When selling digital games right now it may seem that


there are two options, on big stores like Steam and on smaller marketplaces like G2A, Eneba or smaller stores like CDKeys. The latter offers publishers the opportunity to secure a higher revenue, but they can be trickier to control. This lack of control is often why publishers opt to sell on Steam and neglect to use these other marketplaces. One of the main concerns when it comes to


marketplaces is reselling. Resellers will buy games in the cheapest region and then resell that on to marketplaces in Europe. As a result, publishers lose out on potential revenue, which can be anywhere between 10% - 50%. For example, new release Total War: Warhammer III has a lowest recorded price of €29.99 on Steam, but we can see the actual price on the marketplace, using Kinguin as an example, being €19.80.


distributor share could be anywhere between 5% and 30%, but can’t be more than 30%. At its lowest, the publisher will receive 70% of €24.99,


bringing the value down to €17.49 per game sold through the distribution channel. Now that we’ve looked at reselling and promotions,


let’s take a look at regional differences. If we still take the example of Total War: Warhammer


III, a seller could buy the new release from somewhere like Indonesia. Resellers often use different workarounds and purchase games from regional resellers or stores, which would look like: • Converting Indonesian Rupiah to EUR would have a new price of €18.56


• Tax = 11% • NET SRP = €18.56 / 1.11 = €16.72 • Publisher receives = €11.70


In this case specifically, the seller can make up to €6.12 and as a result the publisher believes the game was sold in Indonesia when in reality, the EU customer will buy the game at a lower price. So really, the publisher could potentially earn up to €5.69 more for their game. It’s not only differing regional currencies that resellers


exploit. Often resellers will use various workarounds to purchase games in bulk, such as purchasing during promotions, and then sell the games on marketplaces. As an example GTA5, which is still in the top-10 most


played games, has a current official price of €29.99 but there was a promotion of 77% to bring the retail price down to €9.24.


So, how can this price exist? If we assume that


Kinguin’s revenue share is 10%, that means the seller will get €17.82. If we calculate the price that the publisher can receive


here, it would be: • Promo SRP = €29.99 • VAT = 20% • NET SRP = €29.99 / 1.2 = €24.99


When we look at revenue share between publisher and distributor, we know that Steam takes 30% if the game earns less than $5million and 20% if it earns more. So


As a result when we take a look at Eneba, the price is €12.35, a 58% decrease in the official price. This is very likely to mean that sellers purchased the keys in bulk from somewhere during the promotion period and have then resold them on the marketplaces once that promotion period had finished. This creates problems as it consistently lowers the sale price of the game and, if during the next promotion the


August/September 2024 MCV/DEVELOP | 35


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