Indie game devs! Worried you don't have a good publishing deal? May I present my firm's 2025 Publishing Agreement Data Report! Taken from 100+ actual Publishing Agreements ranging from 2017-2025, providing averages for rev share splits, advances, IP ownership and more! indiegamepublishing.com - ThreadSky

haleyfax.bsky.social • 51 days ago

Indie game devs! Worried you don't have a good publishing deal? May I present my firm's 2025 Publishing Agreement Data Report! Taken from 100+ actual Publishing Agreements ranging from 2017-2025, providing averages for rev share splits, advances, IP ownership and more!
https://indiegamepublishing.com/

Comments

basstastic.bsky.social•50 days ago

the 2.5% rev. share people really just wanted the money up front

fairymountgames.bsky.social•49 days ago

So if it's based on 100+ agreements and 95% of those had an advance, that would mean the entire middle column is based on a single digit of cases?

haleyfax.bsky.social•49 days ago

Good catch that figure was supposed to be “Was the Advance Provided Upfront” not just in general. Site has been updated!

amonjerro.bsky.social•51 days ago

Thanks for this Haley, this is rad as hell

axmn.bsky.social•50 days ago

📌 thank you!

ladyluck34.bsky.social•51 days ago

📌

athenazpeters.bsky.social•51 days ago

Fantastic info! Thank you so much for sharing

tachyon11.bsky.social•47 days ago

📌

binarybagel.de•50 days ago

That's an actually interesting insight. Thank you so much for sharing that.

yolwoocle.com•51 days ago

Website seems broken on firefox 😅

haleyfax.bsky.social•51 days ago

Oh no! Thanks for this note will look into it

voyerlaw.bsky.social•51 days ago

Tested and seems to work for us in the office!

iankumohara.bsky.social•50 days ago

📌

pointered.bsky.social•50 days ago

This is awesome! Any idea of trend, or data from previous years?

haleyfax.bsky.social•50 days ago

Similar deal terms from previous years, just less of them

haleyfax.bsky.social•51 days ago

This information is normally impossible to access due to the secretive nature of publishing agreement deals. Super happy to provide this data to help devs (and publishers too!) understand the current indie market. And if you ever need a Publishing Agreement reviewed, that's my specialty! Hit me up!

jollypunchgames.bsky.social•51 days ago

Great stuff, thank you.

nbmk.bsky.social•50 days ago

Thank you and to all the members involved for doing this.

beetlenaut.bsky.social•50 days ago

a big thank you for making this resource available and easy to read for everyone experienced or inexperienced

great job!

richtaur.bsky.social•50 days ago

That's very valuable thank you for sharing

beacondev.bsky.social•50 days ago

This is great info, thank you both!

veggietales.bsky.social•51 days ago

This is awesome info!

Gotta know the story behind the dev who signed an agreement for 2.5%...

haleyfax.bsky.social•51 days ago

Unfortunately, a lot of our clients come to us post execution of the deal and regret the terms they agreed to. Hoping having this publicly available and accurate data on average deals will prevent this from happening more!

lavalevel.bsky.social•51 days ago

My lawyer advises yes or NO dealeo, is my modus op. Get a legal guy/gal. That's what I tell anyone who wants to invest enough to make taxable income.

gr0m.bsky.social•51 days ago

Just speculating but I imagine it’s one of those deals where the publisher gets all the money until they make back their investment in your game, then the dev gets a large majority of the profit after that threshold. That game probably made just barely enough to pay the publisher back.

obicynkenobi.bsky.social•50 days ago

Love this! So important to ensure indies are getting a fair shake, and similar to pay transparency for individual roles… contract transparency is one of the best ways to do that ✨

descenacre.bsky.social•35 days ago

I'd love to see distribution curves alongside these statistics, too! like, for the first one, it'd be useful to know whether 2.5% and 90% are scarce outliers or there's a roughly even distribution, where the bulk of deals lie

arganoid.com•17 days ago

Very useful info - although for accessibility, it would be preferable if the page could be scrolled using the keyboard

ryversand.bsky.social•51 days ago

@blessingjr.bsky.social @gameovergreggy.bsky.social @kindafunnyvids.bsky.social would be good to have Haley on to talk about this report

kjartankennedy.com•50 days ago

Incredible, thank you!!!

madvulturegames.bsky.social•51 days ago

Thank you for sharing!

byobattleship.bsky.social•49 days ago

In the agreements without an advance, what on Earth is the publisher doing to warrant getting 30+% of the revenue?

synstoria.bsky.social•49 days ago

ADMINISTRATION HELL! Probably specific to France, but for us it's the only reasonable way to give a rev-share to all the team member. Otherwise I would need to create a company which is extremely expansive and complicated. (Mine has a much smaller cut tho, I wouldn't have sign for 30%)

a-fukin-rat.bsky.social•49 days ago

📌

returnone.bsky.social•50 days ago

Great stuff! Thank you.
Would love to see a comparison of the data when considering only the last 3 years

voyerlaw.bsky.social•50 days ago

There’s a bunch of interesting comparisons we can do but had to fight scope creep this year so we could get it done! Hopefully next year we can add some of those comparisons.

jdeepixels.bsky.social•51 days ago

That's so awesome thanks for sharing!

studioatma.com•51 days ago

gekido.bsky.social•50 days ago

Is there a downloadable version of this? Trying to print the website fails because it loads and unloads content throughout

sarahpodz.bsky.social•51 days ago

So interesting! But the 4% "publisher owns IP" will keep me up at night 🛌

akabaka.bsky.social•51 days ago

This also keeps me up at night yikes

haleyfax.bsky.social•51 days ago

Dev maintaining ownership of IP after everything is always the thing I push hardest for. Worst comes to worst, they should be able to walk away with their game at least

pantaloon.io•51 days ago

This is magnificent (and has no right being as good looking as it does!?)

cabel.panic.com•50 days ago

This is extremely good!! Thank you very much!!

nullstar.bsky.social•51 days ago

tokeffyhn.bsky.social•50 days ago

📌

glasgowindiegamesfest.org•50 days ago

This is amazing! 😍

anttikole.bsky.social•50 days ago

Thanks for this! Valuable stuff

theartdevil.bsky.social•51 days ago

2.5%!? jesus christ

cortellhugo.bsky.social•50 days ago

With a sufficiently large advance, it might make sense.

Or someone out there just got the worst deal on history.

ekanaut.bsky.social•50 days ago

There's so much I want to say about this but can't. Thanks for putting this together.

hoistgamedev.com•51 days ago

Fantastic work!

whatisafly.bsky.social•51 days ago

Been looking for something like this ty! Super useful.

haleyfax.bsky.social•51 days ago

Of course! My email is always open too if anyone ever has any followup questions

artofhardingmal.bsky.social•50 days ago

📌

8bitpxl.itch.io•50 days ago

Thanks for making this, will share & you're awesome!

haleyfax.bsky.social•50 days ago

Thanks Tom!

tahk0.bsky.social•50 days ago

you are awesome for this

downieseb.bsky.social•50 days ago

hey super interesting, thanks. Could you advise on the timeframe in which the 100 agreements were struck?
I have a theory that some of these numbers are more positive than expected as they are pre-horror show times.

voyerlaw.bsky.social•50 days ago

The average age (depending on the agreement type) is 2022 or 2023, with the newest being 2025.

downieseb.bsky.social•50 days ago

cool, thanks. So my theory might hold some ground. 2024 I think some of those stats took a nosedive off a cliff

voyerlaw.bsky.social•50 days ago

Actually, the theory is incorrect. The deals we're seeing now are not materially different from those in, for example, 2020 as it concerns advance, revenue share etc. Instead, there are FEWER deals but with the same or similar economic terms.

downieseb.bsky.social•50 days ago

Okay interesting. Thanks for the followup. Is there an expected trend emerging though?

zeboydgames.bsky.social•50 days ago

Thanks for all this information! This is very helpful.

"Publisher owns IP - 4.6%" - I'm guessing this is just new IPs and it's excluding instances where the developer is making a game with a licensed IP?

haleyfax.bsky.social•50 days ago

Correct!

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