edit: IG has switched over to the Humble-like system of tying purchases onto accounts back in May, combating resellers. Thanks y'all for the info. Below is a story of how it was before IG switched models:
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I've heard of some of the shady deals from a few devs about Indie Gala, but nothing like this. Holy crap.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoshFairhurst/20140710/220768/Think_Before_You_Bundle.php
The gist of the story: unlike other bundlers, Indie Gala panders to third party resellers, who in turn resell the keys they bought for as little as nine cents. Here's how they do it.
Lots more at the link.
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I've heard of some of the shady deals from a few devs about Indie Gala, but nothing like this. Holy crap.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoshFairhurst/20140710/220768/Think_Before_You_Bundle.php
The gist of the story: unlike other bundlers, Indie Gala panders to third party resellers, who in turn resell the keys they bought for as little as nine cents. Here's how they do it.
Saturday Morning RPG has been in four bundles: Indie Royale, Groupees, Indie Gala, and Blink Bundle. Each bundle has their own benefits, but only one of them has a serious flaw that I was totally blind to:
Indie Gala
When I was approached to include Saturday Morning RPG in Indie Gala it seemed like a wonderful opportunity. From what I had seen, Indie Gala was consistently the second highest grossing bundle out there – behind Humble Bundle, the golden standard of bundles. There is a reason for this: Indie Gala’s model panders to third-party resellers. This is bad. Like, really bad. It will absolutely kill your game’s long-term saleability. Third-party resellers are effectively the seedy black market of Steam keys – they will sell keys for your game without your knowledge, at a fraction of your Steam price. Many times these prices will only be pennies on the dollar of your original price – which reflects how little they paid for the keys in the first place.
You see, Indie Gala has this thing called “Happy Hour” where to spur sales they allow 2-for-1 deals on keys. Pledge the minimum $1 and you’ll get two keys for each game instead of one. Sometimes the happy hour deals will even yield 4-for-1 deals instead of the usual 2-for-1. On top of that, Indie Gala offers tiered “gifting” which allows you to buy multiple copies of the bundle at progressively lower prices, the more you buy. This is perfect for resellers looking to get a couple hundred, or even thousand keys. Especially when the tiered gifts get crazy cheap during happy hour (these offers stack!). Oddly enough, Indie Gala’s happy hour actually lasts eight to ten hours and sometimes arbitrarily longer. It will occur multiple times throughout the bundle, so there is almost no chance customers/resellers will miss it.
After all was said and done, we made approximately $0.09 per copy of Saturday Morning RPG sold during Indie Gala. I knew the per copy yield wouldn’t be high going into the bundle, but what I did not predict was the long term effect resellers would have on the game.
Lots more at the link.
