Gd.games ads and revenue sharing

GDevelop general
1

Hi everyone,

The number of players coming to gd.games has increased, so we’re coming back to it! We’re going to progressively introduce monetisation on gd.games, with revenue shared with you. The goal is simple: ease monetisation and make it a win-win for game creators and for GDevelop as a platform.

We’re starting with ads. The idea is to follow what most platforms (social media, like YouTube, or gaming platforms, like CrazyGames, Poki…) do: display ads (of different formats) and do revenue sharing with the creator of the game.
We’ll start with 60% of the revenue for the game creator, 40% for GDevelop (gd.games).

Ads types will be classic “display” ads (banners next to games), and we’ll make experiments with interstitials, pre-roll ads (displayed before a game) and in the future rewarded video ads (so that players can earn something if they choose to watch an ad).

Ads actual revenue can vary a lot (basically: display ads is very low. Intersitial or pre-roll is much higher. Rewarded video is much much higher). It varies according to ad network, according to the advertisers and the audience countries.

Anyone can earn with their games on gd.games - provided we’re allowed as a company to make payouts to you (we’re based in the EU, which can imposes rules on some countries). At the beginning, payouts will be done through Paypal (which can also imposes KYC/KYB rules). Revenue will accumulate in USD on your account and payout in cash will be unlocked if the balance is going above $60.

Be aware that even on big platforms (YouTube, gaming platforms) meaningful revenue is only achieved by videos or games reaching a very high traffic and some level of quality (not to mention draconian eligibility rules). Some channels don’t earn more than a few cents or dollars per months (if any).

Because this is also the case for games, we’ll give the possibility to exchange the revenue you got on your account into GDevelop credits. We’re actually making very advantageous: each 1 cent ($0.01) you earn can be exchanged for 2 credits (so $1 is worth 200 credits). The reason is because GDevelop credits can be used in the GDevelop ecosystem, notably the asset store where you can buy asset packs or game templates from other GDevelop creators. So it’s a win for everyone.

Disabling ads on your game page is possible through the game dashboard. Note that a game that would generate a huge traffic/workload on our servers may prompt us to contact you and tell “Hey, this game has been receiving a lot of traffic, we suggest you turn on ads, so you’re not losing the potential earnings from this traffic”. Typically, this is only the case for very successful games or games made by brands for promotional usage.
This will only be on gd.games, you can continue to publish on any platform as usual without any ads.

If you have Silver/Gold/Pro GDevelop membership, you won’t be interrupted by ads while playing games on gd.games (as a thank you for supporting already GDevelop and the community).

We’ll roll this out progressively with a number of selected games or creators. This means your game won’t start displaying ads right now (and when it does, you will see your revenue inside your game dashboard). We’ll probably do multiple trials with some game and creators first.

Finally, I hope this is just a first good step and we can continue with 1) rewarded video ads (which are very successful on all platforms), 2) have deals with ad networks on other platforms (so your game is already “good to go”), notably on mobile and 3) expand this solution to other monetisation schemes (in app purchases, battle passes…) on gd.games or on other platforms.

If you have questions, feel free to ask here and I’ll try my best to answer them!

tl;dr:

  • gd.games will be adding monetization via ads, being enabled progressively over time.
  • Revenue from ads on game pages will be shared with the creators with 60% to creators, 40% to the GDevelop company.
    • Revenue will be paid out via PayPal initially. Payout is $60 minimum.
    • Revenue can be traded for GDevelop credits at the creator’s discretion.
  • Creators can disable ads in their game dashboard.
    • Games that lead to high server load may be contacted to request to turn on ads to help cover server costs, but this will be only for extreme cases.
  • Silver/Gold/Pro members won’t see ads while playing games on gd.games
  • Ads will be standard display banner ads initially, although other types (rewarded videos/pre-load/etc) may be developed/tested eventually (and will lead to higher revenue).
14 Likes
3

Interesting, I just hope ads won’t be that intrusive.

4

Has this feature started now

5

Can someone pay their GDevelop subscription with Gf credits? This post would be life changing knews if that was an option.

1 Like
6

Will the developer still earn from people that have a Silver (or higher) subscription? There could be a very unlikely scenario where every person that plays that game has a subscription which should technically mean that the game creators don’t earn anything.

7

Interest question! On YouTube, content creators still make money from people who have YouTube Premium.

8

Will creators be able to create their own campaigns (ads) within marketing featuring?
Will interstitial and reward ads be only within GD games or even in standalone releases?

9

The post is pretty explicit that the ads and everything about them are specific for gd.games pages. From the info 4ian posted, it will not have anything within your game itself, just the page your game is hosted on if you export to gd.games and don’t opt-out of ads.

1 Like
10

Can someone pay their GDevelop subscription with Gf credits? This post would be life changing knews if that was an option.

This is unrelated and for now there is no such plan for it, but who knows in the future.

There could be a very unlikely scenario where every person that plays that game has a subscription which should technically mean that the game creators don’t earn anything.

That’s very very very unlikely. They won’t generate any ad revenue - because they don’t see ads. But we will probably consider that a view from a subscribed user is equivalent to an average user - and so give the equivalent revenue.

Will creators be able to create their own campaigns (ads) within marketing featuring?

Maybe later.

Will you use user preferences for customization ): or not (:?

I don’t understand the question

Will interstitial and reward ads be only within GD games or even in standalone releases?

As stated, everything here is only for gd.games

1 Like
11

That’s really cool and fair, but in case like this:

How it should works in our games? I imagine an action who display the Ads, but if we export the game on google play? There will be always the Ads of Gdevelop? Is better to have them instead the google ads? And in this case we will gain a condition like “The game is played on Gd.games” to let the ads works on the platform?

12

For rewarded ads, we’ll see when/if we add them.
Currently, if you use for example the Poki or CrazyGames extensions to add rewarded ads to games published on these platforms, their SDK is just doing nothing when it’s not on the right platform.

This could either:

  • be the same for gd.games rewarded ads (if you use the action and your game is on Android/iOS or anywhere else, then nothing happens)
  • or we could do something that would fallback to Google ads or another provider - depending on if we can have partnerships or special integration with other adnetworks.

But it’s too early to tell :slight_smile:

2 Likes
13

I’m still a bit confused about this. Recently, I published a game made with GDevelop on the PlayStore, and the Google AdMob ads appear exactly at the moments I programmed them to in the game, working perfectly. With the system you proposed, would I need to create a different extension in my game’s code and then upload it to GD.games?

14

Admob ads do not appear anywhere other than on mobile apps.

If you publish your game on gd.games, admob ads aren’t going to show up, and you don’t have to do anything in your game to use the gd.game ads, they will appear on the game page, not in the game. At least until some point in the indeterminate future 4ian mentions, when/if they add options around interstitial ads or reward videos.

15

When will this be implemented

2 Likes
16

I would like it. When it will be publicly available, @4ian?

1 Like
17

I am waiting for the same thing. And, I’m ready to earn GD credits using this way!

1 Like
19

This is very interesting. Gives us the chance to make money on our games in various ways. Any ETA on the new feature?

1 Like
20

Now it’s created. See this release: Release 5.4.210 · 4ian/GDevelop · GitHub