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ok so God doesn't protect games. I mean, if I purchase a game from it I can copy it for my friends and they can play it without purchasing?

Yes, but that depends on developers and only developers have to protect their copyright. What I'm saying is, is it relevant for a game marketplace to protect games from illegal or abusive copies?

understand... listen, how GoG works? I mean, does that provide a DRM system? Do you need to download a desktop app (launcher) to play games?

Yes a launcher it is harder to hack and it might be a good solution. Like Steam for instance. Although this requires implementing a piece of code by the developer at the beginning of their games, like in the case of a Steam game. This changes engine by engine, and it can be a little bit tricky sometimes... but I think it's the only solution.

:) no no sorry, I mean, what about a system that just checks if a user owns a game and can play it only after purchasing?

yes that's what I'm saying, just having a non-invasive protection to avoid illegal copies by checking if a player owns the game. So basically having a DLL or similar that double-checks if a game ID coming from the game (previously implemented by dev) matches the same game in the player account.

how does sounds like?

or a system that checks if a player purchased that game, otherwise, it can't be played. What do you think about this solutions?

Of course, it requires that a user is connected to the server, to run the game,

I think DRM or any other copy protection method are implemented not to sell more copies. But to build trust to the developers and in case of the marketplace ... to give trust to it. I totally agreed that every system can be easily cracked, but I think that many developers prefer to have a kind of copy protection system rather than not.

Although Itch doesn't provide any and developers sell their games here as well. So many devs don't care so much about copy protection, I guess. Some DRM systems, in fact, can be invasive for gamers 

I understand Steam DRM with a piece of code and game ID to implement into our game and link to a DLL might be invasive, but at least is a way to partially protect a game.

Would you sell a game without it?

Do you think a copy protection system would be implemented with the option to select to protect games or not?

Hello everyone,

I just wanna ask how is important for you to protect your game from being copied? I mean, Steam provides protection and if you buy a game you can only play it via Steam desktop app. Itch doesn't do that adn I see that everyone published games here.

I think a big studios want to have their games protected to maximise their revenue, while small studios or solo devs don't care very much about that.

What about you? What do you think?

Thank you sooooooo much for your feedback!!

We need, we love some people like you who help us in the making a platform that is not only our platform.

About genre/subgenre separation. We are looking for something very precise. Part of our platform engine will be based on that.

Careful about the AI. First of all because it's an external code, out of the platform server, second because itcan be risky to use it in a website like our website. AI has bee developed for other purpose, not for a website search or product classification. Further, yes, its true that until the marketplace is small its easier to manage the stock,that's why we though about another approach to help gamers to discover more games. Every widget will implement a "local" system to instantly retrieve info from games of the same genre, so gamers can do multiple research in the same storefront (this feature will be constantly under dev)

Of course the platform, like any other software is based on algorhythms, but what we mean is that we want to let more freedom to gamers to do research themselves instead that having our software fully decides for them.

The state of the art of our platform can see the publishing process much easier and funny compared to other platform. The goal to have all in one place was also our goal and we are currently reaching the "help central " with as much information a possible. This is crucial for us, because making the process easier means less headache and stress for developers that can be more happy to work on it.

Of course, we do our best but as soon as the platform will be availale for devs, we'll be working more and more with you.

I personally thought about a donation system, but at the moment we prefer to let devs to release their games for free or paid.

Yes we found your message, :) andI think it can be very useful buddy,

Hope you will be in touch, especially when we will add the Sign Up button on our platform and you can start publishing on it :) Because we will need to work a lot, even more more than now and listen to all feedback, on our forum too !

Thank you very much! :) we are trying to develop the marketplace as best based on what we feel , our passion, but once opened to everyone, we will need all your feedback.

Especially as soon as you start (we hope) to use it, because of course, we are passionate about games, but this project can't be anything without you

Local moderation didn't left the theme... we are still designing.

You just don't see any signs of success for this project. Ok, so tell us what you would do to succeed.

We would like to know more about your ideas and vision on a project like our marketplace.

Thanks, please follow the development and stay tuned, because we plan to open soon. We are currently working on the forum platform and the KSS DreamGate desktop app now.

A big part of the job is done, but of course we will need all of your feedback!

yes I started follow you here on Itch and Youtube... and soon I hope I can even follow you on K Storm Studio marketplace :)

Thank, so glad to hear you like our work, and I hope to raise your expectations more and more as you start using the marketplace.

Well, at the moment we don't have some search feature based on metadata. We are building a product page and store pageadding as many information as possible to allow developers to better showcase their games. At the moment, we want to have an approach where gamers can explore new games based on genre, title and category. We are also implementing a random discovery feature.

As soon as we will have more games on our platform, we can activate new widgets in the storefront that allow gamers to discover more games based on genre and decide to explore more based on game features.

Thank you so much, glad to read you like it! :) Thanks

:) I understand what you mean. Ok just let me explain you. Basically, the website platform is the centre of all activities. The desktop app called KSS DreamGate has the sole purpose of allowing players to download, play or update the game they purchased.

All your profile, dashboards, everything will depend and be controlled from your account on the website.That is also convenient for us to properly manage the website, implementing new features and regular updates.

Hope this can help :)

Some part of the product editing page for vendors and developers. Still under development but almost done, please let us know if you like it! 

Yes,no problem. Please consider that we want to create a good experience for future upcoming gamers, so it's important for us to collaborate with passionate developers who love making games, no matter how big or long their games are !

A significant thing for us is the way to showcase games out there through our platform. That's why we are working a lot on introducing and improving store and game store page editing features. Because every game needs to be well introduced to the world, and of course, a marketplace should provide at least some essential tools and guidelines to do this.

Furthermore, we will provide a small piece of code to implement in your games (we are preparing several templates for different game engines) to connect a game with the platform and avoid illegal copies.

Let me update the post with some pictures of the editing tools soon, cause I think it's time to start showing more

wow..., thank you so much for your long comment and all the feedback.

Some of the ideas you mentioned are totally in alignment with our vision and what we are developing. For example, random game selection based on genre in different parts of the website , in particular the main page. We are working on it.

Also, focusing more on random discoverability and discoverability based on user preference instead the most popular or something like that.

About price... that's an interesting question. I agreed with you when you said not to base the platform on free games or not overpopulate the platform with a lot of free games. However, we have to consider that a game model is "free to play", which means free game distribution with different monetisation. So we can't be very restrictive, but at the same time, don't worry, we will focus on the commercial side of the projects...

Our goal is to get commercial games onboard.

Refund. Well at the moment, the refund policy is up to each vendor. It's an experimental feature we want to start with. That means that we will support gamers, but final decision for the RMA policy is upt to the game developers. This is because we want to create a platform able to connect developers and gamers more than other platforms. Of course, we are a small team to right now, but our goal is to grow as well as the platform.

So basically would you like to have a feature to create your own game bundle? But only commercial games, is that it?

Thank you so much, Yes let me answer your questions:

Resource for sel-promotion: yes we will. We are currently working on the first part of that system, the reqaurding and creadit system. Credits that vendors can spend in ads purchasing.

Each game needs to be launched by a desktop application called KSS Dreamgate. So every game will fit this rule, otherwise the game won't start. Based on that, we will be the first people to test each game application to check its compatibility with the Dreamgate!

But dont worry, the code that you have to implement in your games is very easy and we are creating several template and guide for most of the game engine out there.

Payment: at the moment we just activated STripe as a payment method. Our system already support other payment methods, that we will activate later after the platform launch.

Feel free to ask anything... we will publish some pictures soon to start giving you an idea about the platform, and we are also working on a internal forum platform, which we think could be helpful

So sorry for my late reply, busy travelling and coding.

Thank for your question Well, aside of all the tools provided by our system, we are developing a robust forum community. Ok, about our forum, there are still few things we have to fix in our bullet list, but we do strongly believe that a community forum would be a good way to help and receive help and suggestions.

We are also preparing few additional tutorials to help hobbist gamers to improve their games and showcase them in a better and more professional way.

You can also "tag" your game in the product store page as "Student project" or "Indie" to inform potential players about the nature of your project.

Please feel free to suggest additional features you would like to have,  so we can implement them in our platform.

Hope this can help, let us know with a comment

Thanks

You can search K Storm Studio ltd, you should find it. Feel free to send us a private message or comment. We should also start making some videos to introduce the platform features and explain how it works.

Thank you very very much, and feel free to suggest which features you would like to see compared to other game marketplaces. We will try to implement them. Please consider that the platform development is ongoing and we will never stop developing the marketplace.

Stay in touch

Best

Great, we don't upload regularly, based onccontent, but we use it every day, so feel free to write to us anytime

Thank you very much, stay in touch and join us as soon as we open the markerplace... soon for the first vendors in beta version :)

Thank you very much for your suggestions dna yes... don't worry we will work hard about that.

The advice you gave us are fine, but we also want to make them a bit more advanced. For exmaples

Resources for promoting games and communities integrated to the platform... well, yes we thought about that very deeply. At the moment we have implemented a rewarding system based on credits/points that developers can spend later to promote their games.

Personalised feeds that recommend your games, yes! In several ways.

Further... we will open the platform and hopefully we will have the first developers start publishing games so as soon as we have more games, we can think about different personalised section in the front page. So each user can personalise their search.

We also thought about a real-time system to show new games based on the factors above.

Quality ratings. Ok it might sound discriminatory, but if done properly it might works

Please just stay touch, we will publish screenshots about our platform soon, so you can have a better idea about some sections.

Thanks and feel free to shhare your proposts and feedbacks

Correct, and then later on we will develop additional infrastructure for multiplayers.

But thank you very much indeed

Thanks to get in touch with us and for all the advice. :)

For multiplayer, yes but not at the moment. Because we are still developing several functionalities for both website and the desktop app. 

About 0 dollar publishing fee. Right, but as a new and small webplatform we can't be so restrictive, at least at the beginning. So we don't want to charge developers to publish with us, at the beginning at least.

About game quality, well, this is crucial for us. First we won't publish everything. In addition, for everyone who wants to publish through our marketplace, devs need to implement  a small simple piece of code we provide for language and major game engines. This is for copy protection, and it is during this process that we will test games and eventually decide to unpublish some of those.

Our criteria is flexible, but of course we don't want to have trash games, otherwise the platform won't be attractive for gamers.

As an owner of an e-commerce store, the agreement with Stripe is only related to secure transactions. Our system is based on WordPress, plus required plugins, so we support many different payment methods, but we decided to start with Stripe (despite fees) , then soon also activate other methods.

Yes of course, I don't use Discord so much, even my colleague,for now we can use Facebook or Tiktok or Youtube, then soon even our platform. Please tell me what do you prefer so I can send you link to our profile

We want to create a dedicated session, with a message for the audience. Just like a kind of PEGI system. The most important thing for us is quality. A curated project is always winning. What game genre your games belong to?

Well, some games contain nudity, violence, or offensive language. We will but limited to the same content in the industry standard. 

May I ask, which type of games would you like to distribute?

Thanks, apoligize for my mistake

Dear devs,

after months of hard development, ideas, design, failures and so on, and despite we are still working hard on our idea of a new game marketplace more fair and equal, we can finally have several features done, and we can start to see some light at the horizon.

But we now really need your help again, and please let me personally tell you thank you so much for all the previous help that many of you gave us before.

We listed several key points we were working on, devs side in our platform. Our goal is to have a marketplace able to let gamers explore and discover new games they want, both indie and commercial, instead of brutally forcing them to buy what is currently trendy. But please tell us some additional features that you want to have in a game marketplace.

Visibility & Community

• Effective Discovery and Curation: no tricky algorithms will define how your customers will find your games. In addition, we are constantly working to clean the store design, add powerful search functionality, and curated sections for indie titles or specific genres.

• From Indie to Major: feature indie titles equally alongside bigger titles, with fair discoverability (no burying small developers).

• Data Analytics and Market Insights: access to data on player behavior, market trends, and sales performance enables developers to make informed decisions about their game and future projects.

• Community Engagement Tools: features like forums, review systems, and communication channels allow developers to interact directly with their players, build a community, and gather feedback.

• Marketing Support: we will run promotions and sales events, we are also running rotational sections based on game genres.

Business & Financial Key Points

• 0 Cost Publishing: we don't charge you to publish products, we reward you with more points.

• Fair Revenue Split: from 85% up to 93% split.

• Transparent and Secure Financial Handling: we handle tax compliance (like VAT), and we also offer secure payment processing via Stripe.

• Pricing Control: you can manage prices and run sales and promotions yourself, aside from our promotion bundles.

• Monetization Support: built-in support for various monetization strategies, including in-game purchases, DLC, and microtransactions, helps maximize potential revenue streams

Development & Operational Tools

• Ease of Use & Integration: creating a store page for your games/products is a very easy and fun process in K Storm Studio Marketplace. Also, integrating and protecting your game with KSS is easy, and we provide a small piece of code and example to use for many of the commercial game engines.

• Copy Protection: connecting your game to the KSS System and the KISS DreamGate, your game can only be played by those who have purchased.

• Efficient Patching System: gamers can easily update their games directly from the KSS DreamGate app. Vendors can manage their files from their store page product editor.

• Customizable Product Page: easily customize your game store page with our creation tools.

• Customizable Vendor Store Page: after registration, you will get your own store that you can customize with some best features to better engage with your customers and remain in touch with them.

Please get in touch, tell us your wishlist and feedback.

Thank you!

We are currently working about, maybe there will be also a new transition pack

Thank you so much. we are so glad to hear this. We are still working on our platform :) hope it can help you and all users:)

About K-Engine, the time to release the next alpha version is coming soon. we are excited but at the same time we are scared because we feel some responsibility. But you know, we love it as we love making games, and we will alwasy improve it

Hello, we are working on some editor features now and a new shader update.

We plan to released the alpha or beta version 0.9.4 as soon as possible, stay in touch here on Itch and our website. We are also preparing a community forum to better help each other.

Do you think the forum could be a good way to improve the engine and help developers?

Hi, thank you very much for your message. Yes this set of transitions are for K-Engine. We released a previous alpha version of K-Engine few months ago just to test how the engine works with other people, but it needed more works. 

We are still working on K-Engine (we will work forever on it :) ), it's almost ready but we just want to improve some important features of the editor. We are also working hard on other projects despite K-Engine is always in dev everyday.

We will probably upload even a version here on Itch, for sure it will be available to download for free on our website :)

Thank you very much for your interest! :)