I'm familiar with successful groups that went that way (they aren't millionaire, but it paid the rent for sure).

That being said, none of these groups drafted 'from the web'. Nearly all of them were industry veterans that decided to start something...

Now that my code is so far along, I'm scared to death to share it with anyone. I also don't think anyone is ever going to work as hard as I do to split up sharing properly. Chances are slim that I could find someone with the proper talent that would work for free along side myself. It is hard to find dedicated people.

It is hard to find dedicated people.

No it isn't.

It is hard to find dedicated people without paying them a good wage.

You can get amazingly talented people who are strongly dedicated. They will remain dedicated as long as the paychecks clear the bank.

I think that leads back to the whole crux of the thread.

There are those who think a share is a magical ticket to riches when in reality those shares have zero value. In this case you are not paying them a good wage.

There are others who know what they are doing and will reluctantly pay with shares that have a reasonable chance of eventually having value. In that case you are paying them with ownership which does have some real value, even if that real value is small at present. This is the "it takes money to make money" investment mentality, where they know they need to invest heavily for an extended time before there is a chance of recovering the investment. This group understands that within certain parameters of a good business investment, the more they invest the more likely the investment will pay out.

The first is the "indie" who works for a few days and produces nothing of value. The payment of shares is nothing. The second is the group is making a serious investment, the payment of shares is potentially quite valuable.

Thanks for the answers guys - the advice is quite useful.

I asked the question because I was toying with the idea of royalty share, but now I think I will approach the problem a different way.

The groups that appear on forums with no experience at all, overly vague yet massive ideas, usually no talent, no idea of the legal/business side of things... that's a complete mess that I'd advise people to steer clear of.

As for successes, there's a studio in the same building as me, League of Geeks, who have built their game using a well defined profit-sharing system. The core of their team are actual development veterans coming from other studios, they've sat down ahead of time and worked out all the legals of doing a profit sharing system, and then they've planned out all the work involved and assigned 'points' to different tasks. IIRC, when they're finished, they'll add up all the points, and then everyone gets a slice of the profits depending on how many points they've earned.

They're only in early access now, but they're looking on track to actually finish their game. At that point, I think they're planning to release their "point system" for other devs to copy if they like.

I was considering a similar system in the past, interesting to know someone tried it and seemed to get it to work.