"the developers get 70% and MakeGamesWithUs will take 30%."
That's incredibly generous. When I was making games in high school I'd just be thrilled that anyone was actually playing my games. Good on them for not being greedy.
Mostly, however it is because the teenagers have never really had to show responsibility nor have they ever been allowed to really do something real.
So, what do they offer?
- Tutorials/community? Ubiquitous and free anyway, no value added.
- Analytics? Useless to everyone not doing highly targeted design (read: social games)
- Art? Well, as per the above, the devs pay for it anyway.
- Fit and finish? Now this is actually worth something. But all game devs should develop this skill anyway, and if you're a teenager learning game development, that's a good time to learn.
- Networking libraries? Could be useful.
The overall package might be worth something, but probably not worth having another finger in the revenue/IP pie. I say IP because, what happens if you publish game XYZ with them, independently iterate on the concept, and self-publish XYZ 2? Better to just own your work outright.
Also - analytics have been incredibly useful in spotting steps in tutorials that have been too hard or levels that need to be tweaked or reordered.
For those who don't have money, we take all the risk out of making a successful game. While the developer in some ways ends up paying for some of the art costs (ignoring the fact that the process of getting the art done itself has cost to it), it is guaranteed he will not lose money on art and promotion, which we see as a big win.
We hope the overall package will be worth it, and we plan to add more and more tools / support to make it worthwhile, potentially features like allowing others to beta test your game and A/B testing logos etc. If you can think of more features that would make a revenue share worthwhile please let us know! We want to build things our developers / potential developers need.