I worked on a game that sold three times that and never saw one.<p>The parent company was 'retooling the royalty structure' for well over a year, even had people come from corporate to tell us the progress of said monetary division. Meanwhile we worked a forced six month crunch, 5-6 days a week - most of those twelve hour days, on the first game and were in the middle of the same for the rushed out sequel.<p>Said parent company no longer exists.<p>*Just as an aside, during said royalty meeting they made note of how the money they were spending on food each night was being deducted from our eventual royalties. :)
This is the harsh reality for most independent game development teams, except for a few super-star-teams which are able to negotiate non-cut-throat contracts. The publisher pays production cost in advance, and recoups production + marketing cost before the developer sees any royalties, which means the developer can be happy to cover their costs during production and are then suddenly cut off once the game is finished. New money only comes in after the next deal has been signed or when the last game becomes an unexpected break-out hit and earns much more money then forecast (which is very unlikely). If the team can't land a new project for 2 or 3 months it's usually over. It was always hard for independent teams but since about 2009 it's a massacre.
Oddworld was located here in San Luis Obispo and, back in the day, were known as one of the only large-ish tech/dev companies in town (we have a much better tech/startup ecosystem now).<p>Our local weekly did a cover story on Oddworld a few years back [0]. It paints a slightly different picture. Stranger’s Wrath was a "commercial flop" and the 5 million games sold was over a span of several years.<p>I don't know much about the video game industry but I think there's more to it than the Polygon story.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.newtimesslo.com/cover/7058/the-oddysee-exoddus-and-wrath-of-oddworld-inhabitants/" rel="nofollow">http://www.newtimesslo.com/cover/7058/the-oddysee-exoddus-an...</a>
<i>Now fortunately someone told us to do that, and did the same thing, and that's ultimately how we got the company back," he explained. "Because when we were able to prove that things were not what they should be then it was ‘pay us or give us the company back', very simple. And so that's how we got the company back, 100 per cent."</i><p>I'm really curious about the full story here. Did they sue a publisher to pay them what they owned and they got paid back in their own stock?
I had a lot of fun playing Munch's oddysee. I really felt sympathetic to the creatures and wanted to help them. I wish they would make more games... I want to return to Oddworld!
Url changed from <a href="http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/9/5883301/oddworld-creators-sold-5-million-copies-in-retail-and-never-saw-a" rel="nofollow">http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/9/5883301/oddworld-creators-so...</a>, which points to this. We also changed the title from [1] to the subtitle of the article (as much of it as would fit).<p>1. "Oddworld creators sold 5 million copies in retail and never saw a royalty check"
There are always two sides of the medal.
I remember reading article more than 10 years ago about fantasy writer. This guy wrote some story for one of the largest fantasy publishers and he got $2K for it. Deal was made, all good.
It was that until 6 months later when his story turn out to be a hit and the company published it again (they were holding the rights to it).<p>So this publisher came to those fantasy circles hating on the company why they never sent him a cheque since they made probably millions from it. Even if he said himself they had all the rights to it and he agreed on contract as it was - he still was mad that he didnt got more. Instead of building business relationship, trying to release more stories for better fee he chose to hate on them.<p>Me myself as indie game developer I wouldn't sign contract that I am not feeling comfortable about.<p>I am selling all rights to my games to publishers, so I can focus on game development only. If one of the games will become next Angry Birds - oh well, I wont be hating on the company, but I would try to come out with joint deal for sequels.<p>I understand there could be mistake in accounting, but regarding some comments - publishers are not charity company. They are profit oriented. So if you have in your contract "you get paid $50K for exclusive rights" then you get paid $50K and nothing else.
> I don't want to be a slave to these guys who are making tons of money while the developers are not.<p>Heh, they even created games that mirror their own situation.
One of the oddworld devs, Charles Bloom, is a guru of compression and has a really fascinating blog you should follow: <a href="http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com</a>
A pretty vacuous statement. Where they given 5 million or 50 million in advance? Maybe 5 million copies wasn't enough to pay off their advance. I am ready and willing to believe EA is trying to fuck over everyone humanly possible, but what is the whole story? For instance: If they were given 50 million up front and had a royalty rate of 10% and an average sales price of $30 then that would be 15 million dollars no where near the dollar amount to expect a royalty check.
Sounds like the publisher or studio was accused of being in turmoil back at the time (such as <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8Ex0abZy3ZQJ:www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/10/08" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8Ex0abZ...</a> ).
This comes to confirm the old statement of those courses you see on airplane magazines: "You don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate." (with the slight addition of "... and we can still steal what you negotiate")
It's not like the terms aren't known up front. Are the terms shitty? Absolutely. Are they a surprise? No.<p>Fortunately there's never been a better time to go indie. More opportunities and more store fronts are accessible than ever before.
Reminds me of the scene from Bob's Game, "The Meeting": <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRrEakRSfSk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRrEakRSfSk</a><p>Bob talks with a game company exec.