Mod articles
-
What is Bethesda thinking now? - The role of a publisher
It seems that what Bethesda is trying to do is setup industry standard roles where Valve is the distributor for whom 30% is standard, Bethesda is the supposed publisher, and Modders are developers for whom 25-30% is standard. The problem is Bethesda fulfills none of the roles of a publisher but two - they've sourced the distributor and they've licensed the IP.
In game development a publisher typically advances the cost of development to the developer and in exchange the developer receives a royalty on all sales of the game (25-30% is pretty standard in the industry) beginning after the publisher has recouped an agreed upon percentage of the advance - when the publisher has recouped 10-20% of the advance they will start paying the developer 30% royalty on all sales goin...