Quick Examples

A game that has limited means of distribution:
Wii Fit needs the Wii Fit Balance Board to play it. The need for this extra piece of hardware means that the game can’t be made available as a download – it has to be purchased from a shop or online store.

A game that was originally available digitally:
Alien Hominid – was a 2D shoot-‘em-up that was free to play on the Newsground website. Such was the popularity of the game that a full console version was created for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube.

A developer that has become vertically integrated
Valve Software, the developers behind the hugely successful Half-Life series, created an online content delivery system called Steam. Initially it was thought this would be for the distribution of updates and patches for Valve’s game, but it became apparent that it could be used for the distribution of whole PC games.
Valve can now distribute their PC games without the need to include retailers in the process – however, they do have a publishing deal with EA for their PS3 and Xbox 360 games.
Many other publisher use Steam to distribute their PC games (eg Rockstar with GTA4), but have to share the revenue taken with Valve.

A game in development that doesn’t have a publisher:
The Outsider – a 3rd person action game that is being developed by Frontier Developments for PC, PS3, Xbox 360. This project was started and has continued without publisher funding.

A publisher that does not develop their own games:
505 Games – a publisher that acquires games mainly created by Japanese developers. For example they made an agreement with developers CML to publish the game Cooking Mama in Europe, but other companies published the game in the US and Japan.

Games that don’t need publishers:
Developers creating games for the iPhone can self-fund development (as they are relatively cheap to make) and then use Apple’s existing distribution structure (the App Store) to get the product to the consumers. (N.B. Apple state that 70% of revenues from the store to instantly go to the seller of the app, and 30% go to Apple.)
E.g. Illusion Labs created the game Touch Grind for the iPhone. Games found on Face book.

Using controversy to publicise a game:
For the release of the racing game Burnout, the publishers Acclaim started a competition/promotion for gamers to send in speed camera photos of them breaking the speed limit. Acclaim would then pay the speeding fine for the entry clocking the highest speed. This of course caught the attention of the press who criticised the encouragement of such dangerous behaviour which in turn help spread the about game.

A game that changed publishers:
Developer’s Sports Interactive created the Championship Manager football management sim, this was published by Eidos. The game was hugely successful but Sports Interactive split from their working relationship with Eidos in 2004. The decision was that Eidos could keep the brand name “Championship Manager”, but Sports Interactive could keep all the game code and database.
Sports Interactive then took their game to another publisher, Sega, and released it under the name Football Manager – billed as from the ‘creators of the Championship Manager series’.
Eidos released another version of Championship Manager but had to create the game from scratch with another developer.

A game that changed developer:
Core Design were a development studio owned by publisher’s Eidos. It was Core Design that created Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider games. The series was hugely successful until the release of Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness which was a commercial and critical flop.
Even though Core Design created the game, it was Eidos that owned the ‘intellectual property’ (the rights to use the Tomb Raider ideas and brand) and found another development studio to make Tomb Raider - another Eidos owned developer – Crystal Dynamics.