Like green man gaming or direct drive?
any takers? what’s the margins on third party sales for digital distribution?
Steam generally gets a 30% cut, IIRC. In the digital goods realm in general, that’s reasonably standard (Apple requests it for in-app purchases and books they sell, for instance).
How does one get involved with digital distribution? I wouldnt mind starting something like this up…entering the space, learning a bit… providing the service and developing a better platform for indies on top of it
Go back in time and get there earlier. I don’t think there’s any way you could possibly hope to get your foot in the door at this point in time unless you’re a mega-publisher and can force people to use you by restricting game availability a la EA.
Otherwise, why would people buy from you? I get that you can offer lower margins so people will sell through you; however unless you can build up your customer base to be large enough that you can entice large scale players to put stuff on you and not steam, it seems like driving extra traffic to you instead of the default portal of Steam is unlikely to really work. Maybe you can eke out a living, but I don’t foresee becoming dominant in any way…
I think he doesn’t want to become a Steam competitor but a Steam reseller instead, hence his mentioning of GMG.
Thing is, I have no idea how these guy stay afloat in the first place. Do they buy “inventory” (steam keys) for third world regions and resell them in the US and Europe? Or do they have some kind of deal with Steam that gives them discount on bulk?
If you can get something like this going, it’s probably possible to make some bucks off of it, but in order to get a real foot in the door, you have to stand out somehow. Like GMG constantly undercutting Steams own prices.
At this point, what could it be that makes you stand out, though?
rezaf
Unless you can finance selling at a loss for a good chunk of time it’s just not going to be very realistic.