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Display MoreDisplay MoreHave you asked yourself how this business works? Gameforge needs to recover the cost of the initial investment of buying the publishing license for the game, not only that but they will soon also need to pump new money into updates. You know the two missing characters? Yes, Jin and Iris. That stuff ain't free and it isn't part of the core version of the game, it's an update that GF needs to pay for. Developers don't send new content to publishers for free, so publishers need to be profitable in order to keep the game updated in their region.
I don't think you know how this business works either.
Publishers do have to recoup some initial costs like deployment (servers, bandwidth ...) and localization (translations, voice overs ...) costs. [In the case of GF, they skimped on the voice overs, but most publishers have to pay for that as well.]
But they're NOT paying for the game in bits and pieces like you claim. They don't buy a "core game", then pay for each additional update, and then pay again for new chars. That's just not how things work.
Think of it as a partnership where the developers create a game, but don't want to deal with sales and marketing and deployment of their product as well as translations for the various regions around the world. This is where the various regional publishers comes in to handle those things.
The developers make their money from the publishers making money off you. Because the publishers are basically their sales and marketing team. They don't make their money selling content to the publishers.
There are exceptions to every rule, but what I described is more or less how most developer/publisher relationships work.
That's exactly how traditional video games work, especially console games and single player pc games. However MMORPGs don't necessarily work in that way.
With Tera online (also published by Gameforge) it certainly doesn't work like that. It was even said in the forums that En Masse / Gameforge need to purchase the updates. Online games and especially mmorpgs require constant re-development, new content, patches, updates, cosmetics, events, maps, etc. Otherwise, how is Bluehole Studios making money? Or in this case, Lion Games.
Now, the problem is publishers have gained such a level of power and control over developers nowadays that it doesn't really leave developers much room for negotiation and makes them have to deliver stuff under any imposed condition if they want to survive. But that's another story.
I think what you describe is how traditional games work while what I describe is how most mmos work.
As to how developers get paid, I already told you, they get a portion of the sales from the publishers.
As for your claim that publishers need to purchase updates, I'd like to see a reference. If it's true, then it would be the exception rather than the rule.
The only thing I agree with you on is that publishers have a lot of power and control over developers.
I don't have a link man, this was so many years ago but I also recall hearing about this in the early streams of Blade and Soul's localization. Any way, we might be talking about something that after all goes on a case by case basis depending on what's negotiated. What's clear is that a F2P game is always gonna have a cash shop and the items are not gonna be bargains... I don't know how some people believe that an online game can survive without being profitable. Whether we like it or not this is how it is and thank god GF didn't go for a "fashion inside rng crates" model.
