Outriders dev didn't get royalties yet, Square won't say how much it sold

[arsene_P5]

It increases exposure but then so does ads and many other things that the platform holder is doing, so why pick Game Pass as the one that likely contributed more to exposure than any of those other things?

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Who said Gamepass is contributed more than advertisment? As you said nobody knows without working at one of the companies. But the fact remains PS+, GP, ... can contribute to sales due to affecting how much exposure a game is getting.

Doesn't mean subscription is the main driving force. But it also doesn't mean it's not the main driving force. This will depend on the game and the developer. Not everyone has the budget to reach millions and millions of people with ads. Some need to have partners like PS and Xbox, who happily pay a shitton of money (to add the game to the service) and provide exposure with their services for the game.

Take Rocket league for example, who's dev said they didn't think they could reach as many people without the PS+ deal and did say "it was the best decision ever", due to 6 million PS+ users talking about the game and adding to the exposure.

 

[Justified]

Yeah, I agree with that. If this were a more commoditized industry, profit-sharing likely wouldn't be a thing.

I think the likelihood is that this is revenue-based (which seems normal for publisher recoup) rather than sales metrics-based, but it's impossible to know without either PCF or S-E disclosing the terms of their agreement. It feels like it would be strange for the Game Pass upfront payment to be excluded from that calculation. It's likely that Game Pass probably wouldn't have been on PCF or S-E's radar when they signed their deal in June 2017, but I think it'll certainly be on people's radars by now.

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Yea hopefully it is, and other dev studios don't undercut each other.

 

[TheGhost]

Didn't really follow this game but David Gibson has been tweeting about it this morning

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Going to read this now
But there is no garunteeing people would have purchased if it wasn't on Gamepass.

example…..I did not like the beta or the demo, but the full game was free with a Gamepass sub so fuck it why not. The Destiny streamers were hyping it up and I gave it another shot and loved it. I would not have paid full price for the game though if it was not in Gamepass though.

 

[dom]

Going to read this now
But there is no garunteeing people would have purchased if it wasn't on Gamepass.

example…..I did not like the beta or the demo, but the full game was free with a Gamepass sub so fuck it why not. The Destiny streamers were hyping it up and I gave it another shot and loved it. I would not have paid full price for the game though if it was not in Gamepass though.

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You need to stop saying this. You're a complete outlier with how you use gamepass.

 

[PersonAndStuff]

If only there was some kind of union that could track of this kind of stuff for Square.

 

[Level 7 Boss]

Let's say the deal with SE was this, which is a very normal distribution deal in the game industry (numbers exagerated of course):
- 5M upfront, for an estimated 10M budget
- Extra 7.5M if Metacritic > 80 and 2M copies sold

You are People Can Fly and say "okay, with our current staff we cannot reach the quality the game needs for the estimated budget, so lets use part of the 7.5M bonus we'll have in the future (the remaining 5M of the budget SE didn't pay for) to get more staff and resources and reach the goals!"
Then you hire more people, the game goes great, you reach MC>80. Sales should come easily! Awesome!

Suddenly, SE decided to put your game for "free" on Gamepass, get themselves the 5M revenue or more they gave you directly from the Gamepass fee (apart from the revenue of the first 2M copies), and they tell you:

- "Oh yeah, the game reached 10M players thanks to GP"
- "Cool! So where is our bonus?"
- "Ehhh no no, you didn't sold the 2M copies we said the game would"

So you're suddenly in a deficit of 5M$, while SE is completely out of the blue.

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That's the problem. It's not hard to see. If they're really not getting anything of the Gamepass deal, it's a terrible thing.

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In this scenario what happens if the game never breaks even? The devs continue to have liability to the publishers and are obligated to pay off the initial budget?

 

[Benny Del Toro]

Who said Gamepass is contributed more than advertisment? As you said nobody knows without working at one of the companies. But the fact remains PS+, GP, ... can contribute to sales due to affecting how much exposure a game is getting.

Doesn't mean subscription is the main driving force. But it also doesn't mean it's not the main driving force. This will depend on the game and the developer. Not everyone has the budget to reach millions and millions of people with ads. Some need to have partners like PS and Xbox, who happily pay a shitton of money (to add the game to the service) and provide exposure with their services for the game.

Take Rocket league for example, who's dev said they didn't think they could reach as many people without the PS+ deal and did say "it was the best decision ever", due to 6 million PS+ users talking about the game and adding to the exposure.

Click to shrink...

It may have not been said directly but it was the impression I got when some people say that Game Pass increases sales on another platform.

I don't know why you brought up developers needing partners like PS or XBOX I didn't say they didn't. I agree it is great exposure. Game Pass is great, I just think that some people are overestimating its impact on increasing sales on another platform, that is basically what I'm saying.

 

[Patitoloco]

In this scenario what happens if the game never breaks even? The devs continue to have liability to the publishers and are obligated to pay off the initial budget?

Click to shrink...

No, SE only gives them the 5M upfront, the rest of the 10M budget is part of the devs. If the game sells 0 copies, then SE loses those 5M, the studio another 5M.