gog courts indies

[Bluddy]

Shadow, have you seen this? http://www.gog.com/forum/general/say...to_gogcomindie

Regarding the serial numbers, I think they've become much more tolerant of those. Though I would personally advise you to drop them altogether -- it's very hard for small games to create a consistent multiplayer experience, and many people are looking for that. Having pirates on multiplayer can actually be seen as an asset.

[Shadow]

Yeah, I've seen it.

The keys/pirates thing is difficult. The biggest problem is if pirates overload the server, then the experience for our customers is impacted and/or we have to add new servers which is expensive.

[Bluddy]

But your server just does matchmaking, right? That's a very light load. I hope we get to the point where Soldak's matchmaking servers can't keep up with the load. At that point, there would be such a large community (whether some of them are pirates or not) that you'd be rolling in money.

[Shadow]

It's also running the webserver which is kind of important to our cash flow. While we haven't done much, I've always wanted to expand the server/multiplayer capabilities.

I've thought off and on about this stuff, basically our choices are:
1) Keep the keys/multiplayer as is - this makes it hard to get on GoG and Apple's App store
2) Stop using keys - pirates may or may not overwhelm the server, which potentially increases our costs and decreases our revenues
3) Stop using keys and stop providing a master server
4) GoG and Apple get single player versions only (or ones without match making)

[Bluddy]

There's also another option, which is to only ask for a key in-game when somebody tries to use your matchmaking server. I think gog would be fine with that -- see here. For apple (not as a special build but in all builds), you could put your email address in the game and ask people to forward you their game receipt.

[joku]

I've actually been wondering this a while now. You haven't submitted your games to GOG because of the keys, and you need the keys to protect your servers from pirates, but Depths of Peril doesn't have multiplayer. So have you considered submitting just Depths of Peril without a key?


Also, regarding pirates and multiplayer: someone told me a while back that he shared his Din's Curse key with some of his friends, and they all played multiplayer together using that one key. But then again, perhaps they weren't using your server to play.

[Bluddy]

Oh I can't believe I didn't think of this... what about the humble store?

You get 95% of the money. All you need is to include a widget on your website, which should be very easy to do. They can give steam codes together with your drm-free sale (don't know how that gets work out) and I would be very surprised if they didn't have a way to distribute your key codes.

The humble store has become immensely popular among indies, and it's very convenient too -- every game you buy from there can easily be downloaded again from your personal page. Here's an example of a site that uses them: http://www.roguelegacy.com/

[Shadow]

I definitely still need to check out the Humble store.

[Shadow]

Originally Posted by joku

I've actually been wondering this a while now. You haven't submitted your games to GOG because of the keys, and you need the keys to protect your servers from pirates, but Depths of Peril doesn't have multiplayer. So have you considered submitting just Depths of Peril without a key?

I've just been busy and trying to decide what to do with DC and Drox.

[Bluddy]

Take a look at this game. Specifically, look at the bottom where it mentions multiplayer. Looks like gog are ok with multiplayer keys now.