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GameStop Forms Publishing Program GameTrust To 'Revolutionize' the Process (gamespot.com)
An anonymous reader writes: GameStop has announced today a publishing label called "GameTrust," which includes developers like Insomniac Games, Ready at Dawn, Tequila Works, and Frozenbyte. Mark Stanley, GameStop VP of Internal Development and Diversification, told GameSpot in a recent interview, "We do not involve ourselves in the creative process because at the end of the day, that is what our developer partners are passionate about," he explained. "By allowing developers to fully focus on their craft, GameTrust can focus on all other aspects of bringing a new IP to market, leveraging our deep expertise and retail channel leadership to support each developer and connect their games with a broader global audience." According to GameStop's program release, GameTrust will "revolutionize the game development and distribution process" by way of giving developers another option to bring their games to market, leveraging GameStop's leadership in the retail channel (including marketing and more) to help bring games to a larger audience. Everything "from casual to serious, console to PC, triple AAA titles to independent games" will be supported. They'll be available through all of GameStop's retail channels as well as Steam, Xbox Live, Playstation Network, the eShop, and others. The full interview with Mark Stanley can be found here. GameStop first revealed its foray into game publishing when Insomniac Games, developer of Ratchet and Clank Overdrive, unveiled its upcoming adventure game Song of the Deep.
Steam has the benefits of auto updating your games, keeping a copy of your saves in the cloud, and selling games very cheaply.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
Because someone skilled enough to code their own game is not going to be skilled enough to, say, write code for a website so you can download/register/activate it.
First, coding a website is a different skill from coding a game. A small 1- to 3-man indie studio may have to hire someone. But more importantly, "write code for a website" works for PC games, not so much for console games because the console maker limits who is allowed to have a devkit and how many titles are allowed to be released.
Not to mention a huge community, ability to join friends' multiplayer games, automated broadcasting/streaming as an option, game-based discussion boards, etc.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
anyone who refers to a game as "an IP" (or, worse, "a new IP") is either not a gamer or has been infected by MBA-speak.
Can anyone else decipher this press release?
I'll give it a shot.
Are they setting up a Steam clone?
No. They are, however, funding and marketing games, and getting them on store shelves and Steam/Origin/UPlay/et al. I assume they're doing this for the same reason Netflix is making original content--to make sure they're not dependent on third-party content to keep their shelves stocked.
I'm also guessing they don't see much of a future in retail, so they're trying to pivot into the publishing business before they die off, which is probably more profitable anyway.
Why would I care about a new distributor?
You probably don't, unless you're a game studio looking for someone to finance your next game. In that case, you probably do, especially if you're not big enough to get the time of day out of one of the AAA publishers, or if "we do not involve ourselves in the creative process" sounds appealing.
In the abstract, you should probably care a little because more publishers funding games means more games get made, and GameStop has the potential (the potential) to fill an interesting middle ground between too-big-to-fails like Call of Battlefield Eleventy and no-budget, bottom-of-the-barrel, I-compiled-this-with-two-pirated-rubber-bands-and-kickstarter "indie" games. As in, budgets small enough to be able to take interesting creative risks without worrying about a twenty-brazillion dollar screw-up tanking the company, yet not so small that you have to resort to gimmicky pixel-art shit to get a hipster/10 rating on your Steam Greenlight.
And if nothing else, it's unusual for a large company to see the writing on the wall ahead of time, and actually try to do something about it before plowing head-on into the iceberg. This is kind of a man-bites-dog moment--we're witnessing the incumbent horse-buggy manufacturer trying their hand at self-driving cars.
DATABASE WOW WOW
And allowing you multiple copies on multiple machines. The only (and very sensible) restriction is you can only play on one machine at a time. So you can start a game on your computer in Los Angeles and finish it later in the week on your computer in London if you travel a lot, for example. Traveling with a bunch of CD's was a PITA, not to mention CD's get scratched/lost/stolen. And it's even worse if you have to start dragging game manuals/activation codes around with you everywhere.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.