Sepharo wrote on Jun 27, 2019, 00:36:
grudgebearer wrote on Jun 27, 2019, 00:30:
CJ_Parker wrote on Jun 26, 2019, 23:47:
Re royalties: Due to the common royalties against advance model, the dev would definitely always benefit from maximized publisher profits because the sooner the publisher breaks even, the sooner the royalties begin to flow.
You don't seem to have a very good understanding of the imbalance of the publisher/developer relationship in the gaming industry.
Most devs are paid up font on royalties in a prepay structure from the publisher, and quite often royalty payments from the actual game sales are nonexistent until the publisher recoups all of their advance on royalties to the developer.
Isn't that what he said?
He's insinuating that royalties after the advance are actually being paid out out on a regular basis, and that the developer is actually in a position to renegotiate a publishing deal that they've agreed to, and taken several million dollars in royalty advancement.
If you are a developer, and take let's say $20 million in royalty advancement on a game, the publisher is going to have to receive at least $20 million and $1 dollars before any additional royalties outside of the original advancement are paid out.
The bad part is royalties are not computed from the retail sale price but on net income, allowing the publisher to recoup all costs before any royalty is computed.
So, for an EGS exlusive game published by Iceberg with a 20% dev royalty sold at $60.00, Epic is going to take 12%, down to $52.8/sale right off the bat. If the publisher advanced you $20 million, spent $50 million on marketing and localization or whatever else they've put into the contract as an expenditure for the game, then the dev will not see that 20% royalty on sales until the game has sold over 1.3 million copies (at the original retail price). It's even worse if there's a retail store or physical goods involved
It only gets more difficult for the developer to see a piece of sales once the price starts dropping on the game. For many games, developers never see royalties other than the original advance, which is why you see developers make a really good game that sells well, and still go out of business. If by chance your game sells so well that you eventually do see royalties when it's selling regularly for $19.99 on Steam, then the dev is going to get a whopping $4.00/sale, and the publisher will still be pocketing 80%.
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishfull thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
-Robert Heinlein