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Introducing open revenue sharing

Since October 2013, itch.io has let developers sell their content without taking any of the money. It was originally disabled for the Ludum Dare October Challenge, which challenges people to build a game, take it to market, and sell it.

At the time I decided to keep itch.io’s fee off indefinitely since the cost of hosting the site was manageable, and it was really encouraging to sellers. Fast forward to today and things have grown quite a bit. Recently many have been asking about when itch.io will start making money. They want to see the marketplace they enjoy have a sustainable business model so they can continue to use it for the foreseeable future.

I’m really inspired by the community that has formed around itch.io. It’s a generous group giving money to creators to support their work. I want to encourage this kind of community from every angle, and I decided that how I handle the fee would be the perfect opportunity to do that.

itch.io has always been pay-what-you-want for buyers, it will soon be pay-what-you-want for sellers. I’m calling it open revenue sharing.

I’ve written a separate post on the itch.io site, What is itch.io, talking about what itch.io’s goals are along with introducing the idea. If you also believe that itch.io is doing something good here then I highly encourage you to share and spread the post.

So what is open revenue sharing?

As the seller you decide what percentage itch.io gets from each transaction. From 0 to 100%, set the slider to what you think is fair. A quote from the post I linked above:

You might be saying “well that sounds pretty risky, what if everyone sets it to 0?” We think that’s a risk we’re willing to take in the spirit of encouraging the generous and supportive community that’s already developed around itch.io.

You’ll find these new revenue share options on the seller settings tab in your account settings page. Because I don’t want to just start collecting money with no notice, the revenue sharing will not be active until March 23rd, 2015 but you can configure the percentage that will be applied to your account now.

itch.io’s default rate will be 10%. If you don’t make any changes to your account then it will automatically be set to 10%. 10% is far below the industry standard, 30%, which you’ll see on places like Apple App Store, Google Play or Steam. If you don’t think the default is fair, either too low or too high, I encourage you to change it!

I hope you consider everything itch.io has been doing over the past two years when choosing the revenue split. itch.io is an evolving project that has taken thousands of hours to develop. If you believe this is a project that should succeed then reflect that in the amount you choose. The money earned will be put directly back into the site to continue providing the tools you need to sell and market your content.

Don’t forget to check out the What is itch.io post I mentioned above.

Thanks!
- Leaf

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What is itch.io?

itch.io is an open marketplace for independent game creators. It's completely free to upload your content. Read more about what we're trying to accomplish and the features we provide.

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get to lead 

(+1)

This is awesome, Leaf, thank you! Will you be adding revenue sharing for creators? It would be really helpful for my main tabletop company to be able to pay our digital royalties automatically.

I also just discovered this website and I like its concept and it deserves to be encouraged

(+1)

I just discovered this website and love this concept. I hope it has proven great for everyone involved!

What?? Just-What? A-w-e-s-o-m-e!

Didn't know that. If I start selling games for money I'll be sure to keep the revenue share above 0 if I change it.

(+1)

This is really great, I hope we can also see revenue splitting between other creators. I'd love to put more collaborative work on here in the future, but having to split every payment after the fact manually puts me off. Especially when other places already have such a feature.

(+1)

I'm new to itch. I have yet to publish but have been  working on my 1st project page. It's been overwhelming and  confusing at times since there's a lot to read, design, and test out but  this post makes me truly realize that you and others before me have put so much work already into this site and into this community.  For that, thank you.  I can't wait to be one of your published designers. I'm so close ! ;)

In regards to  the open revenue sharing, I think it feels very collaborative, letting us the sellers decide what is right for us. Thank you for such remarkable generosity.  

 

(+2)(-1)

This is so hecking generous. Bless you.

(+3)(-1)

this has very good info