I want to talk about indie dev bundle scams.
Today’s Hotcakes is more directed at the gaming industry; specifically the indie devs who find themselves participating in incredibly cheap shady bundles for very little money in return, and are working with shady dealers. The rest of you should read it as well.
First of all I will admit that this Hotcakes has a shelf life and is probably close to if not a few steps ahead of going stale. Dirt cheap indie bundles aren’t quite a thing anymore because of Steam making trading cards harder to come by and thus drying up the market of buyers who want cheap and crappy games that they can farm for profit. That said it is still an issue with bigger companies like Indiegala and it needs to be talked about for the 1% of devs who might see this and actually heed its warning.
Here at MMO Fallout I consider myself a consumer advocate as well as an advocate for independent developers however I often get pushback on the second group because my methods are shall we say…tough love. 99% of you are going to do what you do regardless of my advice, but we do keep the light on for those who show up. So it’s often my job to look at certain things that certain developers are doing and say “I get your logic, but that is stupid and it will destroy your reputation.”
Over the past few years we’ve had a number of incidents of developers revoking mass amounts of keys over claims of not getting paid or not authorizing the sales through third party publishers. We have seen this most recently with developers like SRM Games and LaPlace and let me just say; I am willing to bet that we’re not going to see many new titles from most of the developers who did this.
You see in most walks of life there is what is right and what is smart, and those two things are often diametrically opposite to one another. Let’s look at the scenario where a developer doesn’t get paid for their sold keys; in the moment it might seem like the smart idea to revoke those keys. Hey you didn’t get paid, and it sets angry customers onto those jagoffs that ripped you off right? In practice, absolutely not.
I can state unequivocally that this tactic has never worked and only serves to seriously hurt the developer’s reputation and if you are in a place where you were forced to sell thousands of keys for pennies on the dollar you probably don’t have much reputation to lose. Odds are also likely that legal action is off the table as you can’t afford a lawyer or the bundle company has disappeared and is probably located in Russia anyway. It’s a bad place all around. It does make you the only visible person when a lot of people get notified that their key has been revoked.
So am I saying that a developer who deals with shady people and gets screwed should take the loss? Unfortunately yes. Talk to your tax person (if you have one) and see if you can write it off as a business loss, but move on. The alternate is revoking keys and probably committing a form of fraud that would be actionable were your product not so valueless, as well as pissing off a lot of people and getting attention to your company from watchdogs like MMO Fallout and Sentinels of the Store.
Think of it this way; you lose a paltry sum (in the long run) but the potential gain in people who play and enjoy your game will always be more than those who boycott you should you decide to revoke. And if you are planning on releasing new games even having obtained zero loyal customers from the bundle title it’s always going to be more valuable than the people who will actively warn others not to buy your game because of past malfeasance.
As I have said, it’s been done in the past. Many times. It has never ever worked out in the developer’s favor. Never.
But what do I know, I just document this stuff.
MMO Fallout 