How to think about publishing a game?

General
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I have been learning godot for some time now - getting quite comfortable with it. I’ve even started working on my dream project but that’s going to take a long time.

Meanwhile, I wanted to deploy a short game

  • to gain some confidence publishing a game.
  • to get some idea of the marketing stuff - to get out of my zone.
  • to make some money as it’s been a while since I left my job.

There are a lot of platforms. I see a lot of indiedevs publishing on steam / itch and posting on reddit. Is that the only way?

What about gamedistribution.com? Should I think about publishing on poki at this stage? Then perhaps, I won’t need any publisher.

How shall I think about all this? Or I shouldn’t? Any advice will be appreciated.

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I have never heard of this website, and I can guarantee you most people who want to play quality indie games will also not use it. At a quick glance, this seems like a very corporate “lets maximize profits at all costs” mindset they have. Their privacy policy is also a bit questionable. It’s fine for what they’re likely made for, but for people wanting to play indie games, things like:
we share your Users Personal Data with in game event analytics platform to receive standardized tracking for business intelligence team who use the data for analytics & reporting

and

We also disclose your Personal Data in the event of any contemplated or actual reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business or assets (including in any insolvency or similar proceedings).

might be a red flag.

So I’d say if you care about your users, do not publish to any platforms like that. Itch gives people a DRM free option, no data is collected, and in a lot of cases people don’t even need to create an itch account to download a game.

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3

Itch is a good place for a first small proper game or demo. Then Steam obviously, but just check up on taxes and your specific region. Promotion: Reaching out to all (most) of the sites and influencers takes lots of time. But if you got the time and passion its doable. If you don’t have a marketing budget to speak of, you do the slow and grow method.

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I got the impression that this post is just an advertisement for this website.

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That was not the intent. I was just exploring different options.

6

agreeing with itch for small-time publishing. putting a game on itch, compared to steam, takes way less time (depending on effort, 2+ minutes) and money (free). i know it’s also good for larger projects, but if you’re at the point of putting out multi-hour games then it would be fine to do both

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