Games whose purchase proceeds no longer go to the developers

[Althea]

Yep, the publishers are able to make money on a game that's long since out of print, something that wouldn't happen with second hand sales.

Yeah, this is a good point, and one I wish other publishers (and developers) would think about. See, it's all well and good sitting on the rights to something, but it's not making you any money. For what is a small legal expense, you can strike a deal with GOG and have a new cash flow coming in. Even if it's $100 a month, it's money you didn't have, it's increasing the profile of your franchises and it stops them stagnating - arguably it could even be used to protect your copyrights and/or trademarks as they're "in use".

As for GOG taking a cut - I'm sure some games are more work than others, but really do they spend all that much on getting a game working? Some of the newer titles (the ones from 1C - King's Bounty, Fantasy Wars) will require little to no tweaking, whereas some older ones may require a lot. I would guess most are simply put in an artificial environment (such as DOSBox) which allows them to work.

[Tams80]

Your thinking as if most developers get msot of the money from the games they make. Only independents and affiliated developers (the publisher just produces disks and might do marketing) do.

A lot of development studios aren't independent and thus are effectively employees of a publisher (or the publisher is effectively a big developer). In other words they have a set salary, probably with a bonus if they game they work on does well. If a game does well, the developer that produced is more likely to remain intact and sequels ordered. They might receive more funding. The developer effectively becomes 'the group of game developers who made that game' though.

[deano2099]

What Wizardry said - pretty much the only thing which guarantees a developer will do more of what they do is strong initial sales of a title (pre-orders + first few weeks at most) - same as movies where the opening weekend is king.

This is why DRM remains popular with many developers - because if it can stop pre-release and first-week piracy, they've reduced damage in THE most sensitive time. After that, it's arguable most developers working through publishers don't care about sales and any remaining royalties etc are - at best - gravy.

You're begging the question. The reason publishers are obsessed with sales early on is because there's no secondary market outside of second-hand sales. It's because re-printing the game is rarely worth it, it's because high street stores won't stock older titles when there are newer ones, and it's because you often can't get old games working on newer systems.

The point is that if you establish a legacy market, you can and will care about that as an income stream.

[Althea]

The point is that if you establish a legacy market, you can and will care about that as an income stream.

We have a massive legacy market in the UK, I think. A lot of non-game stores carry legacy titles, for example you can go into some branches of WH Smith (a newsagent/book store) and they often have a display of Focus-distributed titles like Tom Cuhlancey games or Company of Heroes.

It's awesome. Focus and Mastertronic must do amazingly well here - or at least they used to.

[Nalano]

If someone unrelated bought the rights, well that's the joys of capitalism

It's at this point where I declare my utter lack of compunction from stealing the fuck outta their works. Baby, it's capitalism.

What, moral arguments? This is an industry where it's all about the starving programmers of creative works, until they get laid off the day before release. Where producers twist the very concept of property to allow themselves the ability to sell you something and retain ownership of it at the same time. Where they destroy an entire legal market because it was cutting into their profit margin. Where loyal consumers are the first to get burned through nickel-and-diming, through rootkit DRM, through mediocrity - mediocrity that's enforced by the wholesale purchase of games journalists, dangling the carrot of pre-release games and the stick of review blackouts.

And here we are debating whether or not they have the right to dictate to us just how we're supposed to be customers to them, like their profits are expected and we should be glad they're selling to us in the first place. Fuck 'em!

[Ravenger]

I've got direct experience of this, as a couple of games I worked on are available on GOG, and I don't see a penny in royalties. I had a pretty senior role on one of them too, so it's not just a case of a junior programmer or artist not getting royalties.

My ex-boss owns the IP rights to the games, and he didn't even know the games were available on GOG until I told him!

To be honest, I'd much rather the games were still on-sale and people playing and enjoying them than have them disappear entirely, but it's a shame that those who actually created the games don't see a penny, whilst the companies that published the games get to profit from their work.

[R-F]

Games whose purchase proceeds no longer go to the developers: All those published by publishers.

[Nalano]

Games whose purchase proceeds no longer go to the developers: All those published by publishers.

It's still pretty much like the record companies: "W-what?! You can't screw the artists! That's our job!"

[Kadayi]

I've got direct experience of this, as a couple of games I worked on are available on GOG, and I don't see a penny in royalties. I had a pretty senior role on one of them too, so it's not just a case of a junior programmer or artist not getting royalties.

My ex-boss owns the IP rights to the games, and he didn't even know the games were available on GOG until I told him!

To be honest, I'd much rather the games were still on-sale and people playing and enjoying them than have them disappear entirely, but it's a shame that those who actually created the games don't see a penny, whilst the companies that published the games get to profit from their work.

Yeah I think it sucks. I'm not exactly sure how the royalty system works on TV and film. Obviously big stars and writers get some revenue from repeat broadcasting (same as musicians) however it's not clear whether all the other people involved (camera men, etc) get a slice. I suspect not.

Ultimately though I suspect once all the division is done it probably only amounts to a few $ a year extra income lost, but what's more important is that you can point to a game and say 'I worked on that' and people are still able to play it today.

[Nalano]

I suspect not.

They don't.

but what's more important is that you can point to a game and say 'I worked on that' and people are still able to play it today.

You can't pay the rent with pride.

[Althea]

I've got direct experience of this, as a couple of games I worked on are available on GOG, and I don't see a penny in royalties. I had a pretty senior role on one of them too, so it's not just a case of a junior programmer or artist not getting royalties.

Did you sign a contract for royalties, though? If not, then they have no legal nor moral obligation to pay you. I assume you were paid your wages for which ever game(s) you worked on, right? Well, they've fulfilled their side of it.

My ex-boss owns the IP rights to the games, and he didn't even know the games were available on GOG until I told him!

That sounds unlikely. Unless I'm missing something such as a license agreement (i.e. they license the IP from him and can do various things with it), I find that hard to believe.

To be honest, I'd much rather the games were still on-sale and people playing and enjoying them than have them disappear entirely, but it's a shame that those who actually created the games don't see a penny, whilst the companies that published the games get to profit from their work.

It's a shame that those who created the game(s) were paid for their work at the time and that the publisher didn't put in any precautions for a legacy game distributor a decade or two in the future? It's a shame that a company is making profit? I don't think it's a shame - I think the shame is that publishers are sat on various licenses and aren't using them, and I think that's a bigger affront to the developers/creators than not chasing said (ex-)employees down to pay them <1% of the royalties for a game they made 15 years ago. The costs involved in calculating, processing and supporting said payments must really be financially unsound. They have to track down the employees, negotiate with them and so forth. It's hardly a realistic situation, isn't it?

I get your point, but I disagree with you simply because GOG is not something that could have been foreseen. There is no way Ubisoft, EA, Activision et al could have even predicted something like GOG, nor its success, and as such they didn't really make provisions for it.

You can't pay the rent with pride.

If making your rent payments would depend on the minute royalties from a 15 year old game, I think you've got bigger issues than this.

I doubt any publisher involved with GOG (beyond CDP) would be able to pay their rent with the proceeds from GOG sales.

[Nalano]

nor moral obligation

What does morality have to do with any of this shit?

If making your rent payments would depend on the minute royalties from a 15 year old game, I think you've got bigger issues than this.

If signing your rights away for a paycheck today is an acceptable system, then yes, we clearly have bigger motherfucking issues.

[Althea]

What does morality have to do with any of this shit?

Just covering my bases.

[agentorange]

I get your point, but I disagree with you simply because GOG is not something that could have been foreseen. There is no way Ubisoft, EA, Activision et al could have even predicted something like GOG, nor its success, and as such they didn't really make provisions for it.

I guess they'd never heard of people getting royalties from books, tv, films?

[BillButNotBen]

Most people in most industries don't get paid royalties on their work. the best they can hope for is a bonus.

Maybe that will change in the future, but it's all down to the contracts that people sign. the fact of a developer being solvent or not probably has no bearing on the payments most coders would receive.

It's rather crazy how there seems to be a universal attitude that developers are exploited angels and publishers are the devil. It's the publishers who put up the money for the project, pay the wages of the developers, pay for the advertising and the pressing of cds and packaging. they do that, knowing full well they'll lose money on half the titles, because when they manage to get a hit they'll receive the profits from that.

Even if the original publisher has gone bankrupt, their rights were then bought by someone else, and that money was used to pay the people that the publisher owed, so that new rights holder is perfectly entitled to receive the profits from the license that they paid for, which the original developer paid for, which the developers were paid to produce.

[Nalano]

Just covering my bases.

You know who pays the rent with royalties? The publishers. Hell, theirs is the largest share.

It's rather crazy how there seems to be a universal attitude that developers are exploited angels and publishers are the devil. It's the publishers who put up the money for the project, pay the wages of the developers, pay for the advertising and the pressing of cds and packaging. they do that, knowing full well they'll lose money on half the titles, because when they manage to get a hit they'll receive the profits from that.

What part of any of that shit is actual labor? That's just making money by virtue of having money. Those poor exploited producers.

[Althea]

I guess they'd never heard of people getting royalties from books, tv, films?

I'm guessing they have, but the game market is much more volatile than any of those. Games stay in print longer now, they're available from more sources and so forth. 15 years ago, that wasn't the case. You might have budget label reprints, but that's about it.

It's also likely just the main actors in TV/film that get royalties, probably not the crew. When you consider how many people are involved in making films and TV shows (and, by extension, games), it's just not feasible to offer royalties to everyone and maintain the ability to continue paying them.

You know who pays the rent with royalties? The publishers. Hell, theirs is the largest share.

Of a game sale in the mainstream market, sure. It's likely the case with GOG, too. But the sales on GOG will not be in their millions. I would guess that titles are lucky to do 20k sales a year there at best - and that's half of what The Witcher 2 did on GOG (which I would assume is "artifically" high due to GOG being the place to get TW2). It might pay the rent for one studio for a year, but publishers will not sink if they didn't have the money from GOG. In fact, it's probably "free money" for them.

[Nalano]

It's also likely just the main actors in TV/film that get royalties, probably not the crew. When you consider how many people are involved in making films and TV shows (and, by extension, games), it's just not feasible to offer royalties to everyone and maintain the ability to continue paying them.

Every label ever makes its money through its IPs. Why, if royalties didn't pay, do they keep demanding them?

[Althea]

Every label ever makes its money through its IPs. Why, if royalties didn't pay, do they keep demanding them?

What? I'm not saying royalties don't pay. I'm saying that when you consider (with GOG) the pricing and the sales figures, and the other assorted costs, you would be talking tiny amounts of money a year in royalties (if you were a developer of the game), so much so that I would guess it would cost the publisher more to track you down and sign a royalties agreement.

[Nalano]

so much so that I would guess it would cost the publisher more to track you down and sign a royalties agreement.

Are you arguing that they should continue existing because NOT exploiting the actual labor is too troublesome?

Because if not, you've pretty much given perfect reason why they should die.