This week has been full of Japanese indie developers talking about their experiences with publishers and warning each other about questionable practices they’ve come across in the industry. The conversation was kicked off on X by developer Shigefusa Works, whose story about a publisher who stalled on signing a contract for a whopping 16 months went viral earlier this week.
In the following days, the discussion has turned to the topic of revenue sharing between developers and publishers. Japanese indie developer GraphicLatte, creator of the dark fantasy action RPG Gear Notes: Ogre Slayer, revealed that around the time they started work on their game, a publisher approached them with preposterous conditions, but they weren’t enough experienced at the time to recognize them as such. GraphicLatte was offered a deal where the publisher would provide promotional support but contribute nothing toward development costs, with the revenue split set at 90% for the publisher and 10% for the developer.
“For example, if the game generated 1 million yen in sales, and we assume Steam takes roughly 30%, that would leave around 700,000 yen. Then, if 90% of that went to the publisher, we would be left with only around 70,000 yen. Once we also took our development costs into account, the deal would be infeasible for us.”
The developer says that at the time, they knew so little about the industry and were so relieved to receive a publishing offer that they wondered if such an arrangement was simply the norm. But thankfully, negotiations with the publisher ended up falling through.
Looking back, GraphicLatte comments, “I understand that publishers aren’t charities and need to think about making a profit as well. But still, I wish publishers would treat developers not as one-sided business partners, but as equals working together to build a game.”
On a more practical note, Masahiko Nakamura, CEO of game company Indie-Us-Games, took the opportunity to share what standard revenue sharing tends to look like within the Japanese industry depending on contract conditions.
According to Nakamura, if the publisher is providing promotion only and taking no responsibility for development costs, a 1:9 or 2:8 split is reasonable, with of course, the publisher taking the smaller share and the developer the larger one. In his view, a typical split would look roughly like this depending on what the publisher provides:
Promotion only: 1:9 or 2:8
Promotion, localization, and QA: 3:7
Support for console platforms: 4:6
Physical release: 5:5
Full development funding: 8:2
He added that each tier further down the list includes the services and support mentioned above it. The figures are based on his own experience and are not necessarily a definitive standard, but he believes they are roughly in line with the revenue shares commonly seen by domestic indie developers. All things considered, Nakamura cautioned fellow devs to be careful, as there are some genuinely unscrupulous publishers out there.
