ICO Partners

It’s well known that online games have been shortening the value chain, threatening the roles of middlemen such as publishers, distributors and retailers, and enabling developers to get in direct contact with players. However, as some very interesting discussions pointed out a few months ago, acquiring users (call it marketing, or traffic acquisition) is hard and expensive, which lends considerable power to other actors in the chain, such as:

• Digital distribution sites, like Steam
• Platform managers
• Aggregators, like Miniclip
• Community and media websites
• Ad networks
• SEO-savvy “gateway” portals (MMO lists, etc)

Channels like these have grown greatly in influence, and the conditions of working with the most prominent ones are becoming increasingly expensive (some of the biggest aggregators now ask for either lots of cash, or equity). (more…)

Nowadays, with many studios and publishers currently laying off quite a scary number of people, we ran into an initiative that we find laudable, even if related to unfortunate news for many.

Vivendi Games Europe is currently in the process of reorganising its activities following the merger with Activision and a number of people were made redundant. A part of the team went to the direction and asked to actually create a dedicated website listing the persons currently looking for a job. (more…)