I am Amar Ahlers from Sila Games. I thought you guys might be interested in knowing that we created a platform that you can use to distribute your Unity3d games internationally for free. The idea is very simple, you can either submit a Unity game for free, then anyone can play it, or you can use our platform to monetize your game in which case you earn 71.5% of the monthly user fee of any user that plays your game (the rest is used to run the site, and support developers with marketing).
We are pretty small right now with 25 registered developers that submitted 30+ games. But then again we just launched it and are still running the platform as a closed beta. As of now we mainly have PC web games and a few Android iOS games…
From the technical side you would have to implement our SDK in the game so that we can track how often and how many users play your games, which takes about 10 - 15 minutes…
The 5% equality is an interesting feature. Not sure if the bigger companies will enjoy that much but I like it. Good work on the site design, some of your grammar/capitalization could use some work to seem more “professional” but a native speaker will have no issues reading it.
Thanks. Our thought behind the 5% is that we want all developers to profit, even if their game isn’t discovered yet. And yes we definitely need to improve with the grammar and spelling in the future. (thumbs up)
Yes, we screen every game before it’s released into the platform, and we also maintain the right to object if the game breaks any of our rules. After its released, users can rate the games from 1-10.
Checked out your site, looks pretty cool and the revenue sharing is definitely better than most portals out there.
However, here’s my one issue after I checked out the signup process: most indie developers, at least most of the ones you’ll find on sites like this, do not have registered companies with a Tax ID and all that good stuff. Your signup process, even for individual indie devs, requires a Tax ID number which for individual US citizens is their Social Security Number.
Please don’t take this personally, I’m not saying you’re trying to scam people, but at the same time there’s no way I’m giving my name, address, and SSN to some startup website no matter how legit it might seem.
That is always nice to hear, thank you! I totally understand that concern and agree with your reasoning. I just talked with the Francisco (the main founder) and he said that it is not necessary to include a Tax ID for “registering” and we will remove that asterisk, but before any game is launched a distribution contract is drawn up with the developer (to protect both parties) where some sort of identification is definitely needed. [/S] (In spain the N.I.F or a in Germany a German Personalausweis number would be sufficient).
EDIT: We made the sign up page more clear, but will keep it mandatory to fill it in since it is absolutely necessary for the distribution contract and it would complicate things further in the future.
Also, does strike through text work here?
To add to our credibility, in the bottom of the website you see that we are part of La Salle Technova and we have held a crowdfunding campaign in Spain about a year ago which you can go to when you hit the “Projeggt” button. (I know the video is terrible )
I have checked the site. It seems amazing , specially their business model. I want to clarify a bit about 5% thing with mewdawn.
Does this mean: on every month, 5% of total revenue(from all the user) will be divided among the number of games. Lets say 5% is 1000. Total number of games on this distribution is N(three version of same game is actually three games). Then every developer(even if his/her game is never played this month) will get (1000/N)*X on this month. Where X is number of developer’s game.
So this is it?
I attempted to register, but sadly it ask for TIN(tax identification number), just like sinisterCookie pointed out. I am afraid I will not be getting it any time soon. In my country Bangladesh, TIN is provided to business entity(company) only and the process is kinda mess. mewdawn, you said you will need some sort of identification while agreement. Will the national ID, birth certificate or educational certificates etc be ok? And oh, about payment system. What kind of payment do you support. I hate to tell you credit card system is also a mess here. Paypal is not supported. To be eligible for international credit/debit card in Bangladesh, one must have around $51K(yes dollar, not BDT ) deposited in bank account or earn $2K every month :(. That is why I applied for payoneer international debit card, it will hopefully ship in next month. Anyway let me know about these details.
71.5% of the monthly user fee? So if the user fee is $10 a month, I get $7.51 for every user who plays my game? And what if there are 100 games, is the 71.5% split?
I think the system works like this: their sdk knows total game statistics. Lets say you have three game, each having 3 versions(PC,MAC,Android). So nine games. Lets name them like: game1,game2,game3 etc. User A played around 100 hours this month. User A played your game1, 3 hours this month. So user A played 3% game1 out of total gameplay, this month. Now user fee is $10, this month. so developer, meaning you will get, $X= 0.03100.715 for game1. That was the revenue for one game per user.
71.5 (%) is the total percentage that developers get for their games. The remaining 28.5 % goes to Sila Games.
Now, 66,5% of the user fee goes directly to the developers where 5% is split between every game in the platform. If you happen to have more games, you will get more of the 5%.
The 66,5% of the user fee is split between the PERCENTAGE of each game played for every user. I made a quick mock up which is attached below.
Constraints are: 4.95€ / Month (we currently only have small games, this is subject to change). it only represents 1 user, and only 66.5% which is directly earned by developers.
"Will the national ID, birth certificate or educational certificates etc be ok? "
Yes, the national ID is perfect.
I am not sure about the payment situation, but I will discuss it and report back.
These things are ok for me, in fact not only from me, but also for every developer of paypal unsupported countries.
direct check payout which is lengthy and cumbersome
wire transfer
via payoneer debit card
Option 3 is wonderful for me (in fact I am confident about all indie from BD).
In the meantime, I have posted about this distribution platform in facebook “unity bangladesh developer group”, just here. Lets see what they think of it .
Thank you for also posting it in Facebook, maybe also show them the user site ( www.silagames.com) and were they can grab a registration code to try it out?
I updated the post with a working link!
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