A Question About Distributors ( For Midnight Synergy )

[Ryan Hayward]

I have a question about distributors of Wonderland such as ArcadeTown and Oberon Media.
How exactly does it work and do you have to have a lot of trust in these distributors to do the honest thing by giving you your fair share of the pie when a game of yours is sold ? I noticed that most of them do the credit card processing themselves....
How much of the pie would they get and how much would you get ? ( don't feel obliged to answer this if you perfer to keep it secret )

I hope you can answer this as I have bought a lot of shareware games recently, I just want to know that my money is also reaching the teams behind the games properly. Nowadays I do my best to buy direct from the developers, though.....

[Midnight Synergy]

I have a question about distributors of Wonderland such as ArcadeTown and Oberon Media.
How exactly does it work and do you have to have a lot of trust in these distributors to do the honest thing by giving you your fair share of the pie when a game of yours is sold ? I noticed that most of them do the credit card processing themselves....
How much of the pie would they get and how much would you get ? ( don't feel obliged to answer this if you perfer to keep it secret )

I hope you can answer this as I have bought a lot of shareware games recently, I just want to know that my money is also reaching the teams behind the games properly. Nowadays I do my best to buy direct from the developers, though.....

I obviously cannot give specific numbers, but let me give some generalities. The amount of royalties that go to the developer when you buy from a "portal" website varies, and ranges from up to 50% to as little as 10% (the latter if one portal is actually licencing the game from an intermediate portal which in turn licensed from the developer).

About the honesty - I do trust them, (a) because we have no choice (checking books is both expensive and ultimately futile) and (b) because it would be foolish for a portal to cheat their developers. If any one of the developers found out, it would basically ruin the portal's business. A site like AOL has bigger things to worry about than squeezing a few extra dollars out of a developer. (I hope!)

Obviously, buying from the developer directly does ensure that the largerst share of your money reaches the actual developer. I do the same as you - I tend to buy direct - but that is also because I know a lot of these people, and I know it's not always easy to makes ends meet. At the same time, I am not as "anti-portal" as many other developers. They do a great job at putting the games in front of a lot of people. I'm sure many players on this community wouldn't have heard of Wonderland if it wasn't for a portal. (This is a large topic of discussion among indie developers with opinions ranging all over the place).

Hope this helps satifsy your curiosity.

[Ryan Hayward]

Thanks buddy, yes it certainly did !
I discovered Wonderland Secret Worlds through Oberon Media as the game demo actually came pre-installed with my new Compaq computer.
So yes I can understand your point. Some portals must be very good for business, especially those that can directly influence the consumers through very good placement.