Opinion: what should the publisher do?

A year ago, one of the hottest topics was the following: whether a publisher is needed in the mobile market. Everyone had examples before their eyes, like Temple Run and Tiny Wings. And small teams, with an eye on the already iconic developers, wondered: what are we worse for?

Today, such questions are no longer asked. In the minds of most developers, there was a certain scrapping. Many have realized that it is quite difficult to enter the market today without the support of publishers, where the number of available applications only on the App Store has exceeded 600 thousand titles.

Along with the change in attitude towards publishers, some independent developers, faced with high competition, low incomes and the need to invest huge sums in promotion, became disillusioned with the mobile market.

And they can be understood. In three years, the mobile games market has turned from a fiefdom of small independent teams selling the final product for a small amount and earning something from it, into a harsh jungle with strict survival rules and a high entry threshold.

Therefore, it is quite natural that the question “whether a publisher is needed” was replaced by another one – “what should a publisher do”.

It is widely believed that, having received a project, the publisher should rush with it like with a newborn child, show it to everyone, produce it, bring it to the tops with all his strength, support its development (preferably at his own expense), and at the same time help developers make it better. 

Such an idealistic picture is, unfortunately, very far from reality. The publisher must provide some “added value” to the project – to give or do something that the developer does not have and that he cannot do himself.

The task of most publishers today is to test the product, competently bring it to market and give it traffic at the initial stage. Plus, in the case of online projects, another task becomes to provide the project with server capacity. All.

Due to the fact that this model is being replaced by an “ideal” one, misunderstandings and conflicts occur. For example, we have repeatedly heard from many developers not the most flattering reviews of various companies that regularly bring projects to the top, and then supposedly “score” on them.

And the point, as it seems to us, is this. All the publishers’ projects go into the so-called “portfolio”. The task of the portfolio is to accumulate traffic. For which, in fact, the developers are turning.

Thus, the publisher, with the help of its traffic, gives the game the necessary initial push, brings the game to the tops, where it receives additional “organic” users for the future. The developer, in turn, gets the opportunity to light up, which is very difficult to do without a publisher (unless, of course, there is an investor ready to invest a lot of money in marketing). 

Today, most of the paid standalone and freemium projects have a very short “tail” (both in terms of downloads and revenue), so if a publisher sees that after accumulating traffic on a particular product (and this often happens simultaneously with its Apple feature), he himself does not stay in the top, the company switches to promotion of the next game. 

This model often offends developers (“yes, we sawed the game for a whole year at our own expense, and the publisher threw it!”), but in fact everyone benefits from it.

The developer gets much-needed traffic and his moment of fame. If the game is doing well with retention level and viral mechanisms, then there is a chance to stay in the top for a long time and, possibly, earn. The publisher gets another source of traffic (another drop in the bucket).

Yes, in the current situation, the very “added value” of the publisher is often reduced to “pumping” the game with initial traffic – everything else depends on the developer himself. On the one hand, traffic is a chance. And if you don’t have your extra tens of thousands of dollars, then contacting the publisher is the only chance. 

What do you think about the relationship between publishers and developers?