{"id":1169,"date":"2011-05-04T09:00:51","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T08:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2011-05-04T09:00:51","modified_gmt":"2011-05-04T08:00:51","slug":"indie-retail-why-bother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2011\/05\/04\/indie-retail-why-bother\/","title":{"rendered":"Indie retail… why bother?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came to the conclusion a while ago that retail selling of indie games was a total waste of effort. I have a bookcase to the right of me with a big pile of boxes of published games on it, I can see Kudos 2 (lovely box), Democracy 1 in English and German, Oval Office, and the e-games ‘Space Arcade Collection’. However, I have concluded that the long term utility of these deals is thus:<\/p>\n

People who aren’t in the industry who visit my home-office are very slightly impressed.<\/p>\n

As that number of people is somewhere between 0 and 2 people a year, and as I never care what they think, I wonder what the point is. Oh the money? Well… in theory yes, but the problems with retail are huge:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You need to spend 4 hours reading the 30 page contract 3 times, to spot the bit where they say they can deduct whatever they like as expenses from your royalties.<\/li>\n
  2. You do a ton of work up front doing stupid crap like animating publisher logos at the start of the game, and it only sells 6 copies.<\/li>\n
  3. You don’t get paid for retail until long after the end of the sales quarter. If at all. If the company doesn’t go bankrupt and then re-incorporate the next day owing you nothing (commonplace).<\/li>\n
  4. You have NO IDEA how many copies were sold. you have to trust a person you never met, in another country. He trusts the distributor, who is in a third country, in the developing world. Yeah right…<\/li>\n
  5. Your game is pirated immediately, as 50% of the staff in the packaging warehouse think they are ‘l33t’ because they are in some childish warez ‘scene’. *sigh*<\/li>\n
  6. You are now commited to providing tech support to peole for whom you have NO IDEA if they bought the game or pirated it.<\/li>\n
  7. People who bought the game through the Swedish branch of a French-owned store selling copies of your game made by the Belgian distributor for the Canadian publisher you signed a deal with through your agent in Los Angeles now email you saying they want a refund. They think it’s your fault.<\/li>\n
  8. Once a quarter, for the next 10 years you get mailed a $3 royalty check it costs $20 to cash.<\/li>\n
  9. Half the boxed copies you sell sold ‘second-hand’ on online sites turn out to be copies manufactured by some dodgy CD-replicator who pocket 100% of the cash.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    When I get email from someone that says “greetings, we are a retail publisher of high quality…” I just bin it. I don’t care who it is. Retail blew it big time. I no longer care. I have enough boxes now. They are fab, but if you want to own Gratuitous Space Battles, buy it online :D. I had a poster made for my office instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I came to the conclusion a while ago that retail selling of indie games was a total waste of effort. I have a bookcase to the right of me with a big pile of boxes of published games on it, I can see Kudos 2 (lovely box), Democracy 1 in English and German, Oval Office,<\/p>\n

    Continue Reading… Indie retail… why bother?<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1170,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions\/1170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}