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Comment by killtimeatwork | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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...

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.

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...

> 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)

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