Back from Gamescom!

Hi everyone!

I'm now back from Gamescom and what a blast! I've wanted to go for many years and through my work on other projects I was able to attend the conference for the first time, and as an exhibitor, which gave me special access to B2B halls and meeting rooms.

The conference was absolutely packed with business events, meetings, parties, and foremost people. More than 250,000 people attended the conference, and I am now mentally, socially, emotionally, and physically exhausted!

Between my obligations to assist my colleagues, I was able to have a few meetings concerning Battle Mage Royal and was able to bring it up in a few appropriate conversations as well, and I wanted to share a few scoops with you.

Meeting with Nutaku

I had a meeting with Nutaku, and I must admit, I wasn't impressed. On the contrary, I picked up on several red flags I'm going to share below.

They spoke in a mildly condescending tone throughout the meeting and consistently undermined anything we've achieved as a community, instead of taking things at face value. This is a ploy meant to make us less confident and sow desperation, most commonly used by people who are reliant on others to "dance" for their money; an unwelcome attitude from a business partner, which also suggests they are not confident in their ability to appear as a good option to us unless they succeed at appearing like the only option.

This also becomes apparent when you mention Steam and Patreon to Nutaku, who insist that all revenue should go through them. This means a developer would have to abolish their Patreon if they have one, and they were very keen on a Steam release having to go through them as well. This is another ploy, meant to make us reliant on Nutaku, as they would control all revenue sources, while we would also surrender our community to them. A publisher, distributor, or platform should be able to perform their business to mutual benefit without us crippling all our other alternatives, and in the case of an exclusive release, the platform should offer appropriate compensation to cover expected losses 🙄

Furthermore, Nutaku was proud to share that 10% of the games on their platform earned 90% of the revenue, this 10% of their games naturally being their free-to-play games with incredibly addictive and abusive in-game purchase models. I had an inkling this was the case, but I hadn't expected it to be this bad and skewed, and it would suggest Nutaku is only interested in and/or capable of selling games that don't have their audiences' best interests at heart 😤

So you can rest assured I won't be talking with Nutaku in the future, cause that place is a money-grubbing shithole! 🤑💩

Meetings with other developers

Thankfully, I was able to meet with other developers, some of whom have had great success with 18+ games that rely on creating quality products, and some who had experience releasing on Steam, and they didn't mind sharing experiences and challenges, and letting me in on a few things they had done whilst working on their Steam game that had been instrumental to their success. —All who had interacted with Nutaku only had negative experiences to speak of as well.

So, all in all, Gamescom was a fantastic trip and I am now much better prepared for the journey ahead with Battle Mage Royal. Nobody will have to worry about perverse incentives from Nutaku, and I have much better ideas for how we might drive a bigger audience to the game that will benefit everyone!

Thank you so much for all your support and I am sooooo ready to get back to developing the game with renewed inspiration! 🤗💞

I imagine some of you might have questions about the trip and my new ideas, so I'll try to make time for a stream soon where you are welcome to ask whatever is on your mind!

Cheers,

Tinon