Launch HN: MagnaPlay (YC W23) – Indie gaming subscription service for PC
Paulo and I have been indie gamers for the past decade. Both of us have insanely long back catalogs of games we’ve always wanted to try, but couldn’t. When we were stuck at home during covid, we were frustrated and decided to set out to solve this problem. Naturally, this decision was made during a game of Call of Duty: Warzone.
For consumers, MagnaPlay eliminates the paywall when it comes to buying a new game. Today, the indie market is incredibly saturated and prices are increasing. A subscription service, like Spotify, can make indie gaming more affordable and allow players to try out more content.
For developers, we solve the problem of lower consumer lifetime values for indie games. Most indie games sell for around $10 and lose 50% of that to tax and store commissions, so the average player only nets them around $5 LTV. By introducing a revenue model which focuses on the distribution of player subscriptions, we’re able to pay developers a recurring revenue stream, as long as people are playing their game. This way, indie games can achieve profitability with a smaller player base, which is crucial as these developers tend to have incredibly small marketing budgets.
MagnaPlay subscriptions cost $8/month. We divide that up and distribute it to developers based on a series of data such as time played, play sessions and number of downloads. We designed this with the idea of helping indies achieve profitability with a smaller player base, crucial when competition is ever-increasing.
This isn’t a new idea, but we offer a few twists. Namely: a) we only work with indie games, which makes the unit economics work; b) we don’t do streaming—the business model doesn’t really work and it’s not as cool as it sounds; and c) we’re trying out all our funky gamer ideas: letting players vote for titles, let players review games on a review feed and even letting players choose who gets part of their subscription!
By far our biggest difficulty is overcoming the chicken-and-egg problem of platform businesses: we need games to get users, and we need users to get games. We have a few high quality games already, but not enough yet to draw major interest. Things have been especially hard on the supply side, because most of the time we’re competing with massive companies such as Microsoft, which really bankroll their service “Game Pass”. We’re going to have to be clever and determined to overcome this problem and it may need some real hacking…accepting any suggestions!
In the meantime, if you think MagnaPlay is a good idea and would like it to exist in your world, like we do, we’d love you to consider taking a leap of faith with us and getting in early. We promise to listen closely to your opinions about what games to add and how to build this out going forward!
The other perennial question, of course, is piracy. Since we don’t do streaming, all games are installed on your computer, but since we’re a subscription service, we have to validate your subscription—and however we do that, it has to be effortless for the indie developers to integrate with.
For this, we ended up building our own DRM program. It consists of a C++ wrapper that encrypts and compresses games’ raw binary, as well as a program which injects assembly code into the game’s .EXE files which validates the parent process of the program upon running. The beauty of it is: developers don’t need to change any of their source code! (An interesting tradeoff is that although this reduces game file size by around 26%, it unfortunately increases memory usage by around 9%.) Most players understandably dislike DRMs, and of course there’s no perfect solution against piracy, but we’re hopeful that this approach will be non-intrusive enough for both players and devs to solve...
116 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] threadedit: https://www.humblebundle.com/membership/collection
If not, then interesting that you both choose "Magna*"
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify
Obviously, Microsoft are probably loss-leading with Game Pass, but still, not every all-you-cant-eat subscription service is bad to their vendors.
Game Pass has the huge advantage of being about games, it can retain a much lower game library number (~100 titles) but still keep people subscribed by rotating the games around first party titles. This means that until the landscape changes (Nvidia's attempt being squandered nullifies a lot of potential here of a landscape changing), being an invited third party means good income, due to the revenue being split ~100 ways rather than ~11 million ways.
Of course the above is a simplification, as each game gets its own separate contract agreement and the payout isn't based on how many times a game is played.
Unless you transparently publish your financials, there is no way to be held accountable to this system.
Also there's the secondary problem that Spotify has an incentive to produce easy-to-digest content in house for which it pays lower (or no) royalties [0].
For you, the equivalent of problem #2 is your incentive to make deliberately addictive content of no artistic merit. Easy to say you won't do this, a lot harder when your backers demand growth and your analytics team demonstrates that Angry Birds For Tots will maximize engagement.
Don't get me wrong, I think you have a cool idea and I hope it works, but everything you say about your commitment to devs is cheap talk, and in my experience, such ideals tend to get discarded during, e.g., difficult funding rounds.
good luck!
[0] https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/the-fake-artists-problem-is-...
Forgive me if I'm missing something, however I don't understand what exactly is wrong with this. Isn't this the case with any "art-type" career?
Are there any services that pay a flat-rate per stream?
Isn't this the same as saying players will pay at least as much as they are in existing markets?
Spotify's merchandise stores and concert notifications are IMO a pitiful shadow of what they can and should be, and what you can and should be - imagine a Patreon-esque system with tiered badges and in-game supporter perks, with verification built in at your DRM layer, the Discord tiered-role features that Patreon integrates with, award-gifting, etc. Draw a hard line at what kinds of monetization is and isn't acceptable, and become a breath of fresh air in the monetization debate. There's so much possible here beyond subscription distributions, and you could cement your reputation as an innovator and ally to a whole world of brilliant creators.
Always thought the appeal of Stadia could have been I could try a large variety of games on any platform and not have to deal with installing them (especially for AAA games, though indie games can also get giant).
Also, Google tried streaming, NVidia tried streaming, both have had little success. Imagine going to your YC partner and saying "yeah, I know google and NV tried it and failed, but we'll succeed, because... it's indie games?"
Isn’t that the opposite of how that’s supposed to work?
Meanwhile, the overall number of indie games produced each year just keeps increasing, as tools improve and the barrier to entry lowers. And old indie games don't just disappear, the best ones are usually ported straight to each new platform that arrives, leaving their stores pretty saturated from day 1.
Similarly, how do you plan to retain devs, especially once they become established and choose to sell directly instead? I think your most “similar” competitor, Apple Arcade, gave out contracts to larger studios to build games, which isn’t really sustainable in the longer term as far as I can tell, especially when they can simply sell their games instead. Is this more of an alternative revenue stream for studios? One of the main draws of a subscription for customers is exclusivity, which would kind of contradict that.
In general though, I really like this concept; it can solve a lot of issues with getting indie game dev going in a sustainable manner, which is a market neither Game Pass nor Apple Arcade really address. Best of luck!
I like the idea! There's clear value for Indie devs who need a sweetener to get people to play, and there's clear value for gamers that like to try a lot of different games but need to control costs.
> we're able to pay developers a recurring revenue stream, as long as people are playing their game.
That's how normal game sales already work for non-replayable games.
Good indie games are usually more like $20. If you want to be in this service and make the same amount of money, you'd need your existing player count to only play your game for over 2 months, assuming the revenue split is the same (which you've left out). This is unrealistic; I'd expect people to play 2 or so games per month. Your service would need to make that up through a massive increase in advertising. This is already what publishers do, so you probably won't get any Annapurna/Devolver/THQ/etc games. Basically, you're trying to do what Epic did (make a new platform and subsidize dozens of games) without making a billion from vbucks.
> This way, indie games can achieve profitability with a smaller player base
Your service doesn't encourage this. People are going to be less likely to stick with a game, so you need more players to get the same revenue, assuming all else is balanced.
From the player side, people irrationally hate installing new launchers. The DRM thing is probably fine though. It'll depend on how often it breaks games and how much performance it takes.
My conclusion is this is Moviepass for games. Except it only has 11 games.
But, to be fair you're right in that we still haven't figured out the best way to pay shorter games. Right now, the upside for them is more distribution. About the new launchers thing, it's a tricky problem to work around. We've thought about just using a website, but you run into issues with DRM implementation.
Some indie games I've really enjoyed back in the day for the story were ones like What Remains of Edith Finch and Binding of Isaac. I'm certainly not playing them for more than a few days. On the other hand, indie games that I would replay, like Terraria and Stardew Valley, are already making significant revenue through the current Steam model. In fact, many of their current players would have been dismayed by a subscription model, which would have led them to not enjoy that much of a fan base.
Also, I would never use your service because of DRM. GOG doesn't do DRM and always has many indie games on sale, which seems like a better value prop? I don't think the Spotify analogy works because games are already very cheap. I have a large backlog of games I'll never get around to playing, and so does everybody else. Being able to choose from millions of songs on Spotify is way better than having to buy individual albums, but I don't need access to a large game library.
Maybe this is another "less space than a nomad" kind of comment, but my intuition is that indie games are mostly played by older gamers who are happy to just buy a game they want to play. Go to gog.com and see how many games you can get for the $100 a year you plan to charge.
I appreciate your opinion on the value prop too. I'm curious though, is there anything you feel is missing out from these other stores that maybe we could do?
Other than exclusives, I can't think of anything that would tempt me to join your platform.
Edit: typos
The reason "add DRM later" is problematic is that you hit product market fit with the a lot of the second group, meaning they will be upset when you add it.
That's valid if the target market is "people who want to play games". It's not in this case, it's "people who want to play indie games", which is a different target. By removing DRM, it's expanded to include "people who want pirate indie games" which is a ridiculously tiny segment.
> The reason "add DRM later" is problematic is that you hit product market fit with the a lot of the second group, meaning they will be upset when you add it.
So? These are gamers we are talking about. Bugginess, poor quality and everything else that they claim upsets them still doesn't stop them from buying the game!
I don't think that matters in the context of revenue for a business - if you want paying customers, then you have to offer people value for the money they hand over, which GOG does.
If you could distil the value you are offering to customers in just a few short sentences, what would those sentences be?
Anyway, good luck :-)
And like you on both Steam and GOG I have a backlog of hundreds of games. Games I mostly acquired through Humble Bundle and GOG sales or giveaways. Nowadays I vastly prefer buying on GOG over Steam, due to feeling I am more in ownership of the games due to no DRM. I can download the games and make back-ups in case GOG ever goes down.
I will probably never be able to play all the games I bought, but even then devs and publishers should have gotten some money from me. Would not happen if it weren’t for Humble Bundle & GOG sales, cause I like to buy cheap.
The last time I found some stats (five years ago), MOST accounts had hundreds of games, most of which were never played (playtime < 2 hours, I think).
Luckily, the developer still got paid. With MagnaPlay, the developers will never get paid unless the game is played.
In other words, this looks like a bad deal for developers, while also looking like a bad deal for gamers![1]
I can't really see any way for this to take off.
[1] For gamers, the DRM is an unnecessary hurdle, and GOG solves that. The lack of titles is also a hurdle (remember, this is only for indie titles).
IOW, they decide whether the founders pitching them an idea are going to generate a return, not whether the idea being pitched will generate a return.
What research have you done to show that it is an actual concern?
The one I always come back to is covered here in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15319476 where the data shows that video game piracy actually generates more sales than it costs.
Or is it not based on actual data, just a requirement you've seen from the developers or publishers?
Most of my gaming these days is done on Linux with Steam + Proton and, unless y’all plan to support Proton (or some other variation of Wine) I don’t hold high confidence that this will work. Even if it does I’m on my own, trying to run a slightly different version of the game from everybody else.
(I guess this is relevant in the wider market — your games won’t be playable on Steam Deck.)
The problem is specifically this DRM. Bespoke DRM that injects assembly seems like another layer of stuff that will break Proton and, when it does, there will be no one to support it.
Some people will do this, sure. But just because they can doesn't mean they will.
I could torrent Netflix's entire catalogue today. Yet I have a subscription to them and they're still a multi-billion dollar company with millions of paying subscribers. Hmm... that's odd isn't it?
These people are not your target demographic. $8/mo is too expensive for 95% of VN/CN/IN/ID/MY/RU/$I_COULD_GO_ON gamers.
I'm not saying "don't do DRM", but your argument does not stand up to scrutiny.
I wish you the best of luck with the project!
Any sort of DRM protection doesn't really stop piracy, if someone really wants to pirate a digital product, there are always way to do it, unless the product is entire server-dependent.
I think DRM may be less of an objection when the consumer knows up front they’re not buying the game.
I’ve never heard anyone complain about Netflix DRM, for presumably the same reason.
I'm still pretty salty that netflix doesn't stream in 4K HD in my browser because of DRM even though I'm paying for 4k.
I don't use netflix and remove the widevine DRM binaries from browsers I use. I'm not alone, either in nerd circles, or more widely (terrestrial television is good where I live, and you can legally timeshift broadcasts with set-top recording devices)
The other problem that "pay-for-playtime" has shown to have on Apple Arcade and similar is that it penalizes "content rich" games where the player can play through rich, authored content in ten or twenty hours and instead rewards more endless mode game. Not that there's anything wrong with those types of games but this means that eventually, more meaningful games will be driven off the platform and it will be just idle games, puzzle games and farming simulators. I love those kind of games but it can make the platform feel cheap. I think a pay-per-install metric would work out a lot better in the long run for you.
I'll keep an eye on this service, definitely the more outlets an indie has the better.
You're right about penalizing smaller titles though, we're trying to figure that out at the moment. Pay per install is interesting, thanks for the suggestion!
I'm working on a game myself; interested in what research is out there.
However, since then they started re-releasing classics that don’t necessarily have daily engagement built into the design.
I find it hard to believe many people will sign up to play eleven games they've never heard of and know next to nothing about. More likely, they'll search for one of the games to get more information, find the steam store, and consider buying it there easier than signing up to a new platform.
Who do you target first and how
Although my immediate thought was - DRM is just wrong. It will only punish legitimate players and will be cracked quickly anyway. Indie games do not need DRM.
Also I'm generally wary of subscription services. For any sort of "serious" game I would prefer buying, so to not depend on a subscription where the set of available games may change at a whim. However one interesting possibility may be a partnership with a platform like itch.io. They have literally thousands of games, and a lot of them are quite original, but I'm generally not ready to pay for them - as a lot of them are in development/not finished/bad quality/obviously overpriced. Subscription which gives access to all (or most of) the games of itch.io may actually make a lot of sense, encouraging players to try much more games. Just a thought.
Good luck!
I think your implicit intuition that indie gamers are keen to explore more titles than they currently (reasonably) can, is valid. I suspect they’re also keen to be involved in early development. And devs are interested in early feedback. So you could introduce something to facilitate that. Or introduce a Patreon/kickstarter type model where you can choose to fund development of games from your subscription.
Network effects are valuable to build in/explore - make it super easy to stream the games on Twitch, Share clips on YT etc. Might help with the chicken and egg!
I don't mind spending money on games I like, and even games I might like. Unless the game turns out to be a swindle, I don't mind paying for them. Even the one I hated, I didn't mind paying for: they'd put a lot of effort into it, they just missed the mark massively.
The game I play the most has a free version limited to the tutorial, so I got to try it before I bought it. I personally would be served better if I could try more games without paying for them if they were shit.
Does paying $8 improve the situation? I can try a lot of games. The games that I play a lot of would potentially earn more money from me in the long run. My favorite game I've put in over 200 hours over two years. I paid $20 for it. Would that developer make more money in that period from magna than the cut they got from Steam?
What about the games that were fun, lasted maybe 20 hours of play time, and would normally get like $5 cut? It would suck if they got less.
On the point of trying out more stuff before you buy them: we considered adding a section on the platform for alpha/beta releases. It would allow developers to test and get feedback throughout the early stages of development while allowing players to engage with titles they would otherwise avoid. It would be separate from the revenue share model as these games wouldn't be fully baked and, therefore, at a lower standard than those on the "official" portfolio. We might be able to roll out this feature in the coming weeks! Would that be something you see yourself using?
And absolutely, in the context you gave, you would help developers a lot with our model. Think about it this way: the 200 hours you played on that game got compensated once: when you bought it. On the other hand, if you are subscribed to MagnaPlay and mostly play that game, you'd be essentially giving 80% of your subscription to its developer every month.
>On the other hand, if you are subscribed to MagnaPlay and mostly play that game, you'd be essentially giving 80% of your subscription to its developer every month.
Do I want to pay $75 a year for that game though? And if I play that game for 20 hours in one month, and also play a new game and complete it in 20 hours, how much does that new game get? Many games are very much play-once and done. Like I don't think I'll replay Hob again, but I still think it was one of my favorite gaming experiences of 2021 (when I discovered it on PS4). Likewise Carrion (actually I did replay that one coz people are chewy).
This may be a thing just for the whales, but maybe have a thing like reddit where I could rate a game positively and back that up with cash (like over and above the $8/mo). In a way, the pay-what-you-want bundles offer a similar mechanism, so the idea may be validated already.
I'm also realizing that most of the games I think of as Indie, I played on PS4/5 or Switch. Dead Cells, Hades, Manifold Garden, Celeste, Carrion. With Manifold Garden and Celeste I even bought the soundtracks. (Spend a lot more on consoles than steam, and finish more games there).
In the same way that when you are watching something on netflix or amazon or disney etc, when you are really into the movie or show no one ever stops watching and thinks "gee I just cannot watch this - it is not Blu-ray quality!".
Just like with netflix et al, game streaming is amazing - pull out a thin and light laptop, browse through a large catalog of games and just pick something and play immediately. The "legacy" approach is wait until you can physically go to your gaming PC or laptop (because you need the hardware), wait for it to boot, wait for the inevitable updates to download for Windows and Steam and Graphics drivers, browse through your game catalog, wait to download the 20-30gb install, wait for the VC redistributable to install, then wait for the game itself installs etc. It sucks - you waste so much time. With a Chromebook and geforce now (rest in peace stadia) I can literally go from a closed-laptop to in-game in about one minute, and I can do that anywhere too. This is the future. I have loads of games on steam that I have never even played - if I could just play them immediately with a single click you can bet I would have at least given them a go.
I personally have very limited spare time, so I would (and do/did for geforce now and stadia) pay extra for the convenience of stream so when I get a spare 30 mins I can play a game in that time, not spend it only getting halfway through a game download in steam. Just like I pay for the convenience of netflix et al rather than buying dvds/Blu-rays and having to watch everything on my TV.
I like the idea of the service, but wouldn't use it unless I can run it on Mac. Streaming for indie games would be perfection, as I don't have the time to go deep into a AAA title but would love to quickly start up some cool short indie game on demand.
So, picture this: if you like puzzle games, for instance, you would essentially be put in the "Librarian" role/house (much like how Hogwarts would put you in Gryffindor if you're brave). All so you can see fewer and fewer titles that aren't worth your time!
And hey, indies are super casual, and a 300Mb launcher runs on any system. Give our platform a chance; maybe it is just casual enough for an evening gaming session after you close down all your Chrome tabs and spot our logo on your Desktop...
I do wish you well in this, I think an indie game pass is a great idea. My fault that I'm in a 1.4%-sized piece of the market pie...
I currently pay for XBox Game Pass Ultimate at $15/month. That comes with 400 games, although I tend to play the more indie games. They do rotate off, so I bought Subnautica, for instance, on Steam. I notice that a few of yours have been on Game Pass.
Right now, Epic is shoving free games like crazy through their Game Store. I have a huge backlog of games on Epic that I'll probably never work through. Some indie games, some former AAA games. Same with Amazon - they give away free games every month for some reason.
I don't know if this glut of games is going to end well or poorly, but I would suggest you don't compete with XBox, and instead do a Mac-first indie game subscription service. Apple Arcade is pretty poorly marketed, and there might be more opportunity there.