Hello, I am actually working lonely on an IOS game, and two publishers recently sent me emails to publish my game.
they both share 70% for me / 30% for them
one of them said that he will make my game featured by apple with his contact.
I have never released a game on IOS, i worry that alone i could do many mistakes and having 100% of nothing won’t help me neither.
Have you ever worked with a publisher? was it helpful?
Read the fine-print: Actually 5% for you, 95% for them.
Never sign-up with a publisher unless you are looking for full-time employment.
In theory a publisher can be a very useful thing - someone who can take care of marketing and distribution, organise PR, help you find development resources and support, and so on.
In practice many publishers screw things up, half-assing or miscommunicating your game, sucking at getting high-profile PR, etc, doing just enough for you not to be able to sue them for their share but no more than that. Particularly in the mobile space where there’s so many companies out there that it’s easy to lose people in the noise.
So it comes down to whether it’s a good publisher or not. I’d be distrustful of any publisher contacting me out of the blue. Look at other games they’ve published, see if there are any you know, and try to contact the devs of the other games to ask about their experiences.
I think publishers can be a big help in the iOS market. I recently signed with one. I really can’t talk about anything related to my deal, including who the publisher is. They want to control all press, etc. But two things about your post I can comment on.
I don’t think any publisher can guarantee an Apple feature. Some have more contact with Apple than others, but guaranteeing a spot sounds like a lie to me.
The revenue split may be a reasonable deal depending on when the money is split. Be sure to find out what expenses the publisher may take out before calculating your split.
Luckily, publishers are pretty easy to vet, at least as far as how successful they are. You can research their games’ historical rankings through tools like AppData and App Annie, and also see which games were featured. I’ve used AppData and it is $60 for a month’s access. I don’t know how much App Annie is, but I believe it is much more expensive.
I decided that the “100% of nothing” option was not for me. But I’ve yet to release my game so I may have to eat my words at some point.
What superpig said plus:
Is it ad revenue that they want to split or actual sales?
Have you seen a draft contract? Do they let you keep all rights to the game IP? Unlike Android, Apple only have one store, so this will be the only version you can publish. If they screw up the marketing or say they’ll market it then don’t, then it’ll not sell like it should have at the start.
As far as I can tell, if you want it to sell bucketloads you’ll probably need to spend about $1000-6000 yourself on advertising space on mutliple websites. Unless the publisher has direct links to the marketers/sites and can obtain free advertising space on lots of websites the likelyhood of making their ad costs back at just 30% share is tiny.
If the publisher uses their apple account to sell it, will they allow you read-only access to keep an eye on sales volumes? Otherwise, how do you know if the payments you get are realistic and you’re not being ripped off! Do you have the right to terminate the contract and have the game removed from their store if you are unhappy about the way things are going?
Are they a well known publisher? I would say that the less well known they are, the higher the risk to you.
they have published many games, they asked me to sign a paper very complicated to understand, but it say that i should not say anything to tierce people about our deal, its french company with 20+ games published by year, and their game have an average of 60 rate or comments, i dont know if its a lot, and i can’t find any complaint about them on internet, so I have really no idea about my future decision
I think you should approach a bunch of other publishers with your game. If this publisher is successful and interested, there is a good chance that others may be. See what your options are.
EDIT: And make sure to have a TestFlight build ready. Many publishers won’t look until they can test it on a device.
there are 2 main ways:
the “traditional” one where you get a percentage - from what I understand this is the least reliable one
the “sell your game to the publisher” route - this is a nice route of you actually want to earn something. you make your game, sell it for 3-10k depending on how good it is (assuming it has decent art and isn’t buggy and is fun), and tada! it’s possible to negotiate to still be left in the credits
the advantage of #2 is that you can then reskin the game (same mechanic, different art/characters/name) and resell it several more times for 3-10k. this is completely legal as game mechanics can’t be copywritten - art can - don’t resell the SAME game with the SAME art - this is fraud.
Actually, separating the “expression” from the “idea” of a videogame is not that simple, and several recent court judgements have found that clone games have been deemed to infringe IP, even though they have completely different graphics, sound, and codebase from the original work on which they are based.
right - to be safe, it’s best to make them a “little” different - perhaps change the mechanics just a bit/ add some new features. However, no one is going to sue you over an angry bird clone if it’s done with some other animals n stuff and maybe has some new features
the stories of someone being sued are one-offs, and if you by some miracle do get sued - be like “whatevs” , take the game down, and make clones of other games.
ALSO:
It does not have to be a clone of an existing game. Create a game with new/unique mechanics, and sell several reskins!
Well Indie means independent and you’re not indie if you use a publisher…