Publishing Together with YoYo Games

Publishing Together with YoYo Games.
As many of you are aware we have been very busy recently.

Most of our time has been spent getting the GameMaker “Runner” working on a variety of devices including PlayStation Portable (PSP) and Apple’s IOS based devices which include iPod, iPhone and iPad.

We’re working hard to get Android support before the end of the year and in 2011 we’ll continue to add new platforms. Windows Phone 7 and Intel’s Meego are two of the many possibilities we’re considering.

In the middle of all of this we’ve been playing catch up in attempting to keep you up to date with what this means for you if you’re genuinely interested in the possibility of selling your games by getting them published on these and other platforms.

We can’t cover everything in one message, so this is the first of a series of communications over the next few days that will hopefully give everyone interested in selling their games with us all of the information that you need to prepare and submit games for sale.

“How do I get my games Published?”
We will open the “YoYo Game Store”. Initially the site will not have a “Shop Front” but it WILL be open to allow you to upload your games that you think will be good enough to be sold.

We will not and cannot use any games that have already been uploaded to the website without your explicit permission.


 * By submitting your game to The YoYo Game Store you accept new Terms and Conditions that allow us to sell your games on your behalf.


 * We will publish these NEW terms and conditions for you to look at in detail.


 * We want to get a reputation for publishing GREAT content. That means it is our plan to sell ONLY THE VERY THE BEST GAMES.


 * The YoYo Game Store is BOTH a portal to other sites (such as iTunes) AND a store where we will sell Windows and Mac versions of the games directly to end-users.


 * We may also use the technology we’ve developed for distributing games to place your games on other websites.


 * As we develop support for other technologies (e.g. Google Android) we’ll add links to the relevant marketplaces as well as possibly selling directly to end users of these devices if that’s allowed.

There is a new upload process associated with the YoYo Game Store. Once your game has been submitted for a review along with the documentation required we’ll let you know as soon as we can if it’s been accepted or not.

We will review your game and if it’s not good enough we’ll do our best to tell you why it is not suitable.

We expect to be very busy doing this, so you’ll need to take our response as a final decision. We are heavily into publishing a list of games already so you will appreciate we are too busy to debate decisions.

You can re-submit your game if it’s previously been refused, but remember that we’re prepared to spend time and money making them GREAT. If your game gets rejected once, and you do not make changes we advised, it will not be accepted. Every game published will receive professional finished work. We’ll only publish what WE consider to be really great games.

To do this “polishing” work we’ve hired our first “Production Team” which includes a professional graphics artist and experienced game developers. We also have musicians and testing staff standing by to make sure that your game works well.

In future we intend to hire several teams and publish as many games as we can as quickly as we can. The busiest games publishers in this area only publish about one game per week. We have ambitions to publish a game every working day. That’s about 200 every year.

We’ll start slowly. Even then, between now and Xmas we’ll aim to publish at least one game every week.

We have a Base Line Spec that we would ask that all games adhere to. We’ll publish detailed guidelines on this. You can go beyond the Base Line Spec with your game, but using features and add-ons that aren’t available on all of the platforms we support may restrict the opportunity we have to get your game sold in multiple places.

One of the most exciting discoveries we’ve made this year is just how well Game Maker games run on these different devices. So we won’t need you to worry too much about performance and scalability issues. The Base Line Spec will help you to understand how best to target some individual platforms, but generally speaking if you stick to using the standard features of Game Maker then we can probably get your games to perform well for you on most of the devices we support.

Not every game will be sold in the YoYo Game Store, some may only be sold, for example on iTunes or the Android market place.. We’ll make the decision on where to market your games. We’ll decide what’s best and where.

We’re not worried too much if the game has already been seen on YoYo Games or other websites. In fact this can be a great way to test a game concept before you upload it to the YoYo Game Store.

We WILL NEVER OWN YOUR GAME. The copyright (IP) for the game itself remains yours at all times. We DO ask that you don’t sell the same game elsewhere or to anyone else at the same time that we are selling it. This is what we refer to as EXCLUSIVITY.

You can ask that we stop selling it if you want to do something else with your game. We’ll send out a detailed document on specifications for this process that will tell you more precisely what you need to do to prepare for this process and all of the other details of how long it takes etc.

Why is it only YoYo Games that can sell my Game?
Firstly there’s no restriction on you selling your game or game ideas to anyone else. If you have a Windows or a Mac game then there are plenty of places where you can try to sell your games.

PUBLISHING is a new venture for YoYo Games and we want to be known for creating great games. Part of this means we want people to see Game Maker as capable of producing PROFESSIONAL content.

We believe that GameMaker, combined with your skills as designers and developers, is more than capable of making successful commercial games. What we’re doing is giving the best GameMaker developers a chance to do exactly that.

We don’t want Apple or anyone else thinking that GameMaker means they get deluged with rubbish games, so for the time being we will help to make sure that it’s only good games that get sent to the platform owners (not just Apple).

We’re not a charity and we want to continue to pay wages for lots of people as well as deliver lots of new things as well as improve what we’ve already got. We want to make big improvements to the website. These will be paid for with any profits we make selling games.

We obviously want to continue to make GameMaker even better. And this will also be paid for from any profits we make. So, for the time being the only way to get your Game Maker games running on IOS and the other NEW platforms we will support, is to submit your games to the YoYo Game Store.

What’s happening to Game Maker? Surely I’ll need a new version of Game Maker to develop games for iPhone or PSP??
At the moment you don’t need to worry about things like “tilt” and other interface issues. We’re dealing with the adaption work for you. The  Base Line Spec (to be updated) will help you to avoid making this difficult for us.

In some cases we’ll add APIs that you can use to make sure your games can take advantage of features like online high score tables. We’re working on this at the moment and we’ll make the  Base Line Spec a living document. We’re carefully looking at what features future versions of GameMaker need to keep it useful as a tool for beginners as well as enable the best talent to make the best possible games.

We won’t be releasing a new version of GameMaker any time soon with specific device support built into it. When you read the details of the  Base Line Spec that we send out, then you can do everything we need using GameMaker 8.1

If your game is written to the spec and runs on a Windows PC, then we’ll be able to get it working on other devices without too much work. We don’t see performance as an issue you need to worry about. We like the idea that GameMaker is a low cost or even free way to get into game development. If we’re successful from publishing then we don’t see any reason why new versions of GameMaker should cost more than they do today.

We want to make sure that GameMaker is seen as a tool for EVERYONE from Beginners to Professionals.

OK, I’m still with you, so what’s the deal?
We’re happy to assume all of the commercial risks involved. In return for this we ask that you share your net revenue with us on a 50/50 basis.


 * If nobody else is taking a cut, then that means you get half the money.


 * If there is a cut (most companies like Sony, Google and Apple take 30%) then we share what’s left 50/50 with you.

We’ll pay you as quickly as we get paid but we can’t afford to pay you before Apple or Sony pay us. Sometimes that means you’ll have to wait 90 days or more before we can load up your PayPal account with spending power. On the bright side, if you have a big hit you might have some quality time to think about how you’ll spend your money ☺

I don’t believe in any of this, how do I complain?
We are interested in 'constructive' feedback from the community and will incorporate this into developments going forward. We expect some will moan and groan (as with all things that change) but please don’t waste everyone’s time with complaints just for the sake of it. We’re pretty excited to work with the best talent that wants to use Game Maker to become professional game developers. There are many other ways for talented people to make money in the games industry, but for now this is how we plan to make it work.

Sandy Duncan 27.10.2010