How do you publish your own pc game? - Print out tons of boxes. - Print out manuals. - Send the boxes to best buy, gamestop, compuse, fry's, etc. Anyone know how this business process works?

Stores will only deal with established well known distributers. Distributers in turn will only deal with well known established publishers. Publishers will only deal with whoever they see fit to deal with (usually the people with the best idea and demo who are willing to give all their ownership of the IP).
On the otherhand you could just try to get your game published by digital means.

Quote:Original post by Buster2000
Stores will only deal with established well known distributers. Distributers in turn will only deal with well known established publishers. Publishers will only deal with whoever they see fit to deal with (usually the people with the best idea and demo who are willing to give all their ownership of the IP).
On the otherhand you could just try to get your game published by digital means.

So you are saying that by going through an established publisher I pretty much hand the source code over to them and they screw me?

lets say they end up selling 50,000 copies of your game. How much of that money would you see?

Quote:
So you are saying that by going through an established publisher I pretty much hand the source code over to them and they screw me?

No, unless you had a really crappy lawyer reviewing your contract, or no lawyer at all. You do have a lawyer right? If not, get one. Although chances are, you are not going to be getting a deal with a major publisher anyway - or perhaps any publisher at all, after all, there is no reason to.

Distribute your game digitally and by yourself, especially if this is your first game. It's much easier and you get much more control over things, such as how much money you keep (all of it, minus whatever you need to cover the costs for, say, bandwidth or maybe ads, et cetera).

Quote:
lets say they end up selling 50,000 copies of your game. How much of that money would you see?

X, where X is dependent upon your contract (if you have a publishing deal) or on the price of the game less the distribution, marketing and other overhead costs you incurred selling those copies. 50,000 copies is a pretty optimistic number for an indie developer who is entirely unknown. 500 might be more reasonable, and 50 is probably what you'll get in the first year or so.

Obviously this all depends on the quality of the game and the quality of your marketing.

Thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated :)