are “free” games of the month (PS+, Xbox Live, Epic Game Store) actually free? Are the developers giving unlimited copies to the platform for them to hand out/are the developers making money?
In: Economics
Since distribution cost for these purely digital platforms is essentially zero, this basically boils down to what kind of agreement is made between the distributor (Like Epic) and the developer (like the people that made Celeste)
These deals are not public, and aren’t made public, so its probable that part of the deal is not shouting about it.
But yes, the developer will be compensated in some form. This can be a lump sum, or the distributor can just give the sell price per copy to the developer. Though its likely that this is not a 1-1 conversion, to account for the large volume of copies handed out. (Lots of people will get the game just cause its free.)
Though i wouldn’t refer to PS+ and Xbox live games as “free”, that’s like saying you get a free newspaper if you sign up and pay for a newspaper subscription.
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