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On Digital Distribution For Games - Does It Work?
Thanks to The Hollywood Reporter for its article discussing whether digital distribution can really work for videogames. The piece focuses on NP Cube, developers of PC MMO Dark And Light, who are based on the tiny Reunion Island, east of Madagascar, and intend to distribute free versions via "a peer-to-peer site", before charging a monthly fee later. Co-founder Laurent Paret argues of online distribution: "It's so much more cost-effective than signing a contract with a publisher... One peer-to-peer company wants to charge us $300 a month to distribute 'Dark And Light.' I have no idea how they can charge so little and I'm not asking." However, Mark Jacobs of Mythic Entertainment disagrees with the approach, suggesting: "I know they think they can make up some of their development costs earlier if they distribute online [thus getting higher profit margins]... But they're sacrificing long-term profits for short-term gains."
$300/month to distribute their game...
Here's how they do it.
Ragnarok Online is an MMORPG with ~$12 monthly fee. However, they don't make you buy a disc. Not only can you download the client for free, but you can play free for 15 days. And that's free, as in, they don't ask you for a credit card number or anything until your 15 days are up. I wish more games followed this model! Seems to be working great for them, but maybe the rules are different when you're based in Korea? ;)
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
It could work, but we are not yet at the point were it will work exclusivly. A dialup user wont wait days to download a game. Some people dont have internet at home and couldnt download a game anyway.
There is another problem, the consumer midset is that if i pay $50 for a game, i should get something tagible and not just a license. So if publishers want to charge full price for a digitally distrubuted game, its not going to fly. I myself would rather pay $50 for a box and cd rather than a digital file.
The only market that could go exculivly online distrubution is MMO's, but there again, you better be charging less than you would for a boxed product.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
BitTorrent.
BitTorrent Makes it easy to host multi-GB files from a relatively small pipe. Considering 768kbps upload can be had for $99 a month with 6Mbps down, $300 can buy you a lot of bandwidth. Once your P2P downloads are seeded (you have your customers uploading from their machines), your bandwidth usage tails off dramatically as your only demand now is that you have to run the tracker (ie: the thing that coordinates clients among themselves).
It doesn't even have to be via P2P -- it's quite possible to let users download an installer to their hard drive from a website that takes a payment.
But unless the publisher stipulates otherwise (and I'd imagine that there's probably a publisher that's willing to work with a developer on this), there's no reason that a game cannot be sold both through traditional channels and online channels.
Distribution costs for a gig of data are a couple of cents. That's a lot cheaper than buying a box and CD, and many people are happy to just buy the software (and don't give a damn about a pressed CD). So provide both, and pass on the distribution savings to the customer.
I suspect that some webmerchant retailers might be happy to provide both download services and physical boxe sales. I'd guess that in the Linux world, Tux Games probably would be willing to try something like that.
Benefits of online distribution:
* Small sales can be made, so budget/older titles can be available.
* Warehousing costs do not exist, so titles that are unlikely to sell well can be made available, and there is no reason for something to go "out of print" (it irritates me to no end when a book goes out of print). That oddball game title that did well in Japan but was unlikely to do well in the US can, for the cost of no more than the translation fee, be sold in the US.
* A reliable backup of your game. Ever lose a CD? It'd be easy for a retailer to verify your purchase information and provide additional downloads of the game.
* Patches included in copies as soon as they are finished. Normally, a pressed run of CDs is locked in, with all the bugs that might be found. Users must go online, locate a patch (usually on a publisher's or developer's website -- and too intimidating for many users) and apply it. If Boomstick Development comes out with a fix for their rocket launcher and releases v1.09 of Rocket Launcher Rebels, they can have their retailer automatically provide an updated release, rather than forcing users to obtain and apply the patch.
* Broader distribution area. It's easier to ship electronic copies of something than it is physical copies -- maybe you can't ship boxed software to a Mongolian plain easily or cheaply, but you can transfer it via satellite downlink.
* Speed of purchase. I generally can't get an obscure game without combing the web and ordering something FedEx. If I download a game and install it, I can have it as soon as my Internet connection brings it down.
* Risk. The more distribution that's done electronically, the lower the financial risk the publisher has to assume for deciding to committing to publish a game. That means they don't have to demand such a large chunk of money from the developer.
There are a couple of issues.
* Piracy is an obvious one, but really, there aren't many more barriers to ripping and copying a physical CD than there are to transferring a file -- in general, any form of remotely effecitve protection is going to take place in the form of checking in the game software itself.
* Consumer Appeal. I'm not sure how people will react to buying something that isn't physical (though I can think of some partial solutions to th eproblem). People do certainly purchase services all the time.
May we never see th
I certainly would buy/download my games. As aforementioned, it's easier to replace lost/broken copies, CD-keys easier to look up, and is simply a lot less hassle than going to your local store.
A couple of examples of pay-for-download games that have done alright:
Savage: http://www.s2games.com
Escape Velocity: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/news/
P2P is simply another method of distribution: are we really talking about P2P as a way to lower the cost barrier to distribution, or about the larger idea of selling games via download in general?