Forum ‹ Feedback ‹ New pricing

[Maras]

If I understand correctly, there is no change in current pricing, but on top of that developers pays another 5% / 10% of their revenue to Yahoo. Is that correct?

[Henrik]

No, the monthly- and usage fees are going away, and are being replaced with the new pricing plan.

We will very shortly offer all existing developers the ability to opt-in to the new pricing plan and terms and conditions.

Once you're on the new pricing plan, you get full access to all the features of the entire Yahoo Games Network, and you can develop and beta-test your game without having to pay anything. The revenue share only kicks in if you distribute your game to other networks than the Yahoo Games Channel, and your game reaches a DAU threshold.

[Maras]

Wow,

then it's super great!

Now when Mochi is gone, I was thinking what to do with my not-yet distributed game. The GameFS was quite expensive for me, so i was even thinking about releasing it without further updates! (I am not sure how well monetized my game is)

Looking forward to it and I hope Yahoo will be satisfied with their new gaming network and will not shut down PlayerIO anytime soon.

[robscherer123]

Yes, I'm very excited about all of the new features! I am a little bit confused on the new pricing plan though. From the only thing I see, it says we now pay based on how much we make through payvault, correct? That's all good and dandy, but what about how much bandwidth we use? Wouldn't this mean developers could use up exorbitant amounts of bandwidth and not have to optimize their games now? Or does bandwidth still play a roll in the pricing somewhere?

[Dg74]

I am also confused as to how the new pricing works.

First, section 6.2 of the new Terms of Services states "if applicable, you will be invoiced each month in advance for the monthly fee and for any additional bandwidth fees from the preceding month." However, I can find no reference to additional or bandwidth fees on the site. Are there any additional fees based on bandwidth or other usage?
Similarly, section 6.1 talks of paying for "certain premium Services." What are these premium services and what are the fees associated with them?

Second, section 2 of the Yahoo Games Network Pricing states that a monthly report is required "which report shall use the format or template requested by Yahoo." I can not find any specifics as to the format or template requested by Yahoo. Are specifics available?

Third, what is meant by "has less than 5000 daily active users"? Is this condition met only if for every single day of the previous month has less then 5000 connections with unique connectUserIDs or is it a average of average users per day?
Also, is each call of the connect() function assigned a new connectUserID?

Finially, it is my understanding and my hope that a report will not be required when the Fee percentage is 0% . Is this correct?

If someone could answer these questions that would be great.

[vancext]

For a mobile game utilizing this service and not using PayVault, how is this revenue share implemented? We only use BigDB and the Multiplayer service.

[rluck]

When will we be offered the ability to opt-in? I just started work on a new game using PlayerIO and I'm getting Access Denied to PayVault because I'm not a paid developer...

[Maras]

Yeah I am also interested when we can switch to new payment method

Thanks a lot!

[Henrik]

Now.

Enjoy!

[Maras]

Great, thanks!

Two more question:

If I use ingame ads, do I need to share 5-10% from those too? If I drive traffic to my website from splash screen, do I need to share 5%-10% of revenue from onpage ads generated by my game? - and if so how it should look like? Its forbidden to share AdSense/AdMob stats

[jasonlai1975]

Dear Admin, i have few questions to ask:

1.5000 DAU threshold is per application or per account/developer ?

2.Can you explain the definition of "gross revenue earned each calendar month." For example , if i have ios only mobile game that earn USD 100.00 each month through In app purchase (IAP),i have the pay Yahoo! 10 % of USD 100.00 ( USD 10) before Apple AppStore 30% cut ?

3.In Term of Service,developer must provide accurate and complete payment information and agree to keep that information up to date ("Payment Method").Can you define what is "Payment Method" .ie (credit card,paypal ,wire,check ,etc) ?

Thank you very much.

[Maras]

Yeah, I would like to know that too and also where I should sent the payments and details.

I am waiting with game release just for these details.

Thanks!

[Maras]

I would really like to know the details of this pricing ASAP.

Especially this:
- 10% of gross revenue from microtransactions or overall? (onpage ads, ingame ads, microtransactions, possibly sold units on Android?)
- if 10% of gross overall revenue, does it mean that if I get 60% from advertising company, I still should count it from 100%?
- what happens when the game is not monetized well and 10% is not enough to cover hosting expenses?
- Where should I sent the reports and where should I sent the payment?
- What's detailed report, is it ok to write: "Ingame ads: $50", or should I write "CPMStar: $20, Chartboost: $30"?

Thank you!

[PeteHufnagel]

- what happens when the game is not monetized well and 10% is not enough to cover hosting expenses?

There must be some limits placed on bandwidth and DB sizes. Are they just so high that it is assumed any application would hit the 5000 DAU mark at that point? Are they throttled in some way? In the extreme case couldn't someone write an app for only them self to use, and store their movie collection in BigDB? I'm not close enough to monetizing for your other points to worry me, but the lack of clarity around this one has me wondering if I should get ready to migrate to a different service. I feel like there must be strings attached and it isn't clear what they are.

[Maras]

Bump.

Can we get these answers ASAP please?

Thanks!

[Maras]

Nothing changed, I would still like to know the answer.

[PeteHufnagel]

Bump

(This is starting to get silly.)

[Maras]

I guess the answer is "Don't worry for now"

https://gamesnet.yahoo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=35634

[Amoeba]

I don't think anything will come this way since managing and developing the whole system are way harder than just typing but here is my little my opinion.

I think Yahoo Games Network (YGN) can use two separated pricing models parallel:

A) Subscription: Like the old days but pricing will be based on which users use like messages, bandwidth, server processes and features with a free plan which has limited features and resources. Every "normal" users who aren't yet partners of Yahoo will start with this model.

B) Revenue-share: If users want they can make a deal with Yahoo to switch to this model from the subscription model. Any application before switched to this model will need to be approved by Yahoo to make sure about its quality and profitability.

Then the revenue-share model can be separated into several plans like:

1. PayVault Only: Which means revenue of a game will only come from PayVault or any of Yahoo's other payment gateway systems. In this case, this is very easy for Yahoo to keep track on developer's revenue. Any revenue from a game using this plan will have a percent of the total amount being paid back to Yahoo. Thus make everything easy for both Yahoo and developers at least in billing between the two. The approval process by Yahoo for games and developers using this plan will be easier and simpler than the two other plans in the model.

2. Having other revenue sources along with PayVault: Which means revenue of a game will come from PayVault and other sources like advertisement, offer wall, etc. In this case, the approval process will need to be more in depth to make sure that the users who develop the game are willing and will be able to pay for the services from Yahoo. The percent of revenue to be shared should be the same as the PayVault when in a same publishing / distribution case.

3. Non-PayVault: Which means a game don't use PayVault or don't have any revenue from PayVault in a long period. In this case, the approval process will need to be most in depth to make sure that the users who develop the game are willing and will be able to pay for the services from Yahoo. The percent of revenue to be shared should be the highest of all plans when in a same publishing / distribution case.

Publishing / Distribution cases: Like which we currently have, there are Yahoo-Exclusive Published, Yahoo-Non Exclusive and Not Being Published by Yahoo. The percent of revenue to be shared on revenue-share model should be based on those cases along with the plans.

Normally a user can only switch to revenue-share from subscription model so Yahoo can easily look at the user's insight reports on the system to help deciding if his / her game is suited for the model.

To keep the flexibility of services:

- When users using subscription model, they should be able to choose what features to use and will only be cost by those features, in another way to say, they will only pay for removing limits on each feature. Examples like if a user only use BigDB, they should only be cost for this feature, by default the Yahoo's splash-screen / logo / watermark will be shown in games using YGN, if the user wants to remove it they will have to pay for it and only for it. The user don't have to upgrade the whole plan, paying for other features which they don't use yet just to remove Yahoo's splash-screen / logo / watermark.

- The users should be able to change between models and plans when in reasonable conditions.

With no limit on using server resources like now, it seems more dangerous than propitious. Anyone with bad coding or bad attempt can screw things up and waste a lot of resources which meant to be used by other legit users.