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I don't think this concept is hopelessly flawed, but solving your "cold start problem" (read the book if you haven't) is going to be super hard.

Also, I would never use your service because of DRM. GOG doesn't do DRM and always has many indie games on sale, which seems like a better value prop? I don't think the Spotify analogy works because games are already very cheap. I have a large backlog of games I'll never get around to playing, and so does everybody else. Being able to choose from millions of songs on Spotify is way better than having to buy individual albums, but I don't need access to a large game library.

Maybe this is another "less space than a nomad" kind of comment, but my intuition is that indie games are mostly played by older gamers who are happy to just buy a game they want to play. Go to gog.com and see how many games you can get for the $100 a year you plan to charge.

Great book, already read it! I don't think GOG is very good for the developers, and not having DRM would also harm our business as we'd miss out on subscribers that pirate games and leave.

I appreciate your opinion on the value prop too. I'm curious though, is there anything you feel is missing out from these other stores that maybe we could do?

You don't have to prematurely worry about losing subscribers when you're bottlenecked at getting new subscribers. Even if you have 10% monthly churn because of piracy that's fine because it means your service is good enough for gamers to sign up in the first place! The strategic (but not very nice) thing to do is to introduce DRM long after you've got traction. Right now, DRM is a solution for a problem you don't have.

Other than exclusives, I can't think of anything that would tempt me to join your platform.

That’s a very good point very well put - I fully subscribe. At that stage the problem is players and catalogue - focus on those extremely hard, don’t misplace your limited efforts into solving a not yet existing issue.

Edit: typos

I always think thoughts like this miss that the value prop right now is for "People who want to play games". By not having DRM, you're getting more customers, but you're also expanding your TAM to include "People who want to pirate games."

The reason "add DRM later" is problematic is that you hit product market fit with the a lot of the second group, meaning they will be upset when you add it.

> I always think thoughts like this miss that the value prop right now is for "People who want to play games". By not having DRM, you're getting more customers, but you're also expanding your TAM to include "People who want to pirate games."

That's valid if the target market is "people who want to play games". It's not in this case, it's "people who want to play indie games", which is a different target. By removing DRM, it's expanded to include "people who want pirate indie games" which is a ridiculously tiny segment.

> The reason "add DRM later" is problematic is that you hit product market fit with the a lot of the second group, meaning they will be upset when you add it.

So? These are gamers we are talking about. Bugginess, poor quality and everything else that they claim upsets them still doesn't stop them from buying the game!

> I don't think GOG is very good for the developers,

I don't think that matters in the context of revenue for a business - if you want paying customers, then you have to offer people value for the money they hand over, which GOG does.

If you could distil the value you are offering to customers in just a few short sentences, what would those sentences be?

Anyway, good luck :-)

I am probably an outlier to the general public, but I am an older gamer interesting in playing mostly old games.

And like you on both Steam and GOG I have a backlog of hundreds of games. Games I mostly acquired through Humble Bundle and GOG sales or giveaways. Nowadays I vastly prefer buying on GOG over Steam, due to feeling I am more in ownership of the games due to no DRM. I can download the games and make back-ups in case GOG ever goes down.

I will probably never be able to play all the games I bought, but even then devs and publishers should have gotten some money from me. Would not happen if it weren’t for Humble Bundle & GOG sales, cause I like to buy cheap.

> And like you on both Steam and GOG I have a backlog of hundreds of games.

The last time I found some stats (five years ago), MOST accounts had hundreds of games, most of which were never played (playtime < 2 hours, I think).

Luckily, the developer still got paid. With MagnaPlay, the developers will never get paid unless the game is played.

In other words, this looks like a bad deal for developers, while also looking like a bad deal for gamers![1]

I can't really see any way for this to take off.

[1] For gamers, the DRM is an unnecessary hurdle, and GOG solves that. The lack of titles is also a hurdle (remember, this is only for indie titles).

I don't mean to sound rude, but honestly, if this was the team's original idea for YC, then either the two co-founders are extremely qualified and talented, or YC has begun funding moonshots in the dark. It doesn't take much thinking to easily conclude that it's a bad deal for devs.

In one of PGs essays he outright said that VCs don't fund ideas, they fund people.

IOW, they decide whether the founders pitching them an idea are going to generate a return, not whether the idea being pitched will generate a return.

Hi, this sounds very interesting. I'd consider it as an indie dev if the DRM stuff weren't there, IMO any injectable DRM stuff is going to cause more problems than it solves, and piracy is not a huge concern anyways (it's "crappy free marketing"). Also "not changing the source code" isn't really a big selling point, if a indie dev is going to release on a new platform, making a specific build for it is not a big task. Big platforms like Steam don't require any DRM, the developer can of course still add their own.

The other problem that "pay-for-playtime" has shown to have on Apple Arcade and similar is that it penalizes "content rich" games where the player can play through rich, authored content in ten or twenty hours and instead rewards more endless mode game. Not that there's anything wrong with those types of games but this means that eventually, more meaningful games will be driven off the platform and it will be just idle games, puzzle games and farming simulators. I love those kind of games but it can make the platform feel cheap. I think a pay-per-install metric would work out a lot better in the long run for you.

I'll keep an eye on this service, definitely the more outlets an indie has the better.

Interesting, most of the devs we talk to are pretty concerned about not having DRM. Same goes for implementation, they want the least amount of work possible.

You're right about penalizing smaller titles though, we're trying to figure that out at the moment. Pay per install is interesting, thanks for the suggestion!

Just curious: do you have any sources for the Apple Arcade pay-for-playtime behaviors? I understand the concept in a hand-wavy sense, just wondered if there's some real data you're referencing.

I'm working on a game myself; interested in what research is out there.

The one that came to my mind was the Bloomberg report about Apple changing their Arcade approach after seeing how much better perpetual play games were at retaining subscribers. https://archive.ph/zm0Th

However, since then they started re-releasing classics that don’t necessarily have daily engagement built into the design.

To ask the obvious question — many musicians argue that Spotify has been terrible for artists [0]. Let’s say you grow as big as Spotify. Will you be terrible for devs?

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify

Xbox Game Pass operates a similar model but from a mixture of AAA titles and indies and they're renowned for being a great platform to be on.

Obviously, Microsoft are probably loss-leading with Game Pass, but still, not every all-you-cant-eat subscription service is bad to their vendors.

AFAIK game pass is losing money at the moment and is still in the "pay a premium to get content on the platform" phase. They haven't switched to the Spotify "screw the content providers" phase yet.

And they may never get there because Microsoft can float loss leaders indefinitely if they can justify them in strategic terms.

Spotify was in that phase since it's creation. Contrast paying amounts between Apple Music and Spotify to see that in numbers.

Game Pass has the huge advantage of being about games, it can retain a much lower game library number (~100 titles) but still keep people subscribed by rotating the games around first party titles. This means that until the landscape changes (Nvidia's attempt being squandered nullifies a lot of potential here of a landscape changing), being an invited third party means good income, due to the revenue being split ~100 ways rather than ~11 million ways.

Of course the above is a simplification, as each game gets its own separate contract agreement and the payout isn't based on how many times a game is played.

Nope! We pay devs by distributing player subscriptions at the individual level, not the aggregate. I.e. what others play on a given month doesn't affect how we'll distribute your subscription in that month. This way, devs are meritocratically paid according to how many people are playing their game, and it doesn't matter if that is 1 person or a 100,000. We consider adding diminishing returns and other factors to our model to maybe help smaller titles, but there are no solid plans at the moment.

I predict that will change the minute a hot indie game that would significantly boost your subscriber count says they want some amount up front/guaranteed to be listed on your platform (and the math checks out).

Unless you transparently publish your financials, there is no way to be held accountable to this system.

We could offer more stuff on top of the distributed subscriptions. But, we're not going to be changing our model without letting developers know. I'm pretty sure we'd be committing some kind of fraud.

you could always allow the indie devs to vote on "exceptions" to the model.

I wish Spotify (and iTunes) would do this as well for music.

I'm not sure how this addresses the fundamental problem, which is that Spotify pays a very low price per stream, so you have to be a huge star to make any money, and Spotify is taking a large part of the proceeds in the meantime.

Also there's the secondary problem that Spotify has an incentive to produce easy-to-digest content in house for which it pays lower (or no) royalties [0].

For you, the equivalent of problem #2 is your incentive to make deliberately addictive content of no artistic merit. Easy to say you won't do this, a lot harder when your backers demand growth and your analytics team demonstrates that Angry Birds For Tots will maximize engagement.

Don't get me wrong, I think you have a cool idea and I hope it works, but everything you say about your commitment to devs is cheap talk, and in my experience, such ideals tend to get discarded during, e.g., difficult funding rounds.

good luck!

[0] https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-...

>so you have to be a huge star to make any money

Forgive me if I'm missing something, however I don't understand what exactly is wrong with this. Isn't this the case with any "art-type" career?

Are there any services that pay a flat-rate per stream?

Basically, we pay a higher price per player than Spotify pays per listener, which closes out with the unit economics of indie game sales. Whereas Spotify represented a huge drop in revenue per listener to artists (before piracy), we are keeping the revenue per player the same if not more (for replayable games, shorter games are still a challenge).

> we are keeping the revenue per player the same if not more

Isn't this the same as saying players will pay at least as much as they are in existing markets?

This is a necessary first step, but I think it's only part of the solution. It's not enough to just improve the visibility of a set of indie games, as Spotify did for artist visibility - you also need to provide ways for creators to benefit from mega-fans with disposable income, while ensuring that balance is sustainable and not predatory.

Spotify's merchandise stores and concert notifications are IMO a pitiful shadow of what they can and should be, and what you can and should be - imagine a Patreon-esque system with tiered badges and in-game supporter perks, with verification built in at your DRM layer, the Discord tiered-role features that Patreon integrates with, award-gifting, etc. Draw a hard line at what kinds of monetization is and isn't acceptable, and become a breath of fresh air in the monetization debate. There's so much possible here beyond subscription distributions, and you could cement your reputation as an innovator and ally to a whole world of brilliant creators.

Love this, you just gave us a pot of golden ideas, thanks!

> The other perennial question, of course, is piracy.

What research have you done to show that it is an actual concern?

The one I always come back to is covered here in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 where the data shows that video game piracy actually generates more sales than it costs.

Or is it not based on actual data, just a requirement you've seen from the developers or publishers?

It is both a requirement from the devs/publishers, but also for ourselves. Without DRM, someone could make a free trial, pirate all our games, cancel their sub and play them out without paying. That's a pretty interesting article though, I guess it shows the power of word of mouth negating piracy? As even those who pirate it will talk to their friends about games they are currently playing.

So make them pay up front? Or limit the free trial to a selection of games? Or limit the games to demos of existing games? There are so many options here to limit your exposure.

Those are all valid points, but I think the trade off might not favor them. Although piracy mighttt in some situations help games, I don't see how it could help us. No free trial would mean we miss out on users too. Plus, from what we've been talking with devs, they don't seem to like the idea of being DRM-free.

I’m just an anecdote and probably only represent a small population, but the DRM makes it an instant pass for me. This kind of thing is up my alley, too — I was an O.G. subscriber to Humble Monthly.

Most of my gaming these days is done on Linux with Steam + Proton and, unless y’all plan to support Proton (or some other variation of Wine) I don’t hold high confidence that this will work. Even if it does I’m on my own, trying to run a slightly different version of the game from everybody else.

(I guess this is relevant in the wider market — your games won’t be playable on Steam Deck.)

But you’re playing games on steam which has its own drm!

Haha, reminds me of when people exploded over the Xbone's phone-home DRM and rushed to Steam over it, not realizing that Steam always had much more draconian DRM from the start

DRM is optional on Steam. There are no convenient installers, but the actual DRM is opt-in from the dev/publisher side.

I’m not worried about DRM exactly, I’m worried about being able to play the games on Linux. I don’t love DRM but I’m pragmatic about it.

The problem is specifically this DRM. Bespoke DRM that injects assembly seems like another layer of stuff that will break Proton and, when it does, there will be no one to support it.

> Without DRM, someone could make a free trial, pirate all our games, cancel their sub and play them out without paying.

Some people will do this, sure. But just because they can doesn't mean they will.

I could torrent Netflix's entire catalogue today. Yet I have a subscription to them and they're still a multi-billion dollar company with millions of paying subscribers. Hmm... that's odd isn't it?

These people are not your target demographic. $8/mo is too expensive for 95% of VN/CN/IN/ID/MY/RU/$I_COULD_GO_ON gamers.

I'm not saying "don't do DRM", but your argument does not stand up to scrutiny.

I wish you the best of luck with the project!

People can always pay for stuff, download it and then refund it, or even request chargeback on the credit card, and then still be able to play for free.

Any sort of DRM protection doesn't really stop piracy, if someone really wants to pirate a digital product, there are always way to do it, unless the product is entire server-dependent.

The developer side sounds pretty bad.

> we're able to pay developers a recurring revenue stream, as long as people are playing their game.

That's how normal game sales already work for non-replayable games.

Good indie games are usually more like $20. If you want to be in this service and make the same amount of money, you'd need your existing player count to only play your game for over 2 months, assuming the revenue split is the same (which you've left out). This is unrealistic; I'd expect people to play 2 or so games per month. Your service would need to make that up through a massive increase in advertising. This is already what publishers do, so you probably won't get any Annapurna/Devolver/THQ/etc games. Basically, you're trying to do what Epic did (make a new platform and subsidize dozens of games) without making a billion from vbucks.

> This way, indie games can achieve profitability with a smaller player base

Your service doesn't encourage this. People are going to be less likely to stick with a game, so you need more players to get the same revenue, assuming all else is balanced.

From the player side, people irrationally hate installing new launchers. The DRM thing is probably fine though. It'll depend on how often it breaks games and how much performance it takes.

My conclusion is this is Moviepass for games. Except it only has 11 games.

Fair criticism, the model right now truly favors replayable games. If a game sells for $20, it probably gets $10 after commissions and sales taxes. That's probably mean someone needs to play a game for a little under 2 months to earn the same on MagnaPlay, which should be the case as people on average play 5 games a year on Steam. Consider the extra revenue from players who wouldn't normally try out the game, and developers are probably earning more per player than on other platforms. This is still a bit hypothetical, so hopefully we can confirm this when we have more data!

But, to be fair you're right in that we still haven't figured out the best way to pay shorter games. Right now, the upside for them is more distribution. About the new launchers thing, it's a tricky problem to work around. We've thought about just using a website, but you run into issues with DRM implementation.

I've thought about this problem before too. I think the better angle is to put the developers on payroll and get rights to the game(s). Then, as they continue to release titles, your catalog grows. The company is then about creating sustainable indie development, rather than just licensing a handful of games and paying a pittance with a subpar library. Not sure it would work, but if you can make it work, that's super cool.

That's right; I agree with you on the content creation point. We do plan to make originals, much like Netflix creates their own TV shows and films. Yet that's quite a burn for an early-stage startup like ours. The long-term vision of MagnaPlay must encompass funding developers and adding their games to our portfolio. However, in the meantime, all we can do is upstage the indie segment by giving them visibility, staying true to our cause, and supporting developers with community-friendly features. For instance, players can distribute 10% of their subscription to any developer, essentially crowdfunding exciting teams and projects.

In my experience, most indie games aren't replayable. Everyone I know, myself included, plays it for the story value. In fact, there are times when I enjoy a simple playthrough of a game by a really good player a lot more often than playing the game myself, if they maintain the story very well.

Some indie games I've really enjoyed back in the day for the story were ones like What Remains of Edith Finch and Binding of Isaac. I'm certainly not playing them for more than a few days. On the other hand, indie games that I would replay, like Terraria and Stardew Valley, are already making significant revenue through the current Steam model. In fact, many of their current players would have been dismayed by a subscription model, which would have led them to not enjoy that much of a fan base.

Depends a lot on the game and player. It's true, there are many short, narrative indies out there. But there are also roguelikes, strategy games, simulation, survival, city-builders, etc. which can be infinitely replayable. Even a game like BoI as you mentioned, it is known for being really replayable due to the sheer amount of items you can collect. Not ever indie is replayable, but there are plenty. And, we also want to have non-replayable games, we just haven't figured out the best model yet.

My 2c is to try the funky ideas to get a foothold/differentiator

I think your implicit intuition that indie gamers are keen to explore more titles than they currently (reasonably) can, is valid. I suspect they’re also keen to be involved in early development. And devs are interested in early feedback. So you could introduce something to facilitate that. Or introduce a Patreon/kickstarter type model where you can choose to fund development of games from your subscription.

Network effects are valuable to build in/explore - make it super easy to stream the games on Twitch, Share clips on YT etc. Might help with the chicken and egg!

Having some kind of "early access/alpha" is an idea we had, but something more like patron is a really good idea. Thanks for the suggestions on network effects! We're doing our first YT partnership on Monday, so I'm excited to see how it goes!

Seems like you're in for a rough time considering your competition is an Xbox Subscription with a huge library, including AAA games and Humble Choice which is basically your pitch, plus provides a bunch of titles to own each month and also access to download a library of DRM titles.

I really like the idea, but Humble Bundle Choice does this much much better and has been around for well over a decade. With Humble I get Steam keys and I don't have to install another client.

I honestly don't see how this business model can work, the competition is really really good at what it does. I have Gamepass and Humble which frankly gives me more than I can even play.

Now what could work would be a publisher offering whatever games it sells for a monthly fee. As in, you get the September game( maybe it's 6 months old at this point) and get to keep it even after canceling. Then again, Humble publishes a ton of games, so their already doing this.

The website does nothing to sell the games. The homepage contains a single title card for each one, and the more in depth page shows the title card with a one paragraph description and three vague tags. Compare it to steam, where each of these games would have a page with videos, screenshots, and a lengthy write up.

I find it hard to believe many people will sign up to play eleven games they've never heard of and know next to nothing about. More likely, they'll search for one of the games to get more information, find the steam store, and consider buying it there easier than signing up to a new platform.

Thanks for the feedback! The website needs some work to sell the games better, we're working on it!

Ooof, well I'm looking at my purchase history on steam and in 2022 I made three purchases for a total of just over $50 and played _none_ of them. 2021 I bought 8 for ~$200, loved 5 (finished 4 of them), and played 3 kinda (one didn't run on M1 MBP). 2020 spent $400 on mostly mainstream games (like Civ6). The one game I hated was a relatively expensive indie game at $38. Loved and finished all the mainstream games (or played them to death in the case of Civ6 and its updates). Bought and never played amongus. The two indie games rated 1 never played and 1 hated.

I don't mind spending money on games I like, and even games I might like. Unless the game turns out to be a swindle, I don't mind paying for them. Even the one I hated, I didn't mind paying for: they'd put a lot of effort into it, they just missed the mark massively.

The game I play the most has a free version limited to the tutorial, so I got to try it before I bought it. I personally would be served better if I could try more games without paying for them if they were shit.

Does paying $8 improve the situation? I can try a lot of games. The games that I play a lot of would potentially earn more money from me in the long run. My favorite game I've put in over 200 hours over two years. I paid $20 for it. Would that developer make more money in that period from magna than the cut they got from Steam?

What about the games that were fun, lasted maybe 20 hours of play time, and would normally get like $5 cut? It would suck if they got less.

Makes total sense. We talked to other people who had a similar headspace: exploration is essential, though purchasing each game is not necessarily the problem. One of the things you gain from subscription service is curation; the idea around there is to minimize those encounters where you absolutely dislike the game, either because there's an audience voting for the titles you see or because there's a recommendation system that filters stuff you might not like.

On the point of trying out more stuff before you buy them: we considered adding a section on the platform for alpha/beta releases. It would allow developers to test and get feedback throughout the early stages of development while allowing players to engage with titles they would otherwise avoid. It would be separate from the revenue share model as these games wouldn't be fully baked and, therefore, at a lower standard than those on the "official" portfolio. We might be able to roll out this feature in the coming weeks! Would that be something you see yourself using?

And absolutely, in the context you gave, you would help developers a lot with our model. Think about it this way: the 200 hours you played on that game got compensated once: when you bought it. On the other hand, if you are subscribed to MagnaPlay and mostly play that game, you'd be essentially giving 80% of your subscription to its developer every month.

I've played some beta games on steam. Fermi Paradox was beta when I tried it, IIRC, and it was fun then. If people are playing beta games, I think the devs should be getting paid, tbh.

>On the other hand, if you are subscribed to MagnaPlay and mostly play that game, you'd be essentially giving 80% of your subscription to its developer every month.

Do I want to pay $75 a year for that game though? And if I play that game for 20 hours in one month, and also play a new game and complete it in 20 hours, how much does that new game get? Many games are very much play-once and done. Like I don't think I'll replay Hob again, but I still think it was one of my favorite gaming experiences of 2021 (when I discovered it on PS4). Likewise Carrion (actually I did replay that one coz people are chewy).

This may be a thing just for the whales, but maybe have a thing like reddit where I could rate a game positively and back that up with cash (like over and above the $8/mo). In a way, the pay-what-you-want bundles offer a similar mechanism, so the idea may be validated already.

I'm also realizing that most of the games I think of as Indie, I played on PS4/5 or Switch. Dead Cells, Hades, Manifold Garden, Celeste, Carrion. With Manifold Garden and Celeste I even bought the soundtracks. (Spend a lot more on consoles than steam, and finish more games there).

With shorter games, the model is still a challenge. Pay-what-you-want is an interesting idea.

There are probably partners who have significant reach, and would be interested in a revenue share with your platform, or maybe a white-labeling solution. HumbleBundle, or something along those lines comes to mind.

That's a good idea, I think partnerships are definitely the way to go, especially with content producers like HB. White-labeling is also very interesting, we know of a few really good examples of that in the mobile market. Probably something more towards the future though, right now we're focused on getting content!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but HB includes a lib of 50+ indie games with the Humble Choice subscription. Why should they split revenue with you as a competitor?

edit: https://www.humblebundle.com/membership/collection

Yep, that's why we haven't approached them and have focused more on indie publishers and devs, although a partnership with them could be interesting

That HumbleBundle hasn't tried this already speaks volumes for the feasibility of it, IMO...

Why would they? They've got great things going on with the bundles and now HB choice/monthly. Same for Steam and other large storefronts.

I see you will be paying developers based on popularity of their game. How will you prevent them from getting all their friends to load up the game and just let it run in the background for hours, soaking up all the popularity?

FWIW, Netflix never pays based on viewership. They negotiate a fee up front based on how much they think the lifetime value of the movie/show will be to the platform. They then pay that fee, sometimes all up front, sometimes over the length of the contract, and sometimes a combination of both. Whatever it takes to get the content.

This creates a much more consistent experience for both the content creator and Netflix. The creator knows exactly how much they'll make, and Netflix knows exactly what their monthly cost will be.

I understand that as you're just starting you may not have the bankroll to pay up front, nor the data to properly estimate the value, but I'm just throwing this out there as a possibly better way to pay.

> How will you prevent them from getting all their friends to load up the game and just let it run in the background for hours, soaking up all the popularity?

As long as a player with 8$ subscription can't contribute to your pay more than those 8$ there isn't much room for abuse, is there?

I'm not saying they will abuse MagnaPlay, I'm saying they will shift the market making other developers make less and not want to be on the platform.

Also the devs may not want to be there because they have no idea how much they're going to make.

Yeah as another commenter mentioned, if the payout is proportional to revenue generated for magnaplay, it should never go more than [rev-share%]*[$monthly-rev]/player/month.

This doesn't feel like abuse...now if there is a free user tier that is measured somehow for payouts, though...

I made the same reply to the sibling comment:

I'm not saying they will abuse MagnaPlay, I'm saying they will shift the market making other developers make less and not want to be on the platform.

Also the devs may not want to be there because they have no idea how much they're going to make.

Congrats on launch!

Although my immediate thought was - DRM is just wrong. It will only punish legitimate players and will be cracked quickly anyway. Indie games do not need DRM.

Also I'm generally wary of subscription services. For any sort of "serious" game I would prefer buying, so to not depend on a subscription where the set of available games may change at a whim. However one interesting possibility may be a partnership with a platform like itch.io. They have literally thousands of games, and a lot of them are quite original, but I'm generally not ready to pay for them - as a lot of them are in development/not finished/bad quality/obviously overpriced. Subscription which gives access to all (or most of) the games of itch.io may actually make a lot of sense, encouraging players to try much more games. Just a thought.

Good luck!

That's a good idea. We like to think that subscription services foments this idea of exploration; after all, it makes the traditional process of finding, purchasing, installing, and finally playing shorter and smoother.

I’m curious as to how your company focuses on user retention in the longer term. Obviously, Spotify or Game Pass have the perks of having superstars and AAA studios already onboarded, so customers sign on and stick around for new releases by larger creators. But with indie games, there’s usually not that same loyalty to a creator (I can think of only a few famous ones off the top of my head). Games are also not as replayable as music, especially smaller ones—they’re more like video streaming in that regard. Is your eventual goal just to onboard enough new games every year that users continue subscribing, or is there another angle to it?

Similarly, how do you plan to retain devs, especially once they become established and choose to sell directly instead? I think your most “similar” competitor, Apple Arcade, gave out contracts to larger studios to build games, which isn’t really sustainable in the longer term as far as I can tell, especially when they can simply sell their games instead. Is this more of an alternative revenue stream for studios? One of the main draws of a subscription for customers is exclusivity, which would kind of contradict that.

In general though, I really like this concept; it can solve a lot of issues with getting indie game dev going in a sustainable manner, which is a market neither Game Pass nor Apple Arcade really address. Best of luck!

User retention is quite tricky, especially for gaming. We think that it won't be too hard adding new content, since there are so many titles releasing each year, but getting highly anticipated titles might be tough. We think part of the solution will be adding features to MagnaPlay which go beyond just the games. A good example is Spotify, they have a great content library like many other services, but they also have your curated playlists, artist-specific radios, Spotify wrapped, etc. I think getting good user retention will ultimately depend upon the kind of community we can build, not just the content (although it also is a key part).

> Naturally, this decision was made during a game of Call of Duty: Warzone

Your business model revolved around indie games. It seems prudent to avoid mentioning AAA games.

> Most players understandably dislike DRMs, and of course there’s no perfect solution against piracy, but we’re hopeful that this approach will be non-intrusive enough for both players and devs to solve this core business problem.

I think DRM may be less of an objection when the consumer knows up front they’re not buying the game.

I’ve never heard anyone complain about Netflix DRM, for presumably the same reason.

> I’ve never heard anyone complain about Netflix DRM

I'm still pretty salty that netflix doesn't stream in 4K HD in my browser because of DRM even though I'm paying for 4k.

Ok, fair enough. But that has to be a pretty recent development.

People complain a lot about Steam DRM, but I'm hoping players will be less critical on our case since we're a subscription service.

> I’ve never heard anyone complain about Netflix DRM, for presumably the same reason.

I don't use netflix and remove the widevine DRM binaries from browsers I use. I'm not alone, either in nerd circles, or more widely (terrestrial television is good where I live, and you can legally timeshift broadcasts with set-top recording devices)

I'm probably the target market for this, and I think it's going to have a hard time selling.

I currently pay for XBox Game Pass Ultimate at $15/month. That comes with 400 games, although I tend to play the more indie games. They do rotate off, so I bought Subnautica, for instance, on Steam. I notice that a few of yours have been on Game Pass.

Right now, Epic is shoving free games like crazy through their Game Store. I have a huge backlog of games on Epic that I'll probably never work through. Some indie games, some former AAA games. Same with Amazon - they give away free games every month for some reason.

I don't know if this glut of games is going to end well or poorly, but I would suggest you don't compete with XBox, and instead do a Mac-first indie game subscription service. Apple Arcade is pretty poorly marketed, and there might be more opportunity there.

I feel like a Mac first sub would be too limited in market, something like 95% of the players on Steam use windows as an OS. Shame to hear that though, I think we'd probably have to win you as a consumer some other way maybe... competing for content is likely not the solution when going up against Microsoft and Epic.

>Today, the indie market is incredibly saturated and prices are increasing.

Isn’t that the opposite of how that’s supposed to work?

At the top end of 'indie', dev (and marketing) budgets have increased massively, so these games demand a higher price.

Meanwhile, the overall number of indie games produced each year just keeps increasing, as tools improve and the barrier to entry lowers. And old indie games don't just disappear, the best ones are usually ported straight to each new platform that arrives, leaving their stores pretty saturated from day 1.

That's completely right. Fun fact: We're over 70,000 new indie titles per year already!

It used to be that EFF contributions came with a reward of access to MagnaTune (http://magnatune.com/) which feels like it has a similar spirit - Is that you guys too?

If not, then interesting that you both choose "Magna*"

Not us! Funny coincidence though. We chose "Magna" because it means great/big in latin, maybe they had a similar idea. Interesting service too, hadn't heard of it before. Was it discontinued? I saw the website didn't have an SSL certificate anymore.

Have you spoken to anyone at Steam or GOG or the like and just asked them for a list of Indie games that don't sell? Obviously, one reason they don't sell is that they're bad games, but if you can filter those out, then you've got a pretty decent list of developers that are probably looking for another revenue source.

I like the idea! There's clear value for Indie devs who need a sweetener to get people to play, and there's clear value for gamers that like to try a lot of different games but need to control costs.

Glad to hear you like it! Haven't done that, but it's pretty easy to find some really great hidden gems! We already have a few really amazing titles that are quite small on other platforms, check out Existensis, Evertried or Super Mombo Quest!

Comment on the website itself: You may want to consider trying to pre-load the images that are in the slides on this page: https://magnaplay.tech/devs - initially there was a very obvious delay in how long the images took to load, until they had been loaded and cached. It may be worth pre-loading the next image or images so that it is already downloaded by the time the user goes to the next slide.

Thanks for the tip! Will look into it

> Most players understandably dislike DRMs, and of course there’s no perfect solution against piracy, but we’re hopeful that this approach will be non-intrusive enough for both players and devs to solve this core business problem.

I take an ideological stance against DRM, and will not buy any product with it. I spend a lot of money on games – they're arguably my main hobby – and predominantly buy things on gog.com and itch.io that are DRM free.

Not interested, I'm afraid.

Congrats on the launch. YC W22 founder who loves gaming and used to work in the gaming industry here. Love the concept and I'm excited to see how you guys grow

Not a fan of this model - it's a race to the bottom that devalues games and trains game audiences to be impatient and fickle.

Could you expand on why you think this?

Sure. To start with, a large selection of games for a flat monthly fee has the psychological effect of making players less patient because they have so many other options. When a game presents unusual mechanics, creates unexpected challenges, employs steep difficulty curves, deep completion campaigns, or even suffers from minor flaws or design issues, players are much more willing to simply leave the game behind rather than push through and actually experience the game as it was intended by the designers. This is especially true in an environment where new games are being added all the time. Yes, some games are removed over time as well, but that does little to mitigate the aggregate sum of the catalog acting as a cloying distraction that begs the player to just move on to the next thing. The inevitable result is a binging culture which gradually erodes the perceived value of games.

That's all without considering the economic incentive for a customer to play many games to get value out of the subscription, and the second order effects of a game's perceived value compared to an entire catalog of games for the same price - why gamble 8 bucks on this random indie game when I have 1000 other free options I've never tried. The result of this psychology on the market is that game producers will become gradually incentivized to optimize on quantity over quality - we've seen this pattern play out over and over again with the various streaming services. Yeah, you need one or two blockbusters to headline your platform, but consumers broadly perceive most of the subscription streaming services as shoveling trash peppered with a few occasional gems.

I know that's harsh, nothing personal, I dislike gamepass for the same reasons. Just to be clear, I'm not saying it's a bad business model, it might even be an inevitable one, I just think it creates a lot of negative externalities for gaming.

I actually would strongly disagree here. One of the best things that happened in gaming in the recent years surprisingly is Apple Arcade. A good selection of cute games bundled in one monthly subscription. No microtransactions (god save!), no need to bu a game just to play it.

It’s the best from all worlds and if I’d build another game myself, I would love for it to be on such services.

So huge props to developers. You are doing a great thing, many blessings and wish you great success!

Seems like it's only for Windows... except all the screenshots clearly show Macbooks / iMacs.

I like the idea of the service, but wouldn't use it unless I can run it on Mac. Streaming for indie games would be perfection, as I don't have the time to go deep into a AAA title but would love to quickly start up some cool short indie game on demand.

the constraints of canva hehe. Good that you like the idea, streaming is interesting but as said in other replies, its presents a much tougher business model. Hopefully one day!

Why not the streaming model? Seems like it'd work nicely with subscription.

Always thought the appeal of Stadia could have been I could try a large variety of games on any platform and not have to deal with installing them (especially for AAA games, though indie games can also get giant).

Streaming is very capital-intensive and requires significant tech investment and potentially code changes from developers. Being a marketplace operator is asset-light - you develop a minimal IP (the marketplace app) and, if the product is desired, marketplaces are viral, enabling rapid growth. A marketplace that's sufficiently large allows a small company (how many people are needed to build the Spotify apps?) capture revenues from a very big market (nearly every musician in the world, alive or dead). it's a way waaay better business model.

Also, Google tried streaming, NVidia tried streaming, both have had little success. Imagine going to your YC partner and saying "yeah, I know google and NV tried it and failed, but we'll succeed, because... it's indie games?"

Placed it really well! Ultimately, it comes down to the business model. Streaming is very capital intensive and requires more tech built out, both from us and the devs (adding barriers to entry to MagnaPlay). Streaming is definitely going to be something of the future, we just don't think it is 100% there yet, costs still need to drop a bit further.

Please add game streaming. It is as cool as it sounds and is the only way I play now (via Chromebook - first via stadia and now geforce now). My gaming PC now sits and collects dust because streaming to a thin & light Chromebook is just better for me.

Really? What do you think about the streaming quality?

Apart from the occasional hiccup, quality is fine. I am sure that if you did a side by side comparison it would be obvious, but I can honestly say I don't notice 99% of the time. Once you are in a game and playing, it is totally fine.

In the same way that when you are watching something on netflix or amazon or disney etc, when you are really into the movie or show no one ever stops watching and thinks "gee I just cannot watch this - it is not Blu-ray quality!".

Just like with netflix et al, game streaming is amazing - pull out a thin and light laptop, browse through a large catalog of games and just pick something and play immediately. The "legacy" approach is wait until you can physically go to your gaming PC or laptop (because you need the hardware), wait for it to boot, wait for the inevitable updates to download for Windows and Steam and Graphics drivers, browse through your game catalog, wait to download the 20-30gb install, wait for the VC redistributable to install, then wait for the game itself installs etc. It sucks - you waste so much time. With a Chromebook and geforce now (rest in peace stadia) I can literally go from a closed-laptop to in-game in about one minute, and I can do that anywhere too. This is the future. I have loads of games on steam that I have never even played - if I could just play them immediately with a single click you can bet I would have at least given them a go.

I personally have very limited spare time, so I would (and do/did for geforce now and stadia) pay extra for the convenience of stream so when I get a spare 30 mins I can play a game in that time, not spend it only getting halfway through a game download in steam. Just like I pay for the convenience of netflix et al rather than buying dvds/Blu-rays and having to watch everything on my TV.

Hard pass on the DRM.

A saving grace would be if the DRM is optional as far as your business is concerned, and it's up to the devs/publishers to use it or not (aka how Steam handles DRM).

Get this on Steam Deck and I'll sign up. It's the best casual game experience out there for my money, and I think that experience would match the spirit of your store well.

Interesting idea! Adding MagnaPlay to the Steam Deck might pose an exciting challenge... We've developed our platform on a cross-platform stack, so it might be possible. I'll take a look at the feasibility here.

And hey, indies are super casual, and a 300Mb launcher runs on any system. Give our platform a chance; maybe it is just casual enough for an evening gaming session after you close down all your Chrome tabs and spot our logo on your Desktop...

When I close all my tabs I'm looking at a Linux desktop, so, there's that. :-)

I do wish you well in this, I think an indie game pass is a great idea. My fault that I'm in a 1.4%-sized piece of the market pie...

This is something I'd like to check out! Have you given any thought to curation? I would play more indie games but frankly many just aren't worth my time.

That's a great question! Initially, MagnaPlay's entire idea was building a smaller portfolio (~50-100 titles) compared to our competitors; we'd be focused on quality over quantity -- essentially becoming the place to play the best indies. We would do that by collecting player engagement data, serializing reviews, and flat-out asking for which games our audience wanted to see on our platform. While we still haven't changed that strategy in the short term, we see ourselves adding more and more titles with time and eventually allowing MagnaPlay's community do all the curation instead of relying on more abstract agents like the team's preferences :)

So, picture this: if you like puzzle games, for instance, you would essentially be put in the "Librarian" role/house (much like how Hogwarts would put you in Gryffindor if you're brave). All so you can see fewer and fewer titles that aren't worth your time!

Hello, interesting model. I’m an indie gamedev and I could be interested for my games. You can contact me at dam [at] dmayance [dot] com.

Excited to be building this with you, Pedro!

What is your GTM strategy to get gamers and game developers

Who do you target first and how

To get players, we're looking at influencer partnerships. That's where the indie community tends to be. To get games, it is a bit tougher. Individual outreach, partnership with large publishers, partner with gaming conventions... nothing's off the table. Still got to figure it out!

Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) – Indie gaming subscription service for PC