My problem on making a website and sell it there:

-i have no idea to make that kind of site.
-the customers will not trust me.
-how can i get their payment.


any other way on selling our games? other than STEAM,OWN WEBSITE.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and the info herewithin this post does not necessarily reflect the status of current, past or future law in whatever country or region

As for your original question: You should really get to your local civil bureau (or how it is called at yours; I mean the (probably) same bureau where you also get your identification card) and ask them what you can do to sell your game.

In germany, e.g., it makes a difference how much money you earn with your game/games. Also, again germany, you pay different amounts of taxes depending on whether a job is your first or second one. Then there is all the bureaucracy, e.g. (in germany) it is impossible to be unresponsible for the functionality of what you sell (even if you sell at no charge, see e.g. FLOSS software). And and and.

Also, it really differs from country to country, and I even bet there are regions in the world where it differs from city to city (right now I think of gambling casinos in some american reservations). So again, get to your local civil bureau!

edit:
As for steam: I am personally against online registration in general, and as soon as a game requires that, I won't buy it. It makes me dependent on the existence of, e.g., Steam or the publisher himself (yay, it's recession time), and am not assured to be able to play my favourite game the other day. There are still alternatives I can play and that don't require online activation or forbid reselling the game.

[Edited by - phresnel on March 23, 2009 10:11:14 AM]

You can sell video games:

• Through a publisher. Steam is one example. These will involve at least some level of co-operation with your publisher, which may require that you incorporate anti-theft solutions or integrate with an existing platform. The technical details will be available when you discuss it with them, and they will help you out if they think your project can bring in cash. Once you co-operate with a publisher, they take care of the billing process and you get your share from them.
  
  
• Through online distribution. Look for an e-payment solution such as Paypal or Paybox or even a corporate banking institution that provides this (Société Générale does that, for instance). Paypal tend to be the friendliest to developers. The basic idea is that your website redirects the customer to a bill stored on the HTTPS paypal website (or the website of your banking solution). You then get a response from paypal telling you that the bill was paid, and you can then let the customer download the game. A ready-to-use solution (like Magento) can help you create a sales website with a paypal connection in a few days, with no technical prerequisites. And since the customers disclose their credit card information on that other website, they don't have to trust your website at all—if you don't deliver the goods, they can usually just ask their own bank for a cashback, and the bank will decide whether they want to waste time asking you for the money.

The question of whether you have to register as a company to sell a games depends on local law. In France, for instance, you don't need to be registered to go through a publisher (you get royalties, or whatever the english translation for "droits d'auteur" is), but you need to register as a company if you want to sell them on your own (you can't sell things unless you register with the "registre du commerce", mostly).

Joshi9999: I wanted to play Portal on a three-hour train ride from Paris to Brest. So I booted the computer, launched Steam, went into offline mode, and launched Portal. "Sorry, this game requires an internet connection to work." Well done, Valve.

Quote: Through online distribution. Look for an e-payment solution such as Paypal or Paybox or even a corporate banking institution that provides this (Société Générale does that, for instance). Paypal tend to be the friendliest to developers. The basic idea is that your website redirects the customer to a bill stored on the HTTPS paypal website (or the website of your banking solution). You then get a response from paypal telling you that the bill was paid, and you can then let the customer download the game. A ready-to-use solution (like Magento) can help you create a sales website with a paypal connection in a few days, with no technical prerequisites. And since the customers disclose their credit card information on that other website, they don't have to trust your website at all—if you don't deliver the goods, they can usually just ask their own bank for a cashback, and the bank will decide whether they want to waste time asking you for the money.

so if i choose this method, do i have to register as a company? or i can just buy a domain/get hosting/register paypal/make website/upload website to the host.
and thats it??

the customer don't need to trust me? because? the credit card is deducted by paypal which they trust? how can i tell the paypal to deduct(i.e. $5-if my game sells that price)?

Quote: Original post by macmoy
so if i choose this method, do i have to register as a company?

Quote: humble me
So again, get to your local civil bureau!

Quote: Original post by macmoy
so if i choose this method, do i have to register as a company? or i can just buy a domain/get hosting/register paypal/make website/upload website to the host.
and thats it??

As I've already explained, you need to check with your local laws about that. In France, for instance, you need to register before you can sell things. Look for online information on forums in your country, ask any relatives you may know that ever sold anything about who they talked to in order to be able to do that, ask a lawyer, or visit any local representative of your government that might have something to do about it. France, for instance, has a ministry of Finance and Industry that provides fairly informative pages on their website about creating a company.

Quote: the customer don't need to trust me? because? the credit card is deducted by paypal which they trust?

Yes, it's quite probable that a customer will trust PayPal (which has become a major staple of internet payment that almost everyone knows about) even if they don't trust your own website.

Quote: how can i tell the paypal to deduct(i.e. $5-if my game sells that price)?

You would use the paypal API, or use an e-commerce tool (like Magento) that does it for you.

ah! i see,thanks for the info..
how about,if i want to just give it to a publisher? which publisher do you recommend? aside from playgreenhouse(they told me their pipeline is full) and steam.. other publishers that mostly indie developers contact?

Chrono1081: Games you mentioned are actual Valve's games. Most games who are not from Valve actually works exactly the same in offline and online mode. There are also a lot of other recent games who are sold on DVD not through Steam who need an internet connection to activate.

There have been a lot of hate about Steam when it first started, but at some point it started to work right and people changed opinion. Of course, this was before the orange box, so it don't apply. Offline mode works great for me even if I try Counter-Strike who is an online only game. If the game ask for update in offline mode, that's because it saw a new patch ready while it was in online mode, and you didn't grab it, that's your problem. As for your "invalid" orange box, delete local content and re-download, you probably had some internet problem during the transfer.

thanks for the responses.

i am currently developing the website.

question:

how can i spread the word?? i mean, where can i announce that my website sells games? how can i tell lots of people outside my country that my group/company is selling games and available at www.xxxxxx.com??

I'm a little surprised to see Valve and PayPal mentioned on here for payment options, but not BMT Micro. Since that's who my publisher uses (and who I figured I'd use if I ever decide to handle publishing myself), I'm curious if there's a problem with them I wasn't aware of? Or maybe they're just not that well known?