Oh I see, probably this information left in the book from the first version then.
It not about publishing AppGameKit and mobile apps really, it about publishing indie games in general.
Yes, I know money wise it not a big deal to be able to publish our games on different stores but the book also got a good point on that why would you let a publisher to publish your game if you want to make money:
To be successful, you need to to make your game known by people. To do so, in first place you should run your own website where you can share information about your game. It cost money and not only to run a website but also to protect it.
I do have a wordpress website and it a really pain in a but to keep it running because it under constant attack by bots and hackers, they were successfully make the website crash few times by causing damage to the MySQL database.
Since I know next to nothing about MySQL, I had to ask my host provider to help me restore the scripts running the database since I was getting an error when I tried to restore my previous backup.
No infections so far thanks to protection I'm using and other security techniques, but it just make me think I'm not going to renew the domain and host next year simply because it just doesn't worth the time. Not only money, but it also require time to run a website, you need to keep your eyes on it and keep up to date what is happening with your website and how to protect it.
A publisher can run a website or product page on their website for you to share details about your game.
To make your game known by people you may also want to advertise your game which is also cost money. The publisher can help you with that as well if not through paying for adverts, but the publisher could put some ads on their own websites and they can share details about your game on their facebook page, youtube channel which may already followed by thousands of people.
Without a publisher, basically you need to hunt for people on forums, on youtube and social media and may even pay for adverts and hope that people gonig to start talking about your game and recommend it which takes some time and slow process and by the end you may end up with only couple of hundreds people did read something about your game. A publisher can bring attention of thousands of people to your game straight away, so that's a huge plus.
Even though there are so many stores available even for indie developers, you may want the game to be available from your website as well, since the stores also take some % of the retail price. Maybe I'm wrong but I believe Steam takes 20% something like that from each sale, I don't really know at this point, but to sell games in stores also cost you money on each sale.
If you want to sell your game on your own, you need to setup servers so people can download your game and demo and you need to provide payment system which again not only to be there but also cost time to maintain it, make sure it safe, up and running and finally you need to provide support if someone got trouble with the service which is basically a full time job if you don't want disappointed customers.
Again a publisher can help you with this as well, especially TGC as they got their own stores and infrastructure already.
Finally, Steam. The most popular store on the PC, brings you millions of potential customers from all over the world for a small amount of registration fee and revenue share. For the first time it cost you not only money but time to be able to publish your game on Steam since it needs to be voted by people and if your game got no fan base already, it may going to take a long time to get your game on Steam. And even though you pay the registration cost, there is a risk you may not going to success simply because not enough people bothered to vote on your game and some people may even down vote your game.
A publisher already present on Steam can help you on this since your game don't need to greenlight and able to bring attention to you game.
And there is also an other thing, if someone think that you have been using anything in the game without permission or license, illegally, you can get sued. In this case, you need to provide evidence of every content in the game is original or properly licensed.
If you fail to do it, you may end up with need to pay tons of money to someone based on how much sales you just made. It can be anything, a single sprite, a sound, the story it self but even if you have proof and you are safe, the whole process requires your time.
A publisher takes the full responsibility and basically, I think this is the most time consuming process of publishing a game since the publisher need to make sure everything is legal so if they get sued, they get the hit and you are safe behind the publisher.
I don't say that you can use copyright content with a publisher and they gonna get the damage instead of you, but the publisher can and will make sure legally everything is covered so both of you are safe.
Of course it unlikely to happen when you make small money or no money at all on a title, but in case you are making good money, you can be sure companies, and people going to take a look at your game to see if they can find anything so they can sue you and make money that way.
In my opinion if you are about to publish a $5 game or free with adverts or in-game purchase, it not that important since you unlikely able to make much money on a single title anyway.
But in case you are trying to race in higher category and trying to make good money on a single title, a publisher could definitely help you to be successful not only on publishing, advertising, sales and licensing but also with testing, development and customer support.
Does anyone know about any publisher who would willing to publish an indie game? I mean of course we can contact couple of publishers once we have our game (almost) ready, if it good, someone would definitely publish it, but is there any publisher out there who is promoting such service for indie developers?
I don't have anything waiting to be published, I'm just curious
Thanks.
