I don't think its necessarily that developers make less, but that we'd have to charge more to keep profits up. If we charge more, the players have to deposit more money. In theory it seems like it would work all around. Developers profit stays fairly level, player spending goes up, Dantom's profit goes up. the problem is if the players don't want to deposit more money to pay for more expensive games.
Tylenol and Blue Books are must haves?
Tom wrote:
[snip] I should take this time to mention, however, that we are going to be changing the pay-cut model for subscriptions. Basically, there is no way that we (Dantom) can survive with the current model, which is a 10% flat-cut on all cash-outs. The expense-per-user is higher than the income-per-user, so even if we generate a huge audience we will lose money. Instead, we are going to go with "publisher" model, where we take a much more substantial cut on subscription sales and remove the withdrawel fees. We're thinking of 40-50%, so a $2 subscription would net the author $1 and us $1. While this will undoubtedly incur some backlash, realize that, with the way the economy is currently setup, a seller could probably just double all charges (charging 50 dimes instead of 25 dimes) and not lose any sales. A lot of posts in this thread have alluded to this very point.[snip] I understand that developing software costs money. I understand that server space costs money. I understand that bandwidth costs money. I understand that keeping track of transactions costs money. I don't understand how charging more for a product entitles the providers of those services to get more money for doing the same job. I would much rather have a flat rate or something related to an increase in those services. Warm and fuzzy feelings towards Dantom can be expressed with donations. Outside of this community, those feelings are gone and all that's left is a business plan. Honestly, intangible publisher things are what stopped me from trusting any system before BYOND. I think more tangible service deals are more trustworthy and would help Dantom more. You can measure file size, bandwidth, and the number of transactions. You know why you are being charged. You are not penalized for being able to sell your product at a higher price because of the demand you created. I think it makes Dantom look much more like a business than an internet scam. | |
I don't understand how charging more for a product entitles the providers of those services to get more money for doing the same job. I would much rather have a flat rate or something related to an increase in those services. That's an excellent point. The main downside I can see is that in order to be profitable, a flat transaction fee would have to be high enough that it would become impractical to use the system for small transactions. It'd be like the dilemma of a person who wants to take money out of an ATM that charges a $2.00 fee -- if you only want to take ten bucks out, you might just decide not to use the machine at all. Another possible counterargument is that, since Dantom is assuming responsibility for the accurate tracking and keeping of all money that passes through its system, larger transactions -- though they are equivalent to small transactions in terms of bandwidth, CPU cycles, and storage space used -- require Dantom to underwrite a risk proportional to the size of the transaction. Taking that into account, a percentage-based system might not be unreasonable. Just throwing out ideas... I'd probably be happy with either system, myself. | |
Well, remember that the use of the BYOND passport is a powerful thing, when done correctly.
You could easily set up a proc in a mob that starts running upon login() and increases a count every second. It also calls a check_subscription() proc before each increment. After a set number of seconds (say 3600, for one hour) you give them an alert box that tells them their demo time is up, and if they'd like to continue playing, please subscribe. After that, they won't be able to log in to the game. If you really got fancy, use savefiles to keep track of the time for a particular BYOND key, severely limiting how much they can do in your game. Sure, they may have multiple Keys and/or chars, but they'd still only get so far before running out of time. That's just one suggestion. There are many ways to implement subscriptions while giving people a free taste of the game. I support Dantom's idea of percentages. Think about it, you're using their software, their network, their everything except for your own game/idea. Now, most places that host e-commerce of any type charge a percentage commission on sales. I don't see how this is any different. As many have pointed out, small subsription prices are not really worth it, except for dimes to use on other subscriptions. One last thought: money wise, for the developers, it equates the same whether the cut is taken at subsription time or at withdrawl time. Lets say you charge 60 dimes for one game, 40 dimes for another ($6 and $4). 50% of $10 is $5. That's if it happens at withdrawl time. 50% of $6 is $3, and 50% of $4 is $2. $2+$3 = $5. Same number. What's really the difference is when Dantom gets the money it needs to run things. If you never take out your dimes, Dantom makes no money. I think they're perfectly within their rights to charge per subscription and get their money immediately, before you spend it all on other BYOND subscriptions. Notice, also, that the current system already charges a percentage charge. It's just 10% though. All Dantom is doing is upping their percentage and changing when they get their cut. Anyway, that's my 500 cents worth. I do apologize for the long post, but I felt I needed to rant. | |
Gughunter wrote:
That's an excellent point. The main downside I can see is that in order to be profitable, a flat transaction fee would have to be high enough that it would become impractical to use the system for small transactions. It'd be like the dilemma of a person who wants to take money out of an ATM that charges a $2.00 fee -- if you only want to take ten bucks out, you might just decide not to use the machine at all. How high is high enough? Is 2 dimes from a four dime transfer really worth it? I thought that was part of the minimal economy problem in question. A dollar or two might go a long way. The only reason that sounds expensive is because current prices are way too cheap. (Also, that $2 out of $10 is a lot less than 40-50% we would pay otherwise.) Another possible counterargument is that, since Dantom is assuming responsibility for the accurate tracking and keeping of all money that passes through its system, larger transactions -- though they are equivalent to small transactions in terms of bandwidth, CPU cycles, and storage space used -- require Dantom to underwrite a risk proportional to the size of the transaction. Taking that into account, a percentage-based system might not be unreasonable. Dantom may remove frauds, but does not give refunds for third party items as far as I know. Once Dantom gets the money from the customer to the developer, the developer is the one the customer should go after. If there is a problem with that split second transaction mechanism then that is a bug that needs to be fixed no matter what the subscription price. I'm not sure what transaction risk you are speaking of. The risk for keeping money does not increase with subscription price. It increases with the amount kept. Just throwing out ideas... I'd probably be happy with either system, myself. Playing Devil's Advocate is fine with me. =) I'd really like Dantom to succeed, I just don't think the percentage deal is the way. | |
It sounds good in theory, but it's obvious that many people will just take payment outside of BYOND, onto something like PayPal, in order to avoid the 40-50% cut.
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Here are my thoughts on the whole thing:
I'm fine with charging for subscriptions, but I'd do it in a way that scales up with price... sorta like ebay. First, charge a flat fee. This is pretty low for small subscription costs, but gets higher. Then charge a percentage that is somewhat lower than the one you suggested. It works out the same for decent-sized subscriptions, but keeps "micropayments" a possibility. The only problem with this is it might give people an incentive to keep prices low. Also, and I know this has been brought up before, but having a small fee ($5-$10) to set up a "BYOND Merchant Account" (or whatever) so that you have to pay before you can charge for subscriptions, is probably a pretty good idea. It'll help out some with revenue, and it'll get rid of the scams and worthless subscription stuff that I see constantly on the hub... I believe there's more of that than legitimate uses of the subscription features, and that's probably why you're losing money on it. Also, I think donations should have less of a cut. Otherwise, people will probably just set up Amazon.com or Paypal donation links in their games. BYOND can get away with charging a little more than them, because it's a lot more convienent for most people.. but it probably shouldn't be 40-50%. Donations don't have the benefits of automatic subscription, so this makes some sense. -AbyssDragon | |
I'm glad to hear people chipping in their thoughts here. Here are a few comments and some additional information:
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I can see the donations cut because it goes through the server. I’m a bit disgruntled a bit because of the donation/charity aspect, but I mostly understand it.
The merchant fee does not particularly bother me. Referrals don’t bother me if the money comes out of Dantom’s share. The loss of free hosting services does not particularly bother me. (Although I wonder where the tutorials, libraries, and demos are going to go.) Bandwidth and storage cost money. The publisher percentage still bothers me. If someone has a game which charges $1 and I have a game which charges $2, why am I paying $10,000 and that someone gets away with only $5,000 when we both have 10K customers? Sure your costs scale. With users. However, there was no difference in the service due to the subscription price. There was also no difference in the bandwidth usage. Even if my file was larger, it didn't go through your site because you didn't offer that free storage service anymore. If I paid for the hosting service then I paid for the bandwidth so the percentage is still not necessary. Also, since the advertising I was paying for went through the hub, the market is inbred. Chances are, they have already been using whatever bandwidth to play other BYOND games. You mentioned the option of promoting the game on your own instead of following the standards/paying for hub advertising. Then you used those new customers as reasons for a percentage-based system. If the standards are not being followed and you're not being paid in the first place, how do these customers justify the percentage? You've already been kicked out of the loop by that point. What really irks me is that I would not be paying Dantom for services given to me. I would be paying for all of the games that could not afford a price as high as mine. I'll give some time and energy to answer some questions. I'll release libraries. I'll possibly join a team to help finish a project. I will not sacrifice the price of my product to support a game by another developer. Price is a basic marketing tool and I don't intend to lose it. I don't have paying subscribers for my current game right now, but at least I can fail on my own. If I can't afford a flat fee then I will not be ruining the price of everything else with my game. All that said... What are the benefits of the BYOND pager exactly? Who can't just paste a BYOND link to a list of people in a chat program to mimic the private list? The pager directly uses your bandwidth. It's real. I can bite it. If only a few people pay for it then only a few people will be using your bandwidth. Your costs for pager bandwidth will be covered. The people who don't pay can learn how to cut and paste. Charge! =) | |
I'm really glad Dantom hasn't started to charge. It would turn a lot of interest away from BYOND, in a sense of players and developers. I haven't touched dimes, and I'll do fine with the way I am now. To me, dimes are more an issue(for the developers^^)To show your work is liked. If Dantom is losing money, I'd pay to them anyway, they deserve it.
"Pay to Dantom what belongs to Dantom, but pay what belongs to the Developer to the Developer" win-win situation. PLUS this would provide some other good thngs. From me, Dantom, you can take yer 50%(keep the change yah filfthy animal)and I'd still wanna donate. Mantaining BYOND probaly isn't easy, and I'd be sad if we couldn't have it. With more money, you can not only maintain, but expand! Here are some ideas to make money, they may even make the charges above needless! --Offer "premium" service to games. These games would get their own category, and would be hand chosen by Dantom. --See the banners? Offer them at a price! Proelium would most likely cough up a couple bucks just to keep theirs! --Spruce up the forums for the games. It's probaly bandwith and trouble to have the forums, so charge for it! A nice forum is something I'd pay for. --Charge games a dime a month to be hosted in the hubs. --Offer coding help for a few dimes. Most new developers that have a few are more then willing to give up their juice money to learn how to make a duck fly across the screen! Just some ideas! | |
Actually, for less than mandatory-subscription games, there is an admittedly weak case to be made for the percentage cut: if one game charges $5 for the Super Bonus Level feature or whatnot and another game charges $10 for an analogous feature and they each have 1000 subscribers, the $10 very likely has more players, as a somewhat smaller portion of players are going to be paying for the higher fee. Not anywhere near enough to offset the actual price difference, but oh well.
Anyways, how about a flat rate per subscriber? Say, 5 dimes per subscription-month, 25 dimes per lifetime subscription, or something along those lines. Prices below these rates simply wouldn't be allowed. This has the advantage of ruling out the ultra tiny payment system without placing overly high stress on higher-price games. Tiny payments are useful, but all things considered I won't miss 'em too much. Moreover, the developer's cut is entirely based on the number of users' worth of resources a game is burning. | |
I like the idea of paying for the banners. Although I have two up myself, I don't see any reason why all the advertising should be free. It'd certainly eliminate that annoying (now truncated) Street Fighter Online banner and several others I know aren't gonna be kept up.
Personally I think this sounds like a fair set of charges:
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Anyways, how about a flat rate per subscriber? That's what I was thinking of in my earlier response on flat rates -- except I didn't articulate it well and ended up conflating the issue with BYONDimes payments. Tom wrote: I know some people object to this because our costs aren't proportional to the profits. Why should we take so much from a game just because it is popular? I would also argue that, in a sense, our costs do scale. If your game gets 10K subscribers, that's 10K BYOND users that we have to support. They download our software and use our bandwidth. And as this project begins to expand into different niche markets, I think it will become more and more common for people to sign onto BYOND to play particular games, rather than to use it as a "game browser" (the upcoming release adopts this mantra too). So your game may translate into lots of new users for us, and since we aren't otherwise collecting money from said users, we have to have a way of covering the costs. But it seems to me that this argument doesn't hold water if there is a per-subscription flat fee. Let's say that the flat fee per subscription is $2.00. James Byond charges $5 for his game and nets $3 per subscriber. I charge $100 for my game (because it's incredibly great, of course), and net $98. But the actual Dantom resources consumed by people downloading my game are no greater than James's. Further, I don't see the publisher/manager/agent model -- taking a percentage of the star's profits -- as being applicable, because what Dantom does is much closer to providing a well-defined service than it is to assuming the risk of publishing a million copies in dead-tree format, or crafting press releases for individual games, or schmoozing with industry bigwigs at trendy restaurants trying to cut deals on behalf of a specific game. It's more like the print shop that manufactured the Blue Book than the publisher that sends an author out for a couple weeks on the talk-show circuit. Yes, this seems like a cold and analytical way to view things, given the amount of work that has gone into the BYOND software that makes it all possible -- but then, the print shop had to buy its presses before it could get customers. I personally don't have any objection to splitting my profits down the middle with Dantom (you may quote me on that in the future, Dantom, though I may just laugh evilly when you do). But that's because I happen to like Dantom and what they've done and I want to see them keep it up, not to mention the emotional benefits I'd reap from seeing Dantom get rich off grand old American virtues like initiative and perseverance and all that. In other words, my personal willingness to go along with a percentage-based model is based not on business sense but sentimentality. However, it's not just likely, but downright inevitable, that many future BYOND developers won't have the slightest interest in The Dantom Story. They'll just want to buy a service without feeling they're getting shafted by the online equivalent of an income tax. My reasoning could be flawed, of course, but that's the way it looks to me at the moment! | |
Lummox JR wrote:
In addition to this, a $2.00 charge for actual acceptance would be profitable, and I don't think that would be too unreasonable -- really, $5.00 for top-notch entry-pager promotion? Thats a good deal. Although it might be a good idea to throw in a tiny sum of that for the reviewer's benefit. ;) I believe this is too cheap. I would rather see a $5 every 6 months. There is no way your going to advertise to [byond.amount_of_users] users on another site for a mere $10 dollars a month, to have your ad viewed many, many times a day. Thats especially not possible with a more professional ad system. I would go for uping this price. I agree, 20%-30% is a fine cut. Only a dime a year? Just as many twits would sign-up for that. I believe a pager setup fee of 50 cents, which will get your pager turned on and running with a year's worth of access, then somewhere around 2-3 dimes a year would be in Dantom's better interest. This is still quite low, if you consider the usefulness of such a tool, and the fact that it's the only way your going to broadcast your game live. Following all these suggestions would definitely help raise the bar on BYOND economy, and account values. I myself am planning a new release I will be marketing at $15 dollars to download and use the game, lifetime subscription. I'm also adding plenty of security measures to make sure I won't get cheated out of my profits. The game should definitely be worth it, especially if I can con my 3 assistants of choice into helping out ;) ~Polatrite~ | |
Polatrite wrote:
But a lot of people have multiple games out, and this would quickly break the most prolific authors. (Although I suppose an approach that doesn't charge extra, or much extra, for the 2nd and 3rd games wouldn't be all that bad.)
Well, what I'm specifically suggesting is that the game broadcast access, and ability to join people via the pager and such, remain free. The reason is that 1) I don't think this could be as easily separated from the current mechanisms for joining players/worlds, and 2) many people simply won't realize the necessity of this until they've used it. I think leaving these parts free would encourage many more people to sign up than otherwise would. Yet the privilege of using the system to send messages should be paid for. Lummox JR | |
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Tom wrote:
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Maybe the flat fee and percentage could be combined? As in, Dantom receives whichever is cheaper: 50% or $5. That sounds great to me. | |
WizDragon wrote:
Maybe the flat fee and percentage could be combined? As in, Dantom receives whichever is cheaper: 50% or $5. It's a good thought, but we'd have to up the base fee then, because the 50% assumes that the _average_ profit per game would be around $5 (or whatever). The idea is that the popular, more expensive games would largely fund the BYOND effort, while also making good money for themselves. | |
*after three months, dantom takes 30%*
"Holy crap. BYOND rocks! Now I have money to buy the blue book! I made almost 20bucks!"
You see, Dantom makes the tools, we use the tools, we get money for our pops and tylenol which we MUST have to make a game, along with the blue books...now we just add a new expense in the book. Dantom, don't look at it from developer's losing money, they're just making less. My game will require some pay for special options, and any support I can give to Dantom, well, they deserve to take my dimes. You can have them <3.
Besides, I set my pay on the new car staggered by months. I think 2000 dimes should be enough for next month.