What do you think about royalty-based resources?

[EpicFILE]

Hello folks!

I am interested to know the business side of video game development (more specifically for RPG Maker).
As far as I know, the resources available for games come from either resource packs, or paying a service to resource makers.
I haven't seen the resources that come with royalty.
Maybe it's because this is the age of royalty-free resources? (anything can be royalty free; photos, music, etc)

With that being said, do you think practicing a business with royalty-based resource is still ethical?
Let's say I provide a service for making resources, is it okay if I ask the game developer to pay me 2%-5% from his monthly game sales? (of course I will tell this before anybody decided to use my service)

In my perspective, royalty-based resource have an advantage.
It allows the game developers to pay resource making services with minimum budget (initially).
How much will he pay, depends on the success of his game.
I think it's far better than having to pay full price for making resources, but the game's success is not yet guaranteed.
Royalty-based resources seem to be more beneficial in my eyes, either as a developer or as a resource maker.

That's my opinion.
Honestly I am still very much clueless about this issue.
I only see the positive side.
Is there a downside, like complicated regulations or anything else?
Provide your opinions, let's discuss it together.

 

[Pan Dimensional Being]

I feel like if you had some humongous library of stuff then yeah that makes sense, but I've seen some plugin behind a paywall on a certain art pay site that apparently gets bleeped too so, though that's not the same, it's pretty similar.
Personally to share in profits with someone it would either have to be a partnership where they make all the music or art or such or it would be more like licensing some large database or something similar to that.

 

[EpicFILE]

I think that's a good point.
For one piece resources, it's better to stick to "pay once" method.
But if the dev wants an entire resources for the game, go with royalty.

 

[Andar]

Royalties is something different than profit-sharing. But lot of your writing gives the impression that you don't know the difference.

Profit-sharing means that people provide different parts of a game and share the final profits in one way or another depending on whatever agreement you have.

Royalties mean that you have purchased not only a base licence, but have to pay additional fees depending on how many copies of the game you sell or give away.

As a result, royalties not only require you to have someone to handle accounting, they are also only considered for projects that have large number of sales - few people bother with royalties at less than ten thousand copies, but royalties are the main income for book writers and hit-bands and so on because those receive additional payments depending on how many copies of a book or a CD have been sold.

Most RM-Games and developers are simply too small to consider handling royalties as a good solution.

 

[dragoonwys]

As Andar pointed out, royalty-based offers are only viable to consider when the dev has a good track record of products that actually sell big. On top of that, royalties need to have legal work involved as you don't want to get bit in the bum by some shady dev. You'll need it signed by both parties and find a reliable way to fufill the agreement for as long as it's written. Things that the usual RM dev don't have the manpower to upkeep.

And even going with Profit Sharing, you'll still encounter that last problem, legal papers would be much recommended to have if you want to have any sort of drip feed earnings after your job is done.

If you want to consider using this as a means of making a living, you don't want to waste your time making a art/music ect for a game from a dev that never proven themselves and then they return with minimal to no sales, which using that time, you could have used your time to seek out commissions that pay you per item done.

Pay once and you are done, maybe give after sales support after but its no extra strings attached and everyone gets what they want, which is what most offers are in this community.

 

[EpicFILE]

@Andar
My bad, it seems I mistook profit sharing as royalties.
Thank you for correcting me.
Anyway, I kinda agree that most RM devs are still small. (but there are great RM devs still)

@dragoonwys
Thank you for the advice.
I haven't give much thought about the devs track record when it comes to profit sharing.
Looks like I gotta go with pay once method.

Thank you for the discussion, I think I can already make the decision.
The thread can be closed.

 

[slimmmeiske2]

This thread is being closed, due to being solved. If for some reason you would like this thread re-opened, please report this post and leave a message why. Thank you.