for download May 19th.
CD Projekt owns Good Old Games. I think the acquisition happened a year or two ago, but it happened. CD Projekt Red is a game developer that is also owned by CD Projekt, and is the developer of the Witcher 3.
I’m not saying you’re wrong about more large-scale games coming to Good Old Games. It would not surprise me to see more and more games showing up on that service. But the Witcher 3 probably isn’t the best of examples. It was ALWAYS going to show up on Good Old Games.
Good to know. I guess I wasn’t aware that CD Projekt owned GoG.