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Weaker subscription deals have hit indie publishers, says analyst | GamesIndustry.biz (www.gamesindustry.biz)

submitted 1 year ago by iusearchbtw@lemmy.sdf.org to c/games@lemmy.world

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Smaller subscription deals and the underperformance of certain titles have had a severe impact on Devolver and TinyBuild, says stockbroking firm Goodbody.

Both companies floated at the peak of the games business in 2021 and have seen their share prices plummet over the past two years. Devolver has seen its share price drop 92% since its peak in January 2022, while TinyBuild's has fallen 95%

"We have seen from Devolver and TinyBuild that subscription is under pressure at the moment," says Patrick O'Donnell, technology and video gaming analyst at Goodbody.

"The cheques coming from Sony and Microsoft are just not as big as they were. And that creates problems if you're concentrated on that side of the market.

"TinyBuild, of all of them, was most exposed. Devolver was exposed, but not quite as much."

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[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 114 points 1 year ago

Whoa, subscription models hurt smaller games? Whoever could have seen this coming?

Glances at spotify.

No-one could have predicted this!

[-] szczuroarturo@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

I always wondered if thats really true for smaller musicians . I mean you get bigger share of subscription money without label and you should come out on top over cd eventualy if pepole are listening to your music. The only diffrence being that you get your money over time instead of an imidieate boost. I get this feeling its just the case of more music being made than ever before.

Also how does revenue sharing works in case of games. In case of music its pretty easy but in case of games i am not sure how that works.

[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In the case of both, how fair it is, depends on payment model. At least spotify is grossly unfair, to the point that there is an entire industry around bot farming plays to drain money from the payment pool.

As for game subscriptions, I've not looked into it much, but I know Apple's service at least is based on hours played, which has resulted in some games on the service attempting to stretch out their playtime using things like mandatory grinding to progress in their games. With this model, developers can literally shoot themselves in the foot financially, by allowing the player to sprint. It's stupid.

Games can't be reduced to that simple a value. You can get the same amount of hours out of God of War as you can Binding of Isaac, but their production and purchase costs, are not, and should not, be the same.

[-] szczuroarturo@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Hmm yeach ive heard that spotify aproach is kinda shitty and allows music boosting by bots. But at least tidal as far as i know is fair in that regard. basing the revenue based on hours played im game is fairly shitty. Actually Given the games specific i wonder what would actually be fair ( actually i know what would be fair. Microsoft buying the games that you downloaded straight up and paying the current price,but i really doubt it would be sustainable ).

[-] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz -3 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately, basically no game on these services, will ever get what a customer paying full price would net them.

The same goes for music. There's simply less money to go around in the subscription model.

[-] szczuroarturo@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Hmm with the game i agree but with the music i basicaly buy a full cd every month. And i doubt pepole were buying a cd every month. The only controversy to me here is the revenue sharing model which seems to be shitty on some of the platforms( like Spotify wich i would probably ditch for tidal if not for the amazing discver weekly )