Originally Posted by cEcil = MC^2 "DRM is a waste of time. Only about 10% of people pirate anyways, and DRM just annoys people"
excuse me? you have that backwards sir. i think the estimated piracy rate on world of goo was near 90%. get your facts straight. more people pirate than actually pay money for things.
Really, it depends on the game, and platform. PC games obviously get pirated much more than console games.
You can't cite one game and offer it as a rebuttal, though. Cite a few other games before saying that 90% of users pirated a game. You can provide Spore, but it doesn't count for your citation (because Spore was already mentioned in this thread).
how does only citing one stat make it any less valid? 10% is still waaay off from the actuality. im not going to cite more just to further my point, he can look them up if he wants. games distributed without drm is far above 10% piracy rate. and consoles arent even in this topic, of course its pc we're talking about.
My point is still valid. And I just made some research and it applies to all countries not just germany or europe. If you earn money by commercially selling games you have to pay taxes. In Germany this applies every year, I make a report and send it to my financial center. In germany I can make 410€ a year free of taxes. Excluding donations, who do not count towards business. (However be careful, this might get invested by the government)
I have a regular job so I do not need to pay for healthcare and such, also I have permission from my company to take a second job as long as it is not the same type of business. (Many people forget about this until there company finds out you sell games on the internet and you get fired asap! Make sure you double check!)
I could earn 410€ over the year without anyone telling anyone.
If I earn more or expect to earn more I need a Tax-ID Number and I have to file monthly / quarterly / yearly reports stating my in and outcome. My Tax rate is 37% right now. If my yearly sallery increases above 60.000€ the rate raises to 43%.
That means I have to invest around ~100€ to get the Number and let's asum I earn 3000€ a year in total that would be 1110€ I would need to pay taxes.
I'm pretty sure this is in every country at different requirements and rates. Anything else might be illegal.
OT: About piracy, those downloaders on the net are not the real problem for the companies, they are amnoying but they are not potential customers. Problems are people that download and resell downloaded software on the market and sell it on the streets and over the internet. Making profit of a stolen product ist just more then wrong.
Originally Posted by Rikus a "Buy me now and support the site" button under the download link
There are three types of klik game: Commercial, Commercial-quality-freeware, and the rest.
For the commercial games (Noitu Love 2, etc), I don't see anything wrong with Rikus' suggestion above. It won't solve TDC's financial problems in one go but every bit helps. Let's not have Clubsoft paying for the damn hosting himself in future, that's insane.
For the commercial-quality-freeware (Knytt, Eternal Daughter), creators who wish to support TDC could release a slightly updated version for a small fee. For example, extra levels or "director's cut" (unreleased) content. This is probably an idea that could use more discussion about distribution etc.
Someone already mentioned this but I didn't see a reply: Don't Clickteam help TDC out when the donation pot is low?
^I was thinking exclusive content as well . . .maybe expansions to games.
Replying to OP. I think it is an interesting idea, but I don't think it would work too well.
99% of games submitted are below average or average and a lot of people spend less than a month making their games and neglect to fix bugs etc.
Maybe if you had a set of judges(bleh did i really just imply that I trust judges on tdc?) that could determine whether or not a game is worth selling(zero bugs, good presentation, etc.). Maybe post a list of guidelines and ideas to encourage more professional game development. Articles DO help, but how many people do you think actually look for articles on how to make your games more professional etc.?
I am kind of an elitist and definitely a perfectionist when it comes to judging games since I take it very seriously, so I don't believe I would make a great judge. One bug, minor or not, would result in a rejection on my part =/. And no, I don't think I am perfect with no room to improve =p.
Another idea would be to have competitions that costs to enter.(I think a tournament where a handful of sprites are given to all the entrants and the one to make the best game with those sprites alone wins would be interesting.) I know it is illegal to not pay out what you take in, but surely there is a loophole . . .Maybe a system for donating x percentage of the winning games prize money could be determined . . . or you could just depend on the winner to not be greedy and donate some of the money. I guess you could charge a small subscription fee to competition eligible users . . . but that falls into the "TDC is no longer 98/100% free" category.
TBH, I wouldn't really buy them. If I had money, I'd just rather donate it. If I had a great game, I wouldn't really put it up for sale here, I'd post the demo here, like all the other shareware guys do. I'd donate some of that profit to TDC, Scirra, and Dwarf Fortress, among others, since the main reason I'm not donating is because I have $0 in my Paypal account.
Personally, I don't think this idea would make any more money than the old TDC Merchandise idea. Remember the mug, t-shirt? A bit overpriced for the quality, so I didn't really get them.
However, if I was a guy making money off indie games, I'd like a "Buy this game" button on the downloads page of my demo. That button would link to the purchase page of my game. Then, at the end of the month, I'd get a PM/e-mail telling me how many people clicked that button and the IP address, and I'd give TDC a few cents based on the clicks.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Putting my 2 cents in, I think donations are the way to go with little to no worries about tax evasion. However, does "Donate anything to get the game (no "free" downloads, but pay whatever you wish in donation)" fall under this also? I would think that though it's mandatory donation, technically you are just donating to the creator to keep going with his/her projects or to say good work on the current game, not actually being sold a product. However this depends on the creator giving a little back to TDC and making a donation themselves, so TDC is not taking commission and therefore technically not a business selling products.
Why not get a cafepress.com type thing going with cool TDC designs? I'd be more than happy to submit designs for shirts/mugs etc which people might really like and want. Also, creators of popular games could submit designs of characters/logos from their games so people can buy them which works as a donation toward TDC's hosting.
I think that the authentication server is far more trouble than it's worth at this point, unless this community was at least 5 times bigger.
My point is that we don't need to provide a service such as this to help pay for hosting. People should choose whether or not a percentage of their earnings goes towards the DC - which at the end of the day is exactly the same as a donation. For example, if James uploads Tormishire to TDC, it should be up to him whether he decides he gives a percentage of his earnings to the DC as a donation (I'm just using this as an example).
I'm not sure I've got my point across there, but what I'm saying is that introducing it as a service here probably won't change much. More people might decide to charge for their games, but I can't see people paying for games which they would have gotten for free previously. And even if people do pay for the games, the majority of that money would rightly go to the game developer (given that they choose to donate some to TDC). It would hardly help our hosting problems at all really, in my opinion.
I think we should be coming up with other ideas - maybe charging for VIP membership (though we would need more features for VIP members in order to make that worthwhile). We should also look into reducing the bandwidth of the site from a coding point of view - the code is god knows how old, and I'm pretty sure that it can be streamlined and more efficient in many places.
If everyone is set on this idea then we should go for it - it might help us a bit, but I really don't think it'll change our current situation.
It's times like these that I really wish English was my native language.
I think some of you guys still don't realise how hard it is to sell a game when you don't have a place to start.
I am really against the idea where people who have commercial games out there send a share of the profit to TDC, most of them don't make a lot of money with it. It would make earning decent money with this hobby even harder.
When I look at the money I made in the last 5 years, 70% of it comes from my jobs as a teacher, 29.9% comes from freelance graphics jobs and the remaining 0.1% from selling click games and playing guitar in the streets.
If I was to donate 50% of what I make with making games right now, I would have to send about $4. And have the other $4 myself. A year.
I remain that this would not just be a way to help TDC, it would be an enrichment to the community, new opportunities for clickers. And of course you have to pay taxes if you make a lotta money with this shit.
I would have to say 'no' to selling games on TDC. It probably won't make enough money. Either Clickteam should bail TDC out (TDC generates way more than $800 per year for Clickteam) or convert the site to .php somehow, and then sell games.
Discarded pizza boxes are an indispensable source of cheese.
Well all bits help I guess. AND it will help people who want to try and sell their games. People who are not doing so right now because it is too hard to get proper coverage.
Actually, getting only a tiny amount of money would be the perfect reason to have this. If say, 100 people recieved on average $0.40 of pithy donation money a month, that should be more than enough.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Of course we need other ideas besides donations from games as it seems to be accepted the fact that click games don't really make a of lot money. I suggested to keep it as this donation thing and the creator chooses to donate or not to TDC because of the whole business and tax evasion issues. Even then, I don't know what the go is with users having to pay money for subscriptions to a service (the VIP membership), because that would also fall under "Goods & Services".
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I might be wrong.
Edited by GamesterXIII
