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Rev Sharing

A topic by Programancer created Nov 30, 2021 Views: 1,458 Replies: 12
Viewing posts 1 to 10
(+19)

I know this has been posted before, but I hate to see it archived when it's a very important thing.

It'd be nice to be able to assign people who get a split of the revenue (after itch's cut)- selecting them by username and setting a %. There are a lot of games on this platform that have either publishers or a number of other developers that worked on the project that would greatly benefit from this. It seems like a reasonably simple addition that would benefit a lot of people. I've had to remove one after it was picked up by a publisher because the option is not available, and I'd really prefer it stayed on here (or could be re-added) as well. The very nature of itch is rooted in independent developers and people who are doing development in their own space/means, and rev sharing would just be one less step they have to tackle themselves.

(+11)

Revenue sharing is an essential feature that's missing from itch.io, and it's starting to make me pretty frustrated that it hasn't been implemented yet. As a musician, I can't really offer my services to anyone for a fair fee if we're only doing a single  upfront payment. It would cost too much for most indie devs to pay me something reflecting the amount of labor I'm putting into the music. If itch added revenue sharing, I'd be able to collaborate on a lot of projects with minimal upfront fees, because I know I would be included in future sales.

I think most people here aren't "business" types; nobody here wants to be an accountant who has to manually pay their collaborators, which is stressful and nerve-wracking. There's already revenue sharing for bundles, which I've benefited from immensely many times; I fail to understand why it can't be implemented for individual projects, if everyone involved has an itch.io account they've uploaded their tax forms to and stuff.

I would really like to see itch.io break the silence on this topic. I feel like a lot of people are asking for this, and its absence is preventing itch.io from becoming a more legitimate and compelling option for a lot of devs who can't pay their collaborators upfront, who don't want to manually pay people themselves.

(+4)

All the above is so true. I really hope itch’s product team replies to this, because this is actually a feature they are losing money on. If people can’t sell their game on itch because of a lack of revenue sharing, that’s money they could have gotton a cut from and are completely missing out. It’s definitely needed if they want to compete with other store fronts.

(1 edit) (+5)

I received an email from a designer a few weeks ago that said that they were going to use a different platform for distribution of their game specifically because itch doesn't support revenue sharing.

(1 edit) (+7)

Two other developers and I were just talking about this on Sunday.

We would love to work on more collaborations together on itch, but the current way projects are handled make that challenging. We're not a studio and we all have our own separate individual projects we are working on, but we occasionally work together a project (usually part of a game jam), and with the current way projects are handled it's super not ideal.

We can't set up a revenue split to give us each a cut. Instead for each project we need to decide who's going to be the primary developer, and then someone has to keep track of that when a purchase does come through to make sure the correct amount gets dispensed out. It's super messy and it means we're less inclined to do full scale collaborations simply because we don't want to rip off our friends, but we also don't want to have to manage payouts to each other.

a game pass service...

(+2)

That is an entirely different thing to what this topic is about, but to touch on that- I think that’s a lot more difficult and extremely unlikely with a DRM free community, and quite possibly less beneficial to everyone participating. The existing bundle system fills that gap and people get to keep their games, I think. 

(+5)

Fully agree with revenue share, I have a couple games that I am working on with others that I want to be able to revenue share with them. I understand there are some complexities involved with which users are assigned to the project and making sure they are all set up to receive payments as well, but I don’t think that’s insurmountable. This absolutely needs to be a feature.

(+4)

I too would like rev share

(+3)

Hear, hear!

(+3)

This would make collaborations soooo much easier to manage. I'm often afraid to do collaborations with people because having to figure out how/when to pay people after I get paid is so difficult

(1 edit) (+4)

I’m working on a collaborative project (a physical game) and would love to host the finished project on Itch, but the lack of revenue sharing means that we are planning on using a different platform instead. This absolutely needs to be added!

(+9)

Does itch STILL not have revenue share? It's an absolutely crucial feature, especially for the smaller creators that itch caters to - not everyone has a bean counter on hand to make sure all the money gets where it needs to go!