Hi guys,

I'm looking for some feedback on a web service I recently joined as a team member. We are a platform for publishing, discovering and marketing source-code (mainly premium / commercial but also free). We recently opened a game development category and have some components published there already.

What do you think about this concept? would you be interested in purchasing commercial packages if it could save you serious time & money or improve your performance?

Would appreciate any feedback you guys have (good or bad). Thanks!

http://www.binpress.com

What do you think about this concept? would you be interested in purchasing commercial packages if it could save you serious time & money or improve your performance?
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I think it's weird. I mean we can already buy source code from established companies. Why would we go through you guys? Why would we buy source code sight unseen (or is it?)?

It seems as though this model already exists, and better suits the customer in the bounty system where the customer gives requirements and price which can then be grabbed by your pool of indie developers.

What do you think about this concept? would you be interested in purchasing commercial packages if it could save you serious time & money or improve your performance?

Isn't this standard practice?

This has nothing to do with programming; moving to Business and Law. In the future please take care to place your topics in the correct forum.

Thanks!



Also - I wouldn't buy your code. I can get code from people who I trust who will support it just as easily, and there's always good open source initiatives for other stuff. I'm a big proponent of releasing small bits of code for free, especially when they're widely useful for other programmers, so even on a philosophical level I don't like your concept. Sorry.

Epic Games sells source code, Crytek sells source code, Unity sells source code, Big World Tech sells source code. I think I'll buy from them for now, thanks.

[font="arial, sans-serif"]The point is to open up the market for reusable code for anybody, similar to how everybody can make games independently and not just the big studios. Obviously, you can buy complete solutions and SDKs from big companies, our intention is to offer a platform for independent devs or small teams to offer the fruits of their labor to the public or to pick and choose specific components they might need for their projects without committing to a large SDK / toolkit. Obviously, the price difference also reflects the difference in scope.


And it's not "our code", we are the platform - our sellers are devs like you guys who have built their own library and now want to test if it would be useful for others. I was interested if that's something that might appeal to some of you, not just the buying part but also the selling.


@Talastyn what do you mean by "source-code sight unseen"? do you mean you would prefer to see samples of the source?


Thanks again for the feedback![/font]

[font="arial, sans-serif"]@Talastyn what do you mean by "source-code sight unseen"? do you mean you would prefer to see samples of the source?[/font]

Game middleware usually comes from two sources -- commercial suppliers and open-source projects.

Open-source, obviously allows you to inspect their entire code-base before committing to integrating it.
Likewise, every commercial middleware supplier I've ever dealt with will allow you to view their entire source-code for evaluation purposes, before committing to a purchase.

Paying money for code, without being able to read it first, would be a very risky investment.
The exception to this is when you're buying a proven closed-source platform, like UDK or Unity.

If you're going to allow people to view your code before purchasing, then you need to be large enough to afford the money to sue people who violate this agreement. You also have to only offer these services to other organisations that are large enough to be trusted with such an agreement.

There's quite a few hurdles to setting something like this up on a smaller scale... You could open the source up for viewing, and deal with the fact that some people will 'steal' it without purchasing a license... or you could develop a good enough reputation and/or set the prices low enough that people would be willing to make a purchase without a proper evaluation...

I've seen people try to make money off engines and it never goes anywhere. They never get any interest because there's no way to offer enough, cheap enough, and there's still no way people can tell if it's any good. There's already a ton of free stuff programmers can look up anyways, so you have to offer something that they can't find in Google. "Comes pre-assembled" doesn't cut it. Anyone who wants to learn how to do something can find out online, those who don't want to learn need GameMaker, not source code.

Most game programmers don't have any budget at all, if they did they'd purchase something with real support. People complain enough on forums for free no-warranty systems anyways, if you had to support it would be a nightmare. Plus free & open source stuff has documentation, examples, and tutorials made over a long time by lots of motivated programmers. That's something you won't get from some two-bit developer trying to make money off some junky code he was never able to make a profitable game with. Because if he could, he'd be making those games instead of shilling his source code.

I get what you're trying to do but it'd be hard as the middleman. Who supports the code if there's a problem, you or the person selling it? What if something works, but is just so badly written it's a huge pain to change around? Can you be responsible if a developer finds a pirated copy of their engine floating around? What happens if you sell something a guy stole from another license? Or there's a virus hidden in the code? And are there any guarantees for the buyer, because after one bad sale either you or the customer is getting screwed, period.

Nobody wants to buy a mystery bag that might not even do what they want it to, and anyone who's ever programmed with "some guy's code" can say it usually breaks the minute you change something. I don't know what it's like with other languages but the ones I'm working with have plenty of people donating useful libraries for others to use. Some have already been re-released in other games with no royalties or payment required. I don't think programmers for other languages are any different, and you can't compete with that.

It sound like you are proposing to offer some sort of hub/sales platform for developers to offer their existing libraries and APIs. If so then the idea is fine but I think it will take a long time to generate any real income. As others have stated the big players can all be contacted directly and many of the big players are actively courting indie developers and their product come with documentation and normally some form of support (even if it is only through the user forums).

We get quite a few one man developers coming here and asking how much they can sell their engine/tools for and the answer they get will apply to you to. "Not much" unless you can show that it has been used in a number of successful projects and that you can supply a meaningful level of support. While you don't directly need to provide support the developers selling through you do, otherwise their product is going to be pretty worthless. The whole purpose of middleware is to save time and to convince someone that an engine/code will do that you need to show that it works and that it is supported.

Lastly most indie developers only have six figure development budgets for their games - unfortunately the six figures are all zeros

Hi All,
I'm the CTO at Binpress, figured I could chime in with some additional input regarding some of the topics mentioned.

First, open-source - we are completely for open-source software, and when it happens and it's successful it's a beautiful thing. There are for more abandoned projects and private libraries than open-source however, and part of our goal is to add an incentive for people to take their existing code, polish it and prepare it to be publicly published. There are so many aspects to software development, and open-source can only cover so much ground. Obviously, if there's a good open-source solution available, there's no point in publishing a competing commercial product unless there are tangible benefits.

Regarding the risk of buying source-code without seeing it: to ensure the quality of the code, all of the developers who sell on our marketplace are first approved based on proof of professional experience, and every component / package they want to publish is manually reviewed by one of our senior developers. We have a constantly evolving guideline for submission quality that includes coding standards and conventions as well as use of best practices and virus / malware tests. We trust our process enough that we give a full 14-day money back guarantee on code purchased on our site. If you didn't find it useful or it didn't meet your standards, we will refund you. We are also considering showing partial code previews so developers can see the coding style and see if it suits theirs. Support is provided by the original developer through a ticket system on our platform, if it is included in the purchased license.

Regarding budgets - obviously, that fluctuates a lot. If a ready component can save you 5-10 hours and more or solve a problem you are having difficulties with, is it worth 30-40$? that's for everyone to decide for themselves. We are not approaching just independent developers as buyers, but also small-medium companies that have budgets for this kind of stuff and know that development time is worth much more. We also encourage our sellers to set up demos of their components so people can see it in action.

I think there is definitely a market for it, and so far response and sales have indicated that to be the case. I would love to answer any other questions you guys might have and hear more feedback. I really appreciate it!

Thanks,
Eran