Question WebGL Games | Developer Distribution Portals | Advice

Hello,

I'm currently developing a small game in Unity, and I will be exporting it as WebGL.

I would like to ask, what are your recommendation for the best portals to potentially distribute on?

I'm aware of restrictions some portals have based on game exclusivity, so that they can distribute the game amongst their own library of game portals / websites.

Essentially, I'm looking for the widest user base, and a decent revenue split.

I'd like to hear from developers who already have some experience in this area.

From my own research, I've narrowed it down to the following portals, in no particular order :

https://www.crazygames.com/
https://gamedistribution.com/
https://gamemonetize.com/
https://www.y8.com/

Best ? Worst / Avoid ? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

 

I've experience with many web publishers for my Unity webgl games and I feel to suggest only GamePix (https://partners.gamepix.com/developers) and Poki (https://developers.poki.com/)

I also suggest you to publish the games on Steam and Google Playstore.

 

Thanks for replying.

I was under the impression GamePix were only interested in super high quality titles. Hadn't seen Poki before, so I need to do some research there.

Definitely will publish on Google Play Store, although my research suggests some web platforms prefer exclusivity before you're 'allowed' to publish anywhere else. Steam seems a bit high end for games targeted for web or mobile.

 

My games are not super high quality but they are ok. I created an account directly from Gamepix website and one of my games in particular is going good but it took few weeks to start growing. I'm satisfied and no exclusivity was required for my games.

 

Very Exciting topic! And Thank you to @playgenix and @Valiantk8 for the QnA !. I would like to ask one more question to Mr.@Valiantk8 that, is it possible to just publish webGL games to the mentioned sites, we can make it full-time work?

 

Hi, @soumyadip-k31

Thanks for joining the discussion, I agree it's an exciting topic.

For me, it's still an untested concept, but it seems like there could be interesting possibilities to explore.

I'm not sure going full time and achieving a good return on investment is a realisation. I've obviously been looking at this topic for a while, and it's very difficult to get anyone to talk about sales figures / potential in this area. I had at first considered facebook, but I've not heard anything good about the platform, so I then looked at online only. Revenue shares vary across the sites, but may be offset by large customer visits / plays, for example:

Poki | Monthly Visits | 54.76 Million
CrazyGames | Monthly Visits | 27.96 Million
Y8 Games | Monthly Visits | 19.38 Million
GameDistribution | Monthly Visits | 9.56 Million
GamePix | Monthly Visits | 3.15 Million
GameMonetize | Monthly Visits | 1.15 Million

Revenue shares can be slightly higher, depending on what your willing to do with your game titles, for instance, giving 1 site 'exclusivity' for an initial period of time, or implementing features of a sites own SDK can also result in higher revenues, for instance, implementing a sites online save feature or multiplayer component.

An interesting YouTube channel, has 2 videos on the process involved in getting your game from Unity to either GameMonetize or GameDistribution:

and apparent proof of earnings from 1 month:



I had a look on the site, and he has only 1 apparent game that I could see. If this is the case, then yes, maybe a decent potential to make money, but you're going to have to have at least 10, 20 or 30 games up and running to be making decent money.

Anyway, hope this helps a little.

Regards.

 

I think it really depends from the number of people who are going to play the game.
In my specifica case just 1 out of 4 games I integrated on Gamepix is generating good revenues.
This is not my only source of revenue (I also work as an employee in tech) but with the revenues I pay some bills.
I also have my games on Android and iOS but the revenues are almost zero.

I have some good friends in spain and they work full time as html5 & webgl game developers publishing on this kind of platforms/portals (mainly Gamepix and Crazygames) but they make quality polished games.

 

Hi @playgenix and @Valiantk8,

Thank you! so much for bringing a detailed and clear overview here. I must say that there is a quite of research done which is very helpful to the ppl like me, or others who wanted to look for some start! I appreciate your time and effort in this!

The screenshot looks quite interesting, I mean far better than the Android Play Store. As I have a little experience with publishing app there.The only doubt I have is, Are they accepting mid-polished games(graphic) as well? or only for a super quality games (pro graphic and sound) / studio work etc?.

And again yeah, a BIG THANK YOU!! to all of you guys! for adding some valuable lights on this

 

I second @Valiantk8 remarks about mobile, (at least on Android for me), where I released a game some time ago, and monetised with UnityAds. The return was very poor, for the amount of time I had invested creating the game.

The main problem for me was getting my game seen in an already overcrowded market, and getting potential players to install and play (Don't think I ever saw my game in the 'New' section on Google Play Store, although it could be found by searching for it). Sometime later... moving forward, I'm still considering cross platform, i.e. web and mobile, but this decision is purely based on Unity's UDP (Unity Distribution Portal) program, where they will help you distribute your game across at least 9 other international (Android) storefronts.

https://distribute.dashboard.unity.com/overview

I wouldn't worry too much about having a super polished game, as long as it plays well! There are many game examples on these portals, with poor artwork, but are enjoyable to play, so you have nothing to lose just by uploading and seeing if a submission is accepted.

Regards.

 

Agreed with your points! To be honest I feel like that "Flappy Bird" era is gone for a long. Big Bulls are taking over the Android Market, and I have a low of hopes on this, but by saying this no way I am disappointing here because, found some examples at the same time that still indies make something good out of this app development,
As an example:

Just go through the UDP link, looks great, but still wanted to stick with our original idea, which is publishing games to the WebGL platform!

 

Hi @playgenix, One more time! do you got any luck there by submitting WebGL to any of the platform! I have tried to the submitting one game to https://gamemonetize.com/ but the Unity webGL play not working so I failed and noting happen from my side! Any hope or good news from your side? would courage me to try one more time!

 

I would stay away from those distribution services if you can do the work yourself. They take steep cuts just for hosting the game and providing the ads, while at the same time may not have competitive ad delivery setup (ad rates lower on top of losing a cut).

Host your build on your own site and distribute it as an iframe to as many browser game portals as possible. Not serving builds from a central server is going to be pain for rolling out updates, especially due to the way some of the portals (don't) handle updates. Some portals will try to be difficult and demand you to implement their SDKs and complain about iframes, but if you have a decent game, you can probably just keep focusing on one of the hundreds of other portals. At some point those who may have rejected you at first can suddenly arrange an exception for you.

 

post the webgl build on github too so schools don't block it

 

While searching for platforms to publish my WebGL games, I came across this thread.

I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with publishing on poki.com

They have this weird method of publishing your game, where you have to submit a google docs form and then wait for them to get back to you.

I have submitted the form 3 weeks ago and still have not heard anything back.

Do they actually respond? For those that did publish there, can you please share how long they take to reply to the form submission or do they even reply?

Thanks

 

How much time it took for you to start earning after you uploaded your first game?