Something like the board game should be hailed as a positive step in this direction, IMO. I'm hopeful that game publishers start to provide more direct value and capability here. I'm not sure this is something you can control though, since I think the store has all of the power.
With something like DRG merch, I honestly wouldn't be averse to having higher prices, if it meant more profit was passed onto you. I think people really want to support merch where their favorite game developers benefit from their purchases. They just want to extract value out of the brand and properties of many other creators.įor consumers, it can be very hard to tell the difference between a merch shop with an official relationship versus knockoff stuff. There isn't the interest or capability to make game-specific merch. They take care of distribution and discovery and payment processing, and take a cut of all game sales.īut with physical products, I think the profit margins are already narrower, so the cut from the store front that is passed onto the dev/pub is even narrower.Īlso, some of these store fronts seem to be more about stamping game art onto a set of boilerplate products. In some ways, that's not so different than Steam. However, some of these stores seem to be really about exploiting someone else's brand and work to provide revenue for themselves, and pass a small amount of that profit onto the publisher/developer. You're completely right that producing and shipping products (internationally) is HARD and completely out of the skillset for game developers and even most game publishers. I suspect these online product store fronts are an enticing trap for game developers.
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