[help] Licencing out Games

[swcAndrew]

I haven't licenced out any of my games yet, but just because I am new at it I don't want to get ripped off. For those who have given out their games to sites, how much did you charge and what deal did you make? Meaning what did you give them in return after they payed you? Like besides the .swf what kind of rights do they have towards your game?

[blakfeld]

Your best bet is probably to talk to leason, as he owns pnflashgames.com, in fact, Id recommend selling through him, as it just seems to be the better deal as you keep the copyright and such.

As for other places, I honestly couldnt answer (helpful I know) but I would imagine it differed from place to place

[swcAndrew]

Yeah, I am definatly going to talk to Leason in the future but I was just wondering the methods of other sites.

[Squize]

Each client is different, it's down to you to sort the contract out.

As a rule of thumb very few portals want the exclusive licence to a title.

Squize.

[leason]

I am a bit biased, of course, and I am very much looking forward to talking with you about your games Andrew, but I thought I'd drop some general advice. I've talked to a bunch of developers now -- I'm no expert in this field, but I have noticed that besides getting cheated out of some cash, the number one thing that developers complain about is what happens to their game after they sell it. One of the overwhelming reasons we don't buy your game from you is not about money, but ownership and the importance of that. As a developer, especially an indy developer, you pour your heart and soul into your games. It's like art, and who are we to take your art and change it? It would be like taking the Vanilla Sky and putting an airplane in the sky because we think it would sell better that way. I like knowing that the games in my store are not mine, they are still yours and you can still be proud of them.

It's very sappy, I know, but it is true. And don't get cynical on me Squize, you notice I did put money in there right?

[leight]

One of the overwhelming reasons we don't buy your game from you is not about money, but ownership and the importance of that

So you don't actually buy the games, they are hosted on your site and people can play&rank them. I notice also taht you have commercial games, this means you buy some. So what i'm gathering is that there are two options. Give a .swf to you, or if you see a great game, you offer to buy it? And to get that money to buy it i'm guessing you get money from the site some how.

I'm just curious thats all

[swcAndrew]

I am really not sure about this, Lee correct me if I am wrong. I believe Lee markets the product and the profits go to the author. I am guessing you may take a cut from it though to run your site?

[leason]

That's correct Andrew. I don't own any of the games on pnFlashGames.com, including the commercial games. When a developer wants to sell a game in our store, they sign the GDA (Game Developer Agreement) which details their relationship with pnFlashGames.com and the customers. Basically, we market your games and give you an audience. We also give you a forum in which to offer support for your products. pnFlashGames gets a cut of your sales. We are merely a distributor of games, not a reseller. It's a very different model than what I have seen on other sites that sell games.

We also market to a different group: webmasters. As opposed to miniclip and shockwave.com, we don't sell downloadable games to end users (yet). We sell games to webmasters to place on thier site for the time being. There are a host of services that can be offered in that channel and we'll be introducing more of those as time goes on (multiplayer, site vs site competitions..ect). We already have the Automated Installation Service that allows webmasters that use PostNuke to perform batch installations of the games onto their sites, making it very easy for them to manage their arcade and keep fresh content in it. Those are the kinds of things we do and make money on. Basically, pnFlashGames is a hit generation tool. The games draw in new visitors and the highscores keep bringing them back.

[JediMind]

I have to leave for something, so I just make a quick note.
Usualy, not always but standard is that you hold on to the .fla including the rights to sell it to anyone else after the client pay you for a license. Even if this might be old news to you, I think many make misstakes right here, I did myself. Somone wanted to pay me $500 bucks for some sucky game I had. But I thought I was to give him the full rights and I had to leave the game forever. When infact this guy just wanted the game on there site for two weeks for a special event. So...