So I'm publishing my second game..

Hello unity people, I am almost done with my second game I made with unity, only a few minors are left and I'm starting to think about publishing it.

I published my first one on itch.io for free because it was awful(but a really good learning experience), however I think this one is actually worth something and want to make money of it.

So I was wondering which websites are good for publishing my game so that i don't pay anything because I am working on a nonexistent budget.

I know itch.io is okay to make some money but you need PayPal to make money off it. Sadly my country doesn't have PayPal so I need to find a solution

 

Steam?
Gamejolt
kongregate
GoG
Self publish on your own website

Care to share some visuals of the current game and a link to the previous awful game?

 

Steam is good but it seems to be a very different "animal" compared to anything i've experienced that far.

Basically, steam is like having a good app at the google play story - it won't make you rich but you'd think "imagine if i had 10 each one selling that many!".

However...like I said steam basically feels different and out of the 100+ emails you're gonna get soon after launch, most will be people looking for freebies, youtube interviews etc BUT one or 2 of these email will look as if they can save your life. How, you'd figure out.

Hope ^ doesn't sound too crazy and esoteric but just my recent experience since launching my game on steam...

I may give you other advices like:

export as apk and publish on google play;
amazon;
gog;
sourceforge
your site but you will need a LOT of marketing this way

 

Whatever you do, avoid Steam. It's a shady business with a bad reputation, especially in the indie community. hehe

 

But as i said i have no budget so i cannot afford to put it on steam(which is like 100$?) What is like the indy and cheap version of steam? Again i don't want to pay fees to be able to launch my game

 

I'll post those things tomorrow, theanimator, for sure

 

itch.io

 

Come on, you want to make money but you are not willing to invest $ 100 ?

Can we see your new project?

 

Have you tried looking into any of the services offered by Humble Bundle?

https://www.humblebundle.com/developer

 

I'm already happy with Steam in the sense that they gave me great exposure and don't want to trash them but he has a point. $100 is kind of too much compared to the free-for-first year Amazon(for apps...) and the $25 Google play. Only Apple are in the same category of greedyness .

Gog are free by the way and some publishers will handle the $100 for you if your game is really cool.
Though avoid Black Shell Medi, these guys are shady as *****. Can't remember dealing with more bizarre people recently

 

If you're developing games with the expectation that you won't recover that $100 in sales... you're in the wrong line of work.

 

Well it matters which one gives the better option really. If you're dying from thirst and someone offers you a bottle of water priced $100 - sure you'd buy it. But if you have the option to buy another bottle for $25?

In my case i surpassed the fee shortly after launch but again wouldn't bet that Steam is more useful than say Google, as in google I'd invest x10 times less to create way more apps. Given the same time google is better investment. The same applies and to Amazon. You can't make it with one app but you can with many, that philosophy can't happen on Steam .

 

How little do you expect your games to make if 75$ matters to you?

Also, why compare apples to oranges? Steam is a store for PC Games... Google Play is for mobile games.
If you put a mobile game on Steam, of course it will fail miserably, even if priced at mobile levels. On the other hand a game priced as a PC Game will fail in the Google Play store even if it brings PC Game like values, optimized for mobile devices. Trying to sell a game at normal Steam prices (5+$) on the mobile stores only works if you have one hell of a marketing campaign.
If you have approached Steam with the philosophy you were talking about (app spam instead of quality game), of course you did fail. Its not the right market for that. Though I have my doubts you make a reasonable amount of money just with flooding the mobile app stores with shovelware.

 

^ It's all about time.

On steam it will take me 3-4 months to work on a game. On google play for that amount of time I'd have made literally 50 apps. You seriously believe 50 apps can make less than one game? Especially if the game doesn't get good reception. For apps I am no longer even checking reviews, it takes like...5 months and then i somehow randomly arrive at my app's page and read something good or something bad, for steam it's way too risky.

 

The only thing that could make your 50 showelware apps make more money than your one game on Steam is if your Steam game SUCKS big time.

Yes, Steam is a harsh market, and 3-4 months is not a long time to develop a quality PC game.

Yes 50 apps on the app stores might make way less than you think. Most of these will make 0$. Because before anyone downloads them, they get pushed off the frontpage into the depths of the appstores where noone will ever wander. Searches will favor the apps that have more traffic, so basically you app just had its brief period where it could make any impact, and didn't.
Even if somebody did download it, it will still vanish into obscurity quickly. And how much of a difference do some downloads make? Still it will not end up on the frontpage of searches, where the more successfull games with bigger marketing budgets will reside.


Maybe your 50 shovelware apps make >0$ in the end, thanks to the economy of scale (people buy crap sometimes, and some do not bother to return the crap (can you even do that in the Google Play store)... people are more likely to put up with crap if it costs them >1$, or is free). But is single digit revenue per month for all your 50 apps not getting much downloads OR playtime really worth it?

As others have put it, you currently need A LOT of money to make any money on mobile. The cost per user is staggering. If you don't pay that, you simply get no users, and little downloads. So no, while your 50 shovelware apps on the app store might makes SOMETHING, while the failed crap game on Steam will simply linger there without a single unit sold, its still not a good idea.
If you are not ready to invest money, don't bet on the mobile app stores. They have hidden costs that make the 100$ for Steam seem like a bargain.

I will just leave that here:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-a...on-cost-for-an-app-install-on-iOS-and-Android
http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/30/it-costs-more-than-3-to-acquire-a-mobile-user-now-fiksu-finds/

 

^ no really, I disagree. Would love to prove you wrong but gotta go now...

 

The steam fee is only a few hours work as a free lance dev. Sometimes putting down your game to take on a quick cash contract is worthwhile.

 

I am not a professional game developer, I am a 16 year old high school student that has an aspiration to be a great game dev one day.

This game is merely to prove to people I know that I can make SOME money, I am realistically expecting it to make 50-100$, which is not alot but it is something that will motivate me to make better games.

However the MAIN problem is the PayPal. It's required to recieve money on all of those websites you guys listed, but it is not available in my country. Is there any website that directly sends money to your credit card?

Once again I am not willing to spend ANY money on publishing this game.

Link to the first one: https://danilo1214.itch.io/forgotten-hero

I will post images from the second game shortly.

 

Why not release it for free?

Not sure what is the best channel to do that, but this way you do not need to go through PayPal. Of course you are not getting the 50-100$ revenue this way, but really, is this small amount of money more important than getting your game out there?
Depends what you developed the game for really of course... still, keep that possibility in mind.

 

What country do you live in that doesn't allow PayPal?

 

View attachment 192732 I live in Macedonia, it allows paying via paypal, however it doesn't allow recieving via PayPal.
Here are some images from the game

 

Gives me a dark souls vibe

 

That is really great to hear, it is heavily inspired by Dark Souls in terms of combat

 

Just the world character and hud made me think of Dark Souls
You had any friends or others play test it?

 

No, only my brother occasionally and he says it's a 100x times better than the first one

 

At that age you should be focused on improving your skills and not simply trying to make a quick buck. Once you're out of high school you won't have anywhere near the same amount of time available for your own learning pursuits. Better to get as far along as you possibly can now while you don't have a lot of responsibilities weighing you down.

Just put them up on a free site somewhere and use them as portfolio pieces for when you try to make it a profession.

 

I think if you're planning to make more than one game, it is worth purchasing greenlight access:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/219820/

I also think that getting the game onto steam would be the best idea.

If you really don't want to go through greenlight, then in your place I would try GoG next.
They don't require submission fee, but I think they have less users than steam.

See: https://www.gog.com/indie

Also.... if paypal is not available, the other common payment options are payoneer, wire transfer and bank check. They are worse than paypal, though.

 

.... you know, looking back I think the best idea at this age is making friends/social contacts, not concentrating on studying.

 

Only a relative few of the students in my school (which was admittedly a tiny one at 724 students) went anywhere and those that did moved out of the area to do so and almost never came back to it. Living in the boonies isn't very practical. That said you can always form social connections as well as learn programming. Once again you have plenty of time at that age.

 

I've highlighted the important part. Notice how gog isn't filled with crap?
https://www.gog.com/games/indie
I couldn't find a single shovelware/assetflip game. They just don't let them onto their plattform, because they curate it. Submitting anything to gog that isn't super polished and great, imho is a waste of everyone's time, both for the devs and the poor people at gog who have to sift through all the submissions.

If you want honest feedback (which you should seek out to improve your skills) never ask friends and family.

I 100% support what @Ryiah said. You should focus on getting better. Currently every hour you spend on trying to monetize your first games is a waste of time. You need to focus on building skills, once you have those you can start turning those into money. Once you're good at something, it'll likely be a lot easier to earn money through freelancing than selling games. Save the hassle of monetizing till you've got something that's truly worth it and has a decent chance to get you a good reputation. If you start out with 10 bad or mediocre titles, that's the reputation you'll still have, even if your 11th game is super great.

 

The screenshot I see doesn't look particularly bad to me, and whoever is reviewing the games at gog are doing their job (and getting paid for it). I find this part interesting:

Also, I disagree with this:

The best way to learn is to mess up.

Trying to monetize the game, failing to do that and receiving feedback WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON, in my opinion.

Sometimes the worst thing you could do is waiting till "you're ready" or "good enough". Why not "build skills" while trying to monetize your games?

 

GOG is curated, they won't consider a new dev with no published games.

If you want to make money you have to invest, is just the cost of doing business.

 

If i recall correctly they care about the game youre submitting, not how many games you have under your belt

 

I would like to post my new game made with Unity 3D.Please have a look.You can get details here:http://www.redappletech.com/crossy-slopes/.
Play here:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pearlgames.crossyslopessnowyroads&hl=en

 

I'd say the most important thing at that age is trying out different things and decide what you want to do with the first few years of adult life (given few people nowadays really "decide on a career and follow it until the end"... most will start multiple careers and follow them until they grow tired of it, or hit a dead end).

You can make friends at any age. Chances are that friends you make at that age don't stick around during your adult life (those who do most probably will stick around a very long time though).

You can learn things at any age. True, the sooner, the easier you learn new stuff. But don't get caught up in the idea that if you are not a genius millionaire at the age of 13, you will never be anything in life. Many people only got into their current careers later in their life, and some that started a perfect careers at an early age got tired of it way before they became 30.

Of course you can still experiment with new stuff at any age. But if something needs a lot of time, its trying out new things. Like making a game. Or building your own space rocket. Or whatever outlandish idea you have in mind. Do that while you still not have to pay your bills... later on, you might lack the energy and time to do that, especially when you start thinking about a relationship or worse, having kids.


But I agree with everything said until now. Making quick bucks at your age should be the last of your worries. Getting good education, making friends, and trying out as many new things as you can and deciding what you want to do with your life (for now) are way more important.

 

Thanks for all the advice, and ofcourse I should be focused on the social aspects of life. In my mind I manage to do everything with the available time, I go to the gym, work on my game and learn coding, have alot of friends, do excellent in school, even have a girlfriend.

I am not missing out on anything it is just that I am so passionate about programming and I want to be heard and prove people that I am actually good at something.

The quick bucks don't really mean anything materialistically, they are more of a fulfilment and an achievement. I will be able to tell people that I can make money while doing the thing I love, honestly I don't care if my game makes 2-3$.

However if i don't find a method to upload my game for money, ofcourse I will still be happy that I am improving my skills as a coder and hopefully reach the top one day.

 

You are missing the point. You are all missing the point.

While you have free time you should be focusing on catching all of the Pokemon.

 

https://danilo1214.itch.io/chicanery-


I just released it guys, check it out !!!

 

Good on you for putting it up for free. Go from there. I wish you the best.

 

Cool, man. I can tell it still needs some work, but looks way better than anything I did at 16.

 

??....

No, just no....

 

Hey, danilo12, how did you published it on itch.io. It requires you to be 18 years old.

 

If you guys think 100 USD is alot wait until you see the cut they take

 

Why does this feel like two random threads have been smushed together?

 

Necro. Closing.