Slitherine

If you've bought a game on disc can you register it with your sol passport so that, should you lose/damage the disc you can download it?

Iain will know for sure, but I doubt that all the various license agreements would allow something like that to happen easily. And the products use different technology for anti-piracy so it's non-trivial...

Cheers

Pip

Aah, that's a shame Mind you, I'm not likely to be playing frisby with my LA disc, so it's not much of an issue.

Yes unfortunately each game has a different system. We're not big enough right now to dictacte copy protection systems to our publishers so they all do their own thing. A more integrated approach would be nice & probably make life a lot simpler for us, but does have substantial set up costs.

So, are publishers really as evil as everyone makes out?

They rarely help make the game better, and often weaken it in some way or another, usually by forcing a rushed product. Which makes them look pretty evil, yes.

The way we work, it tends not to be an issue. We take finished games to a publisher and say do you want this or not. They sometimes ask for some changes, but relatively minor ones & we'll only make them if we think they are worth doing. They never get to dictate design.

We judge a publisher by whether they pay their bills and how well they market the game. You'd be amazed at how often the developer gets screwed. I don't remember the last time we did not have outstanding invoices that were months overdue or we were involved in legal action to get our money. Oh yes I do, it was about 5 years ago, before we sent out the first invoices.

Does online distribution make it a lot easier then?

Oh yes, direct purchases from us mean we can track every sale & receive the money much sooner. There is still a delay because the payment providers either report weekly or monthly, but they never fail to pay up!

And presumably you get more money from each sale too?

Yes usually

Mwa ha ha ha haaa! <buys things on cd>

I guess the games industry is quite similar to the music industry in that, if you buy your favourite artists records from a record store, they see a relatively small cut of that, if you go watch them on tour, and buy the cd there, they get a much better cut...

ste wrote:I guess the games industry is quite similar to the music industry in that, if you buy your favourite artists records from a record store, they see a relatively small cut of that, if you go watch them on tour, and buy the cd there, they get a much better cut...

Are you going to go on tour?!?