Gdevelop project monetization opinion

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I’ve saw that liluo is showing ads. I know nothing is free, and having such a great platform it requies having costly servers.

First, I would like to clear that I’m not against this, but probably in the way they are being shown. I think, showing them before the game starts (for example) could be better.

But for me, Gdevelop itself could improve it’s monetization methods.

In the first place: The vision, should not be (at all), “all given”, because if you think that, how gdevelop project and his services are going to be maintained? external investments? The cheap export subscription provides something, but probably just to cover the exports server costs and not too many things more.
Following that is not going to be sustainable in long terms. Donations… well, maybe, but why not making anything from where everyone can get any benefit and also benefits all the gdevelop project?

Then, after reading that, you could ask me, how do you want to monetize gdevelop? Making paid features? (Nope, we dont want this…) (All should be free…)[…]

Proposals:

  1. Gdevelop premium: assets, games, examples, with a cheap subscription (separated from the current one), like a netflix, but from where contributors can also get profit, and thanks to such incentivation, gdevelop could get a lot more contributions and more assets. Note: this should not make gdevelop features locked, like today with the gdevelop subscription system. Only for assets, etc.

  2. Gdevelop liluo ad network. Promote your game, and let game developers monetize their games. This is probably the best way to monetize liluo: non disturbing ads, with a native in game experience, and everyone benefits from them (well, except players if game developers put an ad every 5 seconds. However, there could be a time limiter to avoid that.).

  3. Paid games, assets, etc. (I know it’s probably the worst one, but stills being a method)

  4. This is more difficult…
    Gdevelop development network: pay to someone in order to make you a game in gdevelop or get paid for making gdevelop games.

  5. Gdevelop premium support

6.Liluo multiplayer

Why not traditional ads in liluo?

  1. They don’t follow liluo design
  2. Only “benefits” liluo (to maintain liluo) (other gdevelop project things not)

Disclaimer: I love liluo and gdevelop, all is done from an improvement point and of course i don’t want to make appear everything is wrong, just that it could be improved, from my point of view

Maybe at this moment nothing of that is viable for gdevelop, but somethig similar happened with the current liluo proposal 2 years ago (GDevelop ecosystem 🤩 - #5 by Silver-Streak), so, maybe in a future, something could change…

Edit: added multiplayer

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Disclaimer: I am not a marketing expert at all and I have no insight in how the Gdevelop team is getting paid etc. My understanding is that they have plans for several monetizing options while keeping the use of the software free.

As you wrote your opinion and your suggestions, I thought I just comment on them, as some of them - at least for me - are not really understandable or problematic.

  1. subscription: As far as I understand, one of the ideas for Gdevelop is to get a wider user base. A subscription model, no matter if it keeps the actual access to the software open, will automatically push people away. In the forum there are from time to time posts of users who complain about the export subscription and some of them won’t understand the concept even after getting detailed explanations that the one-click service costs money and no one can expect the software developers to pay that out of their own pockets.
    If you mean to put learning materials such as game examples and starters behind a paywall, it will probably result in less users.

  2. That’s more or less what this post announced: Ads on Liluo.io, no?

  3. Not sure what you mean by paid games. Devs who use Gdevelop try to sell their games all the time, some of them quite successful. But how would that benefit the developers of the game engine? By taking a cut from the revenue like in case of other game engines?

  4. Both things are possible already and it is like in no. 3: where is the financial benefit for the engine developers?

  5. If this support would be based on a subscription, the same problem as no. 1 would occur.

Do you have any info about that? I have none and from my completely uninformed perspective I would assume that any profit generated at liluo can and will be used to maintain and improve the engine.

I think donations fit your description quite well.

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Not learning material, just advanced examples, and premium assets. Stills not meaning making all assets premium. Lots of people gets such premium assets from other stores, so, why not making this built-in gdevelop, with such subscription? I think lot’s of people could be interested in paying some cheap price to get such premium assets and creators to make that.

A really good example of this model is telegram premium.

Currently, liluo ads are based in adwords. Disadvantage: they look ugly, too standard, and google’s policies doesn’t allows you paying a third party with the ad revenue. Maybe splitting it is allowed, but not directly.

Advantages of a native liluo ad network:

-Integration into gdevelop games with simple events, so, the ads are in game, and not in-liluo
-Probably more profit in long terms
-Gdevelop has all controls into its design, functionality, etc.

All stores, gets a comission from the games sells, or in game purchases. Same, but with lower fees and such fees goes to gdevelop

Same as 4, comissions, for being an intermediate between both parts.

I said premium or priority. That doesn’t means ending standard support. There are lots of softwares, that works on this way: for free, community support (current gdevelop support) if you want better support, from an expertise, you can pay for it.

I have experience with adword ads, and their revenue in most cases just provide the enough money to cover all platform costs. The benefit margin is too low. So yes, it can benefit other gdevelop project parts, but probably it’s not going to make a big difference, unless if there’s too many people playing liluo games with ads enabled.

Imagine: I donate you 50$, you dont give me something in backwards or at least respect to other people who gave 0$, since it’s a donation. If you give me back a present for making the donaiton, I have a small advantage over other users, so probably other users could get more incentivated, or at least respect not having nothing

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Also, a brief remember, current gdevelop subscription is NOT only for export, it’s also for lan support (doesn’t requieres a server), analytics, remove splash screen (you can remove it without paying, but to remove it natively it’s needed a subscription).

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There is no needs to take a subscription for exports.
Did you say that cuz you see this window?

Did you see the button Continue anyway?
It allows continuing without taking a sub, I think we’ve 2 free exports per day. :slight_smile:

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Let me know if I misunderstood what you called exports or their limitations.

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We say for more than 2/day

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I think that’s kind of the vision. As you know Gdevelop is under the MIT license which allows you to put another name and logo on the software and sell it as if it is your own (some scammers seem to do that).

I remember that there was a survey in the Gdevelop community asking among others for the acceptance of particular monetization models. Paid assets in the store were mentioned. I don’t know if anything like this is being planned. My guess is that the revenue would be rather small.

It would only work if people would sell their Gdevelop-made games on a Gdevelop-owned site. Due to the MIT license I could always claim that my game was made in a different engine.

Not sure how this would work. If I ask you on a different forum or whatever social media channel to make a game with Gdevelop for me, how would the developers of the software could come in as intermediaries?

I understand your point, but there are a lot of projects out there where money is donated just for the sake of letting the developers work on the software and to keep it free for anyone. Incentives - if they are really just small - do probably not change the readiness to donate money, they are just a nice gimmick.

Sometimes, what is meant to be an incentive can be even counter-productive such as

This kind of negative advertisement for Gdevelop is probably not as damaging as in case of Unity but it is not really understandable to offer that as a perk. Everyone who uses Gdevelop should at least feel obliged to reference the tool they got for free. As you wrote, the splash screen can be removed anyway, so I would not consider it as a benefit.

Anyway, I guess your and my opinion represent at least a fraction of other Gdevelop users and we will see what the Gdevelop team is going to do. Personally I don’t like subscriptions but I would definitely donate from time to time without expecting any incentives (otherwise it wouldn’t be really a donation).

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Just going to chime in here to clarify, there are no game engine gameplay features behind the subscription.

There is no lan support/multiplayer support/etc differences if you get a subscription, so I’m not sure where that confusion came from.

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How, When, Where, Who?

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I can’t understand. It’s like adding to liluo a payment platform, so where is the problem?

They match both parts. To avoid scammings, you pay gdevelop and when finished they pay to you. It’s just a project idea.

I don’t mean this doesn’t needs to be into the subscription, just that it’s a part of the current subscription system

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But lan preview feature (not lan multiplayer or anything) is (supposed) to be part of the subscription. You can click go anyways, and use it, but as the popup says, you should buy the gdevelop subscription if you want to quit such popup.

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Nope, not part of the subscription. It’s just a reminder to subscribe. The only thing the subscription would do is remove the reminder, the actual feature will never be locked behind a subscription. There isn’t any limitations to using the debugger or lan preview otherwise.

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I added to the list a liluo multiplayer. That means having a true native multiplayer, secure, and server based. It can be partially free, but work with a plan, subscription or pay-as-you-go to cover server costs and support the rest of the project.

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There was a link to the survey here in the forum. I think it was around the end of last year or maybe the beginning of this year - but it could be even longer ago.

Yes, that would work but no one is required to put their game on liluo, so it would be voluntary - almost like a donation :slight_smile:

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