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Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

Why would anyone need publishers I just don't understand. I paid money to Factorio developers. I've got zipped game. Best UX in the world. Compare that to the Steam or Origin pain when I need to spent hours trying to install all that stuff and having my computer full of spyware afterwards, yuck!

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Direct sales involve handling credit cards (i.e. chargebacks, scams) as well as getting in bed with potentially every tax authority in the world. For example, for every game sold in European country, you need to collect VAT and transfer it to that country's tax authority (currently, there's something like 28 of them?). This also includes filling out forms... Steam takes care of all that for you.

However! Publishers don't do that. Publishers' value proposition is funding the development and doing the marketing for you, so that you can concentrate on making the game. If the game tanks, they eat up the losses (i.e. it's an investment, not a loan). The retail is a separate issue and, while it's handled by the publishers, is still likely to be handled via Steam or other platforms.

I'm in eu and don't have to pay vat for extra eu or even extra country but in eu sales.. it depends on bilateral agreement between countries i suppose..

you definitely have to add the relevant VAT, depending on your customer country, declare it in MOSS where it will be sent to every individual country.

You also have to check if your customer is any other of the countries / states that collect VAT (India, Indonesia, many US states and oh so many random countries) and make a proper declaration in each country. It's almost impossible to do it right if you don't go with a partner to handle it all.

You do not pay additional VAT, you just pay the VAT of the country your customer is resident of instead of your own country. To do that you need to be registered in all EU countries and file VAT for each one of them.

There is an alternative for online services, etc called VAT MOSS[0], mainly meant for smaller sellers which allow you to keep paying VAT in your own country without registering in all of them but you still need to apply different VAT rates depending on your customer's country. Also you need to keep records of these transactions.

Steam (and other services... well actually even Steam uses an external service for this) handle that stuff for you and you only deal with Steam.

[0] https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/vat-digit...

Wouldn't they just use a 3rd party payment processor these days (e.g. stripe or similar)? I can't imagine taxes, chargebacks and other things being such a huge issue now for a small independent who could likely leverage one of the many available payment platforms.

Marketing seems to be the biggest draw for using a publisher these days. That and getting easy access to partner management with sony and microsoft. My understanding is that some publishers are even quite good at social media now, helping indies get exposure on twitch and youtube.

You could also just use any merchant of record service to handle all that book keeping for you.

They’ll charge a hefty fee compared to doing it yourself, but still far below the Steam cut.

Although publishing on steam obviously has other advantages.

> For example, for every game sold in European country, you need to collect VAT and transfer it to that country's tax authority

What if you simply do not do this? Are they going to arrest you? (Presuming you are VAT registered outside of the EU or whatever)

> Direct sales involve handling credit cards (i.e. chargebacks, scams)

This is actually something that the Factorio developers (mentioned in the comment you're replying to) have had a lot of issues with. See "The Grey Market" (https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-171) or this article: https://www.pcgamer.com/factorio-devs-take-g2a-up-on-its-cha...

Traditionally, game publishers were mostly a bank. Their main job was not marketing and publishing (although that's important too), but financing a game's development until it was ready for release, and sometimes to help out with resources and services (like localization, quality assurance, etc).

That's why Kickstarter and Steam Early Access are such a big deal, they allowed new financing models and independent game-dev studios to emanzipate themselves from publishers.

You may need publisher for one of the following:

Marketing

Localization

Covering development costs

Physical distribution

It is definitely possible to do marketing and localization alone as a company, but it will divert studio's focus from game development, which could do more harm than good since game development is insanely hard. Physical distribution is almost impossible to do properly for a small company. Of course there are game investors that invest into specific games and it could be better fit than publishers, but you can do both.

need to spent hours trying to install all that stuff

That is pretty much not a case.

Hours trying to install? What do you mean?

I do think that the steam's fee of 30% feels strange, but all the infrastructure they provide is pretty sweet. How do you update the zip file you downloaded? Do you trust every developer to keep their download servers running forever so you can always download it later?

Same here, Steam is not painful at all to install and manage. And I don't get how Steam is spyware, other than tracking when and for how long I run which Steam game, and what my hardware configuration is.

> other than tracking when and for how long I run which Steam game

Well, this sounds like spyware (unless it is opt-in).

> fee of 30% feels strange

This is comparable to what every developer on every console has paid for over three decades in publishing, and still leagues better than what they were making from boxed retail sales.

I plan to publish my game on Steam soon. The 30% seems steep until you realise they're handling distribution, payment processing, forums and marketing if the initial traction is good. There are many great quality of life features in Steamworks that enhance my game greatly, and I do not need any server infrastructure. That being said, I would not enjoy having to pay a publisher as well.

Not everyone can afford to manage a server, nor have the necessary skills to do so, and thus Steam becomes a convenient tool to distribute one's game through. Factorio too is sold on Steam, but is also available through their own site.

I've heard that one of the appealing features of Steam for developers is how easy it is to upload new versions and generally distribute your game.

The network effect of having established a marketplace with millions of consumers who pay for games is non-trivial. Steam is a trusted name in gaming for a reason.

Steam also promotes games, has reviews of them, and suggests games directly to players. The first time I personally heard of many of the games I play has been through Steam, Humble, GOG, Epic's game launcher/store app or other launchers and game selling sites.

I also can reinstall hundreds of games from Steam without remembering who developed it, who paid for the development, or who published it to Steam. I just tell the Steam client to install it based on the name of the game. That's a great usability and convenience feature.

> Compare that to the Steam or Origin pain when I need to spent hours trying to install all that stuff and having my computer full of spyware afterwards, yuck!

Yeah, double clicking on a game and having it automatically downloaded and executed... hours of work and hundreds of viruses! You have obviously never used steam and origin.

More like:

1. Download Steam client

2. Click to install Steam client

3. Steam client starts to download even more crap itself

4. Steam client actually starts installing

5. Sign In/Register

Then when you want to install or even play a game...

1. Launch Steam

2. [UPDATING STEAM, PLEASE WAIT]... Jesus Christ...

3. Sign In/Register

4. Click to install game

5. Launch game

6. [CHECKING FOR UPDATES, PLEASE WAIT]...

7. Finally play game

And if your internet connection goes offline? Enjoy, you're fucked.

Yeah, fuck Steam and all similar bloatware.

As someone who sometimes has spotty internet service, steam games work just fine when steam is in offline mode. I share the frustration of needing to update a game before playing it, but that actually can be prevented on a per-game basis, and obviously doesn't happen if running in offline mode.

So... your problem is what exactly? Downloading files takes time? Steam has to be installed? Automatic updates?

Steam has offline mode which does not require internet connection. You still may not be able to play the game if the game itself requires an internet connection, but that has nothing to do with Steam.

Because they give developers money to make a game before they have any sales.

In general the publisher pays for development. For big games from known studios, you get a several million dollar advance that pays for development of the game. The game's royalties payback the advance and hopefully you earn something.

That is why EA owns so many game studios one big flop and suddenly you owe EA a couple of million.

No one owes the publisher anything for a commercial failure in standard publisher contract where they are funding development. The publisher is taking the financial risk; that’s the point. The developer will make additional money beyond the advance based on terms of the publishing contract (common terms would be developer starts getting paid royalties when publisher has 1XX% recouped development + marketing spend).

TIL, I always thought advances had to be paid back on underperformance.

In that case, would there be any purpose going to a publisher rather than a bank directly? You’d be paying infinite royalty on success in exchange for.. marketing & distribution?

Weather Factory, developer of Cultist Simulator, has been open about the business side of their development. This includes a few blog posts about their decision to go with a publisher (Humble Bundle) instead of going alone.

tl;dr Up-front advance was important for cash flow and risk management. At the end of the day they ended up with less profit but think it was the right decision anyways.

http://weatherfactory.biz/state-of-the-factory-year-1/

Note also that there is a difference between a publisher (Humble) and a distributor (Steam), which is covered in that post.

In the same way that authors who write books "need" publishers. You can self publish but that can make it much harder for an unknown person to succeed.

In some cases a publisher makes sense, in some it does not.

In this case, the publishers gave the money to develop the game.

They are producers. Developing a game may take years and you need to pay salaries.

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