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Sites that sell GameMaker games

The “Distributing Games” section of the Game Maker Community often contains posts where people are discussing their ideas to setup websites to enable GameMaker users to sell games they have created. Every now and again some of these ideas actually get past the drawing board and a website is actually set up.

The latest such site is PCGamesNow.net

Fees:
Listing a game is completely free!
Sale fee: $0.50 + 10%

Delivery:
There are two delivery options for customers. We deliver the game to the customer for you.
Delivery options:
– Digital Delivery (Free)
– CD-ROM and Digital Delivery (Customer pays $2.99 per game)

Sounds good? But how many copies of your game do you think you could sell on a page that looks like this?

I’m sure this service, like all those that have come and gone before, are started with the good intention of trying to help people sell GameMaker games but more thought really needs to go into these projects. There is nothing to stop creators of decent GameMaker games selling them elsewhere at more established and popular (none-gm specific) sites or creating their own e-commerce solution as is the case with Magi.

As far as I am concerned whilst these sites have little to no good publicity they serve almost no purpose. There is speak of a Microsoft AdCenter campaign, but we shall have to wait and see.

A particularly bad example of a site similar to this was SellYourGMGames (GMB Review) which proposed to use a completely manual method to send out purchased games. To set up a service selling GameMaker games you need far more than just a basic idea, small amount of webspace and a domain name.

Thankfully PCGamesNow is much better than SellYourGMGames ever was. It has a shopping cart for a start which is linked up with PayPal.

Unfortunately I didn’t want to purchase Ultimate Arrow, so I am not sure if the entire process is automated – but if it is this site easily eclipses many of the other half-hearted attempts.

I do hope a project like this can become a success, but it won’t be easy.

What do you think?

13 Comments

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  1. The seller section of PC Games Now! is now open.

    You can now apply for a seller account and submit your games!

    There is also a basic forum for seller discussion.

    sell.pcgamesnow.net

  2. Yeah, that would be great, if, say, I could find a contact email for you =P

    I’ll just post on the MarkUp forums I guess.

  3. I think that it wouldn’t hurt to actually put a game on there, and once enough circulation starts up then a site like this could really get going.

    But my question is how many people would attempt to sell a less than sellable game. I myself am not going to think about purchasing a game that’s along side a bunch of unprofessional games.

  4. In regards to:
    “But my question is how many people would attempt to sell a less than sellable game. I myself am not going to think about purchasing a game that’s along side a bunch of unprofessional games.”

    There will definitely be strong quality control, as is necessary with such a site. If a game is allowed on the site but receives negative reviews, it will be removed.

    We are also working on a seller portal portion of the site. This will include game-submission information, sales and profit information, and a forum for communication. If sellers voice their concern about a particular game driving customers away, we will consider having it removed.

  5. Hello, I would like to address a few of the comments that this has brought up.

    PayPal checkout IS available, the customer is redirected to the payment page after checkout is complete. They don’t have to provide their financial information to us.

    We have two shipping options: Digital delivery and CD-ROM. We require an address during checkout because we ship the game on a CD-ROM if the customer chooses for an additional $2.99 charge. We ship to the address that they provide during checkout. We offer this choice because some customers may feel more comfortable receiving a physical product than access to downloading the full game. We feel that our $2.99 charge is very fair, much more so than some competitors offer.

    I hope I cleared that up. If you have any questions about PC Games Now!, please contact us at contact@pcgamesnow.net.

  6. Eww, but the checkout is internal, not PayPal, it goes though a 5 step program. Including asking for your address. Why, tell me, do they need an address to send you a DIGITAL COPY.

    Anyways, it was a nice concept.

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