Hi this is first post on the forum so kindly bear with me There is a situation where I may land up a deal with a publisher a few of the clauses are bothering me like They will share the revenue only after they deduct all the marketing cost, is it a fine thing? also now how do i know that they are being fair to me? and how much exactly the marketing cost incured to them They are also asking for the source code, well here as this is a buidlbox game there is no source code as such but still is it a fine clause
Not just with dealing with apps but for all contracts -I would make sure that you have everything in writing and get access or reports to the daily performance of app.
Sounds a little bit like a rip-off... This is actually why they get a higher percentage: because they need to market the game, the better they do the job, the more they earn for their efforts because of the unequal percentage split. Reducing the sales amount by the "marketing campaign" (what, when, which cost etc ?) first, would allow them to spend 100% on marketing, e.g. in running another company "marketing" the apps for the publisher) leaving a lump sum for you To be honest, doesn't sound serious to me as they try to move the risk towards you...On the other side, you could run a campaign on your own cost when not using a publisher, costwise it wouldn't be too different, as you are paying for the campaign in both cases with this type of contract, more or less... That's just my business advise, having no contract template available from a publisher. This might not be true but I would'nt expect a serious publisher go this way, otherwise a book author would have to pay for "his" sales campaign too, instead of getting a fixed amount/percentage of each sold unit... Maybe one with a publisher deal can shed some light on this...
I also agree that you should try to reach out to who has obtained a deal already and hope they will give some information. Many may be skid-dish in revealing valuable information concerning publisher deals.
Right now it woudnt be fair from my side to reveal the name of the publisher but they surely are among somewhere in mid-high category... comparable with Appsolute if not any less @Wings n Armor i think I should try to go that way
@contatct The two deal points that you mentioned are standard. Publishers / Distribution companies recoup their costs before the revenue splits start. My guess would be that first-dollar gross deals like we do at Storm Watch Games are more rare. Those are the types that we started out with but we're moving to more traditional terms in the future. As for source code, it sounds like the publisher is going to add more to your game like their ad network IDs, push notifications, analytics, etc. and they need source code to do that. Again, another standard deal point. There is nothing that you mentioned that sounds like a "rip-off" like @todro suggested.
