Some background info because my situation is different from most indie devs. Wall of text incoming:

I’m from a 3rd world country with almost no gamedev industry to speak of. I know of only 1 semi successful indie dev in my country. He/she was lucky enough to get a foreign publisher interested enough to port his game to most major platforms. He/she is a solo dev. There are no major game dev studios here. All the ones I know are crappy mobile game studios that make clones. This is the state of things here.

As for me, I am a CS student at a public university. I’m not broke but I do not have a credit card. I literally cannot buy Unity assets because I can’t pay them(and I want to). Even then, I’m not exactly rich either.

I happened to participate in a local game competition(the only one I’ve seen in the last two years). It was arranged by a local IT startup who probably wanted to branch out from their work. My own entry was somewhat crappy but due to the low number of actual submissions I got picked and I got a deal for my game to be published by them (it was promised as a reward for the competition).

I have not asked for any contract details yet. I probably won't be able to anyways because NDAs are likely. But they did confirm that:

They would help with porting to Android, PC and the Appstore. The last one is big for me because I do not own any Apple devices to develop on. Due to the ridiculous amount of tax on Apple products I probably never will.

They will not pay me directly. But they will bear development costs to an extent. Considering my situation, any monetary support would be beneficial.

They will help with marketing. Ambiguous wording, I know. But they did confirm that a portion of the budget will be dedicated to marketing. I don’t think my game is going to be a hit in either case. I have no interest in making a cash grab mobile game that would benefit from marketing that much.

I am not going to be forced to work on the game I made for the competition if I don’t want to. As you might have guessed, I’m not very fond of my entry for the competition. I can show them working prototypes and they will allow me to pick the one I want to work on based on that.

I keep IP rights and I will not be forced into a contract to make my next game after this with them if I do not want to.

They might take a small portion of the revenue. The game probably won’t be a huge success so it doesn't matter to me.

Also, it’s not as if this IT company has no previous involvement with gamedev. They use Unity for AR stuff. The person who was coordinating the competition manages a local gamedev community I’m a part of. I do not know him/her personally but at the very least he/she seems sincere about gamedev. If I accept the deal, I’ll probably have a chance to work with him/her.

Moreover, I’m the sort of person who only finishes projects on a deadline. The only reason my gamejam projects get submitted is because I force myself to finish before the deadline. Same for university projects. When I prototype on my own I tend to stop after creating the basic version of the prototype.

OTOH, If I do not accept then I probably won’t get any such local opportunities any time soon. I do not know how likely it is for gamedev studios to hire foreign programmers. My portfolio is limited to Game jam entries and unfinished prototypes. I have the skill to prototype most things but I can’t expand that prototype myself. I can’t draw/animate well. I can’t buy graphical assets. I can’t pay others to do my work for me. Frankly, I am at a deadlock.

I have been considering sacrificing a portion of this year to pick up web dev. That’d at least give me the funds to hire people for art. But I don’t know how much time that’d take.

Should I accept the deal?

yes, you should, but make planning for every single need, possible problem, staff and advertising and then raise this value by 50%. This will give a more realistic budget to show them and enough cushioning if you ever need to hire someone else to recover from a development problem to reach the milestone

Living in south america sucks and the gamedev scene is underappreciated, but don't give up!

@ouraf Yeah, it's probably best to have as much leeway as possible. They can't disclose the exact budget before a meeting but I'll try to negotiate as much as possible.

Anyways, I'm actually not from South America.

Seventh, you should make a decision grid. You want to choose between two options: do it or don't do it. There are numerous considerations. The offer has value but it also has costs. One cost is your education, which could take a hit if the publishing deal interferes with your studies and impacts your grades. That's a big factor against doing it. But look also at the factors favoring the deal. Add up all the pros and cons, weight them, and see what the math works out to - and then follow your gut feeling. What does your heart say? (I know, heart ≠ gut. English sayings are weird.)

7th_dragon_knight said:
As for me, I am a CS student at a public university.

I would make sure this is part of the agreement, that they understand studies are a priority, and especially when the university exam periods are so everyone is on the same page, that come May/June or whenever the busy period is, that you might not be available much.

7th_dragon_knight said:
I’m not broke but I do not have a credit card.

Are you able to get something that does work online? Maybe a debit card, or like Paypal? Maybe even a pre-paid card could work? Especially if they are offering to give you development money, being able to buy stuff online would be useful.

SyncViews said:

7th_dragon_knight said:
As for me, I am a CS student at a public university.

I would make sure this is part of the agreement, that they understand studies are a priority, and especially when the university exam periods are so everyone is on the same page, that come May/June or whenever the busy period is, that you might not be available much.

I did tell them that studies will be my main priority. They'll allow me to develop at my own pace and I'll mostly be able to set my own deadlines.

SyncViews said:

7th_dragon_knight said:
I’m not broke but I do not have a credit card.

Are you able to get something that does work online? Maybe a debit card, or like Paypal? Maybe even a pre-paid card could work? Especially if they are offering to give you development money, being able to buy stuff online would be useful.

They'll let me buy assets with the money. That's huge reason why I want to accept their deal.

7th_dragon_knight said:
I did tell them that studies will be my main priority.

Good!

Awesome. You should always weigh the pros and cons as said above, and I personally believe you shouldn't take short term gains for a long term loss especially in the case of negatively impacting your studies in the context of this deal.

Best wishes.