“Digital distribution is much more cost effective than physical sales. However, that doesn’t mean care shouldn’t be taken when considering who’ll be distributing those important keys”
discount is higher than the price they originally bought the games for, they won’t be able to sell the remaining keys. This leads to key blocks by publishers and means publishers need to find a way to refund it since they have already received the funds from the sales.
marketplaces. But the extra work is worth the reward given that they can increase profit margins, build greater community rapport, and bring your game to an audience truly interested in playing the game and not just hoarding the keys. It’s an avenue that should be utilised when done correctly.
SO, ARE MARKETPLACES REALLY WORTH IT? When looking at the extra things to consider with marketplaces it may seem like a headache that you actively want to avoid. But working with marketplaces can increase both your audience and sales between 10- 20%, whilst cutting out that 30% fee from Steam. Through looking at live statistics and data on
different titles, we can see the disadvantages of ignoring alternative stores. Total War: Warhammer III is sold on marketplaces, and based on the revenue from these alternative marketplaces, we can see that the game has been sold in several tens of thousand copies through using this channel. Most likely, with each copy of the game sold, the publisher missed out on €6.12, which could have brought Sega an additional €61,200 for every 10,000 copies. Therefore, it would be worth Sega revisiting its policy regarding marketplaces and considering its approach to this channel in future. Both regional price policy violation and promotion
Since resellers are also buying games in bulk to sell
them later, this results in key activations happening much later than the purchase date. Steam has implemented a limit of issuing no more than 5,000 keys, and it won’t provide a new batch of keys if the previous batch has been sold but not yet activated. This is a great step forward, but not something all marketplaces adhere to and very often it only reduces the publishers’ revenue whilst strengthening Steam’s monopoly. However, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Yes, there are difficulties when it comes to working with smaller
36 | MCV/DEVELOP August/September 2024
periods violations are real issues with resellers on some marketplaces, as demonstrated with both Total War: Warhammer III and GTA5. However, this can all be avoided if you use marketplaces as a separate market and utilize the expertise of an experienced partner, such as Rokky, which can avoid the grey area of marketplaces and create official partnerships that you can trust. For more information on how to make the most
of the digital distribution for your next game, visit:
https://rokky.io.
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