Going Digital

With independent developers like Introversion, makers of Darwinia, seeing excellent sales through online distribution and others, such as S2 Games of Savage fame, announcing that they will be selling their game exclusively online, digital distribution is really picking up steam (get it??). Quite frankly, the trend is building faster than many probably expected, and the main reason is that it simply works. Most of the time, an independent studio is not going to be working on a mass market wide appeal game, which is one reason the studio has to be independent in the first place. The retail channel is simply too costly to be practical in many cases, while distributing online has fewer middlemen and goes straight to the target audience: the core gamers who are following such games in the first place. Tom Buscaglia, the other video game-focused attorney from Miami, dedicates the latest issue of the recurring Game Law feature to digital distribution. He takes a look at the benefits to developers, and goes through what happened with one of the stranger distribution deals, when Tripwire Interactive signed the Unreal Engine-powered title Red Orchestra to Valve's Steam download service.

Of course, with a digital distribution deal, there is usually no big marketing push from the distributor like there is with a big publisher. But, through Steam we would be selling into the hardcore FPS gamer market. And as a result of the Valve deal, Red Orchestra got solid editorial exposure in major PC game publications, including two page 'preview' articles in PC Gamer US and UK. The buzz from the Valve deal resulted in a retail distribution deal with Destineer as well. No advance. But access to the retail distribution channel and a solid chance to succeed. And most important, no need to give up the IP rights to the game.