A small studio Aggro Crab Games acted as a publisher of the indie horror Subway Midnight and attracted attention with an unusual publishing contract. She will not claim a share of the proceeds until the sales of the project reach 10 thousand copies. This decision caused a strong reaction in the community.Subway Midnight
Aggro Crab Games announced this on Twitter.
“We are not going to charge Bubby Darkstar a cent until the game sells 10,000 copies,” the statement said.
Subway Midnight is a psychedelic horror that indie developer Bubby Darkstar has been working on alone for three years. In the game you need to get out of a strange train, running away from ghosts and solving riddles. Aggro Crab Games drew attention to Subway Midnight when the developer’s post about finding a publisher gained over 20 thousand likes on Twitter.
SUBWAY MIDNIGHT!
A haunted-house style horror game set on a spooky train!
-Run away from a weirdo!
-Hang out with ghosts!
-Try not to become a ghost yourself!
I solo-dev’d this game for 3 years and it’s done! I just need a publisher to help release it!
(More info in the thread) pic.twitter.com/R3aAEiiXRC
— bubby darkstar (@bubbydarkstar)September 22, 2021Note that this is the studio’s first experience as a publisher.
Before that, she had only developed the Going Under dungeon crawler. Therefore, it is unclear how successful such an experimental agreement will be.
Despite the fact that Aggro Crab does not disclose all the terms of its contract, other developers liked its decision.
“I declare — this is a new minimum that publishers should offer. Please, from now on, do not sign contracts under which 100% of the revenue from the first 10 thousand copies sold does not go to developers,” wrote indie developer and activist Rami Ismail.
I’m calling it, this is the new minimum offer for publishers. Please henceforth do not sign any deal that does not include 100% share to the dev for the first 10K sales. https://t.co/X25ESKECZ6
— Rami Ismail (رامي) (@tha_rami) October 8, 2021“I don’t like such games, but this publishing contract is just amazing.
I want to see such proposals more often,” said Nathan Savant, narrative designer at Artie Studio.
The terms offered by Aggro Crab Games really differ from standard contracts in the gaming industry. Publishers usually immediately agree on a fixed share of revenue (Raw Fury, for example, takes 50% for itself). Sometimes publishers also do not pay royalties to developers until they compensate for their expenses.