Why not "Self Publish"

[JG14_Jagr]

Given the internet today, why would a game company that is aiming at a failry small audience, not sell their own product online without dealing with apublisher.. It would seem to me that given the economic differences in Russia and the USA for instance, Oleg and his crew would be selling English Language versions of this game for $50 and pocketing all of that $50 less what ever it cost to power the servers for the downloads. I would think that selling 1 game that way would give them the same return as 2 or 3 sold through Ubisoft.

I had no issues buying Eagle Dynamics A-10C online only.. works great and they seem to do ok with it too. I would MUCH prefer to give my $$$ to the DEVELOPERS of this game who put their blood sweat and tears into it than some publisher who has no concern for the game other than it makes them money.

[JG14_Jagr]

For me personally, I would have purchased the online version and then later if they decided to distribute it internationally, I would have purchased the DVD version as well just to have it on hand.. there may be very big reasons what Olef and crew were unable to do that, but I wish it would have been possible..

[sod16]

Originally Posted by JG14_Jagr

Given the internet today, why would a game company that is aiming at a failry small audience, not sell their own product online without dealing with apublisher.. It would seem to me that given the economic differences in Russia and the USA for instance, Oleg and his crew would be selling English Language versions of this game for $50 and pocketing all of that $50 less what ever it cost to power the servers for the downloads. I would think that selling 1 game that way would give them the same return as 2 or 3 sold through Ubisoft.

I had no issues buying Eagle Dynamics A-10C online only.. works great and they seem to do ok with it too. I would MUCH prefer to give my $$$ to the DEVELOPERS of this game who put their blood sweat and tears into it than some publisher who has no concern for the game other than it makes them money.

It is more to do with funding, and I think Ubi and 1C fund Olegs crew with money.

Otherwise, if they made profit from this, they could easily release this game indie on steam and make a lot of profit.

[JG14_Jagr]

That may very well be it... they may need to negotiate some type of buy out deal to let Ubisoft let them off the hook and pay a share of the profits to recover invested money..

[Space Communist]

A lot of people are talking about this possibility but I suspect that there are legal issues. I wouldn't be surprised if they signed sequel rights with Ubi (maybe even 1C in Russia as well) way back in the beginning when self publishing wasn't possible. Now they are pretty much beholden to those companies, both legally and financially.

Sure if they could have found some way to live and pay rent for the 6 years of game development then they would have had full rights to the game and could have published it however they wanted. But well, rent's gotta be paid and I really doubt the continuing sales for IL-2 were enough to keep things going without getting money from these other companies. I feel bad but I for one bought the entire IL-2 series from steam for $2.50 a couple of years ago. I only wish I had been introduced to it earlier!

[GT182]

I believe Oleg has a contract with UBI to publish a certain number of games from 1C. After the contract is up, possibly and hopefully, Oleg will publish his own titles.

I for one would buy stock in 1C to make it happen.

[Heliocon]

They forgot to hire a lawyer - thats why.

[Chivas]

Originally Posted by JG14_Jagr

Given the internet today, why would a game company that is aiming at a failry small audience, not sell their own product online without dealing with apublisher.. It would seem to me that given the economic differences in Russia and the USA for instance, Oleg and his crew would be selling English Language versions of this game for $50 and pocketing all of that $50 less what ever it cost to power the servers for the downloads. I would think that selling 1 game that way would give them the same return as 2 or 3 sold through Ubisoft.

I had no issues buying Eagle Dynamics A-10C online only.. works great and they seem to do ok with it too. I would MUCH prefer to give my $$$ to the DEVELOPERS of this game who put their blood sweat and tears into it than some publisher who has no concern for the game other than it makes them money.

The cost of development is far too high. It would have been nice if Oleg made enough money on the IL-2 series, but from what I've read his cut from a small genre market wouldn't have been enough to pay the wages of 10 to 15 team members for 5 to 6 years. So UBI and IC publishing had to be involved. I doubt the publisher would even make that much money with small genre markets. Luckily we have a developer who cares, especially when he could make far more money on large market sims. I'm sure if it were possible Oleg would have done it all himself.

[JG14_Jagr]

I think the business model that needs to be examined is self publishing through downloads. I would love to have 100% of my cash going to the developers and future development. Hopefully there will be a way out for Oleg and crew (assuming they are all still involved) to have future addons done this way..

[Eklund89]

I think Oleg and his team should take donations.