Originally Posted by Ithiel


Industry standard for digital games sales is ~30% (Source: https://www.quora.com/Valve-company-What-percentage-does-Steam-keep-from-sales). Some estimates are closer to 40%, so let's take that and assume a take-home of ~60%.

This is a larger cut than Retail, but Retail includes other costs: http://kotaku.com/5479698/what-your-60-really-buys. Rough estimate there is take home ranges from about 50%-60%.

Most likely, it's not really cheaper to operate in Retail vs. Steam. In fact, if you do all sales online you don't have to deal with supply chain and manufacturing which lets you run on a leaner staff which saves the company money as well. Integration with a platform like Steam is likely cheaper in the long run.

Only real question is whether they are missing out on money by not going retail. The answer is probably yes, but they've made it clear that the extra operational cost is not worth it to them; they're focused on the game.


I think you guys misunderstood. They dont need to go full retail like Amazon or Walmart for this to be very profitable. Video games are not what they used to be. It used to be that you needed retail for marketing and impulse sales. This game however, does not need that nor will it work well since impulse folks tend to favor action games. The power of RPGs is exactly that they have a dedicated and usually knowledgeable fan base. They dont need retail style marketing... most of the sales will be from folks who already know about the game. This is simply a way to better capitalize on sales that would happen anyway (like myself hopefully).

I am suggesting they simply sell it themselves on the larian website. This would cost next to nothing. You dont need a publisher or distributor. Printing a box is very cheap as is making DVD's. The only real cost is time to assemble the package and ship it. Honestly, this shouldnt be a big deal and can easily be handled by current workers during idle time. Even if they only sell 100k hard copies, thats easily $1m extra profit which can go a very long way for a smaller studio.

Last edited by Marc54; 10/09/17 07:09 AM.