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Launch HN: Dropleaf (YC S17) – subscription service for indie PC games
I'm Vikram, one of the founders of Dropleaf (http://dropleaf.io http://dropleaf.io), a subscription service for all-you-can-play indie PC games.
Zi (Rygeko) and I started Dropleaf because, as gamers, we feel that space around games could be so much better. With the rise of tools that make games easier to make, more people from diverse walks of life are creating games. That means the potential for more games that speak to a wider set of people, and we think that’s really good for the industry. We want to encourage that trend in a few ways:
Discoverability: It’s hard for smaller developers to find people who love their games, and it’s also harder for gamers to find games that will resonate. Our focus on indies and our discovery tools mean that we’ll be able to connect devs with the players who will connect with their art.
Diversity: We think the industry wins when gamers, devs, and media are more diverse and inclusive. One of our goals is to encourage that with our community and the way we think about what we do (You can read more about our community here: http://bit.ly/2uyCsFK http://bit.ly/2uyCsFK ).
Dollars: Pricing trends in the industry don’t favor smaller developers or gamers. Gamers are less likely to take a risk on buying a game they don’t know much about, so it’s harder for indie developers to gain traction. And when indie devs can’t make money, they can’t make games. So our customers play a flat monthly fee, and devs get paid based on time played. This means games people like to play will be rewarded, and players won’t have to worry about the cost of entry.
We’re really excited to launch Dropleaf! We’d love to hear any questions you have, or learn about your favorite games!
- FrobozzElectric 9y agoThis looks very interesting! What does your Linux support look like?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rygeko 9y agoNon-existent currently. But a Linux client and games is on our radar.
- dylz 9y agoI hope you will be picky curators - I hate how so much of steam EA/ex-GL/etc is literal trash when it comes to indie games. Not talking about one person pixel art games, but talking about what's effectively cruft autogenerated rubbish to try and profit for $0.99 a copy. I would love to subscribe if so.
- VikramR 9y agoYou can see our catalog here right now: https://dropleaf.io/Catalog https://dropleaf.io/Catalog We're actually adding a couple more games today including one I'm super excited about, Redout: https://34bigthings.com/portfolio/redout/ https://34bigthings.com/portfolio/redout/ Our goal is to have a wide range of games, so that there's something for everyone to fall in love with, but we absolutely plan to be quite selective with what we allow in. If we have a game, it's because it's either great, incredibly compelling in some other way, or very interesting to the gaming nerds out there
- kin 9y agoIn your opinion do you think those games should be omitted entirely from Steam? Or, do you think platforms like Steam need to organize their storefronts better from their front pages?
- dylz 9y ago50-50 IMO One example: http://store.steampowered.com/app/581200/Nash_Racing/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/581200/Nash_Racing/ This is literally just the demo for https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/advanced-tuning-cars https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/advanced-tuning-car... being sold for money. It's unmaintained and runs like crap. Some of the ones that are obvious beginner games that aren't really polished have their place in EA/ex-GL, with people actually passionate about it and trying to build a product. Kudos to them for trying and good luck. This is a great thing, provides visibility for these creative minds, and all that. And then you have http://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Tero%20Lunkka http://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Tero%20Lunkk... This publisher deserves to be removed from Steam completely. It is not beneficial to the platform or to the players, and would probably cause increased refund request support load / chargeback or dispute load.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- navalsaini 9y agoCool - do try https://halfchess.com https://halfchess.com How much revenue could I make if I were a part of your program?
- VikramR 9y agoHey! Thanks for reaching out. It looks like halfchess is a mobile game entirely, does it have a windows build?
- navalsaini 9y agoThanks for responding. Not currently. It's ReactJS; so possibly can be wrapped with electron (etc) or do you mean windows smart-phone. In which case, it can have windows build.
- tarr11 9y agoA lot of games are more like "one-play" movies or tv shows these days. Given that it's so much easier to create "video game content" than in the past, it makes sense to treat it more like Netflix, for the casual consumer.
- altano 9y agoLooks interesting! If your service gets popular, won't the price have to go up to scale with the time spent playing games and the number of games in your catalog? $5/mo seems like way too little to go around.
- VikramR 9y ago5/mo is just introductory pricing. It's our thank you to our earliest users who sign up while we're still working some things out! We expect the full price to be 9.99 a month, but for anyone who signs up now, they'll keep their plan for the life of their subscription!
- fishtoaster 9y agoThat seems like a really cool idea. I know at least a few of those games support OSX - any plans for a mac client?
- rygeko 9y agoIt's on our radar. Right now we're focusing on a solid Windows experience before we build a client for both Mac and Linux.
- stephengillie 9y agoReally cool idea. Glad to see the subscription model being used in video gaming. How do you install and control game software? How do you uninstall it when someone unsubscribes? Do you use an application manager similar to AWS WAM to manage the application locally?
- rygeko 9y agoOur client acts as a downloader, installer, and launcher. So the game is installed on your local machine entirely. We don't remove the games when you unsubscribe, they just become locked. That way you can pick up where you left off easily.
- hmhrex 9y agoAs a full-time employee, husband and parent of 4 children, I love this idea. Currently, buying games is a huge time risk for me. There's a very large chance I won't ever play it. However, paying only $5/month and being able to try a game out with no strings attached (psychologically) is a really nice idea.
- rygeko 9y agoOne of our teammates said the same thing! He loves playing Pankapu with his kid. https://dropleaf.io/Catalog/Game/?Id=19&GameTitle=Pankapu https://dropleaf.io/Catalog/Game/?Id=19&GameTitle=Pankapu I hope you will give us a try and let us know what you think :D
- JVIDEL 9y agoWhat's the difference with playonjump.com? TBH there wont be a "netflix for games" until the big ones sign up for that And they wont since such a service would be a big pay cut from selling games for 60 bucks
- stordoff 9y agoWe're seeing the big companies move in that direction as well (Xbox Game Pass, EA/Origin Access, PSNow)
- VikramR 9y agoDefinitely - subscription means recurring revenue, which is a whole lot easier than having to sell individual copies of anything! Even if you end up doing a little worse per-unit gross, chances are your COGS goes down a fair bit.
- VikramR 9y agoWe think there's a few key differences: First - we're focusing on personalized curation, in other words, the content you get recommended to you will be based on your preferences. Second - There's a whole host of technological and model difference that will allow us to be financially better for developers, and to include larger and more technologically demanding games. And as far as that pay cut goes, I think you'd be surprised as to how much subscription revenue can add up over the year. After all, we won't be 5/month for very long at all. We've definitely seen more replayable games doing better - per user- than they would have on a traditional storefront. When it comes to integrating those 60 dollar games though, we're going to need to make sure we're not re-creating the problem for the indies that we were trying to solve though. Oh and, unlike jump, we're currently up and running ;) (sorry, couldn't resist)
- guftagu 9y agoSadly I think game developers will now optimize towards wasting as much times as possible without convincing the user to quit. Longer loading times, more cut scenes, more fluff essentially. Short games with a small but great single player story campaign will die out against the rocket leagues.
- rygeko 9y agoOur revenue model doesn't focus exclusively on global time played. So we hope to minimize time wasters that aren't fun. But you're absolutely right, there is definitely risk there. We hope our curation will also help combat that, since it's something we want to actively avoid.
- quadcore 9y agoOne of the most common mistakes in the industry is to think that games are different than other types of software. That people "consume" them and move on to the next game. That's wrong. Only a very few games get all the play-hours. Most people ever really play one game. The "game of their life". For some it's starcraft, for others it's minecraft. Games are software, the same rules kind of apply: there are only 15 (say) unicorns per year. A subscription service doesn't make sense in this context because it doesn't make sense for the unicorns to collaborate with you. What I wish would exist however, is YC for games.
- VikramR 9y agoThat's definitely an interesting perspective, but I think steam stats say something a little different, there are hundreds, if not thousands of games that move 100K+ units (and see significant played time from their users) each year. That's a whole bunch of games that a significant number of people fall in love with. But beyond that, I think you just made the case for those games to sign up for a subscription model! If someone's playing a game, say minecraft, month over month, then that developer is getting paid month after month. In other words, if a game takes over someone's life, it'll almost definitely do better per-user on a subscription platform than on a store front. By the way, check out Flare: http://www.flaregames.com/flare-accelerator/ http://www.flaregames.com/flare-accelerator/
- chaostheory 9y agohumble bundle (http://humblebundle.com http://humblebundle.com) has a game subscription plan as well. While they hook you in with AAA games, most of their bundle is indie. I feel most people subscribe because of the price, but I wonder how many people actually play their games in the age of Steam?
- VikramR 9y agoI know what you mean, I have north of 200 games in my steam library. Finding games that seem interesting enough to buy isn't a problem, but finding the games which are going to most deeply resonate with me is almost impossible. It's like opening the fridge, seeing all the stuff you have and then closing it again because you have no idea what you want to make for dinner. We're hoping our discovery system will fix a lot of this. Instead of wall o' games, we want to show you games that are specifically on the list of things you're going to love!
- b_ttercup 9y agoWhat's the process like to get a game on the platform? Are there any requirements for exclusivity? Any expected monthly revenues for a reasonably popular game? This sounds like a good idea and I'm looking to publish a title at some point within a year.
- VikramR 9y agoHey! Shoot me an email at distribution@rootsoft.com Our process isn't super formalized yet, but we think we make it pretty easy for devs. We don't really have expected revenue numbers, since we just launched!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- erik 9y agoWhen you say that devs get paid based on time played, I'm assuming this is platform wide hours, and not per player? Have you considered alternative rev share models? Whenever I see this sort of service, I'm concerned that it is going to make shorter games and genres with low replayability even less viable than they currently are. Games that people play for hundreds of hours, like Terraria, Rimworld, or Factorio are going to get the dominant share of the revenue. You can argue this is fair, but I hate to see the industry moving in a direction that makes games like Inside less viable.
- VikramR 9y agoActually we agree with you wholeheartedly. Revenue is distributed on a per-user basis, we think that's hugely important! Thanks for the question :)
- imtringued 9y agoYou should try to categorize the games by replayability. Story heavy games will be weighted differently than sandbox games.
- VikramR 9y agoThat's a potentially interesting idea, how would you see a system like that working?
- sboselli 9y agoHow does the split with the Indie devs work? If I pay a 5 USD subscription and just play 2 games, one for an hour and the other for 10 hours; who will get what and when? Also, being a subscription model, does this imply now all of these games are online-only? If I'm offline, a game does not know if my subscription is valid/active. How is that handled? What happens later, when I cancel my subscription? I don't see an easy way for you to protect the games once a user has downloaded all of them and cancelled your service.
- VikramR 9y agoWe're not going to post our revenue split numbers exactly, but what I will say is that we distribute revenue based on played time on a per-user basis, each calendar month. We share revenue with our devs, with the supermajority of it going to them. In other words the developer portion of revenue will be split 10:1 in your example. You do need an internet connection to launch games, you're right about that! We use both an API and some encryption to make sure that a game which is saved to your computer is only launchable through the client. If you cancel your subscription, you're going to have a bunch of files you can't use. However, we don't ever want you to lose the characters you've fallen in love with, even if you leave us, so your save files are yours to keep, and should be compatible with any other windows or steam build of the game!
- mysterydip 9y agoAs a hobbyist indie dev, I think it's a great idea. My main concern for the platform is the same as indies in general: discoverability. How do you plan to grow the platform and make people aware of it? People won't subscribe without games, and devs won't spend time modifying for a platform with no audience. Seems like a chicken and egg problem. What's your goal in subscribers for one, two, five years?
- VikramR 9y agoIt's a great question - first of all, we require very, very little(usually zero) technical integration work for games that aren't heavily dependent on steam! As far as growing our brand, we're going to use all of the typical avenues that a games company might! Twitch and Youtube influencers, physical presence at cons, and twitter/fbook/instagram. It's taken some work to get things moving, but now that we've got great games like Evoland, Cluster Truck, Redout and tumblestone, we think we've got a virtuous cycle instead of a chicken and egg problem!
- justinian 9y agoI applaud your goals with your community, and wish more game developers and game-adjacent companies would think similarly. I've worked on games that didn't care, or didn't put the effort in, and so ended up with fairly toxic communities. When I was at Runic Games, I was amazed to see how inclusive and positive a gaming community around the Torchlight series was, but it definitely took work from the very beginning to make it that way.
- VikramR 9y agoThank you! I really appreciate hearing that :D
- Elixyrs 9y agoAre you hiring ???
- VikramR 9y agoNot quite yet, but very soon!
- navalsaini 9y agoWhats your tech stack at Dropleaf?
- rygeko 9y agoIt's .NET, Azure, SQL Server, Windows. We're definitely an anomaly in the start up space here but all of the engineering team worked at Microsoft at some point in our careers, some of us on those very products. So all else having been equal we went with a stack we had a hand in building and we were familiar with.