European Distribution

[Moon]

Small correction: CMAK has not been released in US retail until, uh, last week thursday in a Special Edition, distributed by CDV USA

That is no coincidence by the way - Battlefront always releases games online-only first and goes retail much later usually. The T72 tank simulation for example has been released a couple of months ago here, but you won't see it in stores in most countries until next year (through Strategy First).

The problem with retail is that the developer of a game only gets crumbs from each game sold. That wouldn't a big problem if a wargame at retail could sell hundreds of thousands of copies, but those times are long past. Silent Hunter 3 for example only sold 26,500 copies from what I hear.

This trend isn't new. It's why Battlefront.com has been founded six five years ago. By selling directly to you, the players, the developer gets the majority of the profits, cutting out the long chain of retail, wholesale, distributors and publishers that stuff their pockets otherwise. This - and only this - allows our developers to make enough to continue making games.

How many developers of successful games have you seen fade out of business in the past years? TONS! In fact, most of those that are still around are in-house teams (i.e. owned by publishers and therefore basically paid employees).

But that's only part of the truth. The other part is that this approach also allows us to negotiate with our retail partners on a different level. Suddenly they like our games because we have proven products. And we are able to use retail to our advantage, too - all of our games have made it to the shelf after 1-2 years, and with this we manage to increase the audience and reach of our games and grab impulse buyers, too, who would never look for and find us on the internet.

This same principle applies to a European release of CMx2. It will be released online-only at first and you will find it in stores in Europe at the end of 2006 or early 2007 most likely.

We're not married to CDV in any way, even if they did the past 3 CM games for us. We have other partners (including in Europe - Strategic Command has been released there by Walkon Media; and the T72 sim will be released by Strategy First), and we will see who we choose for a retail rollout when the time comes.

Martin

[Peter Cairns]

I thought that any product for sale legally in the EU must be allowed to be sold elsewhere. Does that mean that a version of CM made in belguim with Swastakas can be sold in Germany, or do the Germans have an opt out because of their constitution.

I think this should be posted on the international law and constitutional politics forum.

Peter.

[Philippe]

At the end of the day what the law is or isn't doesn't really matter. When dealing with a large corporate legal department the issue is whether you are going to act in accord with their recommendation, and whether they have enough internal clout to string you up by the balls if you don't (and they usually do).

So if CDV's legal department thinks that it will save their shareholders potential legal liability and expense to be overly-conservative about how they comply, it doesn't really matter what the law actually is or what outsiders think. Internal corporate policy takes precedance, and there's nothing that a small U.S. company can do about it when dealing with a transaction of this magnitude. You don't risk rocking the boat unless there are seriously large amounts of money at stake.

And you don't go to court over something trivial like forcing the German government to allow you to use nazi emblems in a computer game if you expect anyone in Europe to take your business sense seriously in the future. Doesn't do great things for your credibility.

[Battlefront.com]

Oh, yeah... I forgot that CMAK wasn't here in the US until just now. Duh

Philippe, you are correct that legal departments are conservative. They should be. In the case of the German law and Nazi symbols, unfortunately the law is pretty clear and the German government's ability to immediately cause major problems even clearer. We have copies of the law itself, complete with pictures of all banned symbols. There is an exception for historical documnetation purposes, but since CM is an entertainment product and NOT a history book or a museum exhibit, we couldn't use that exception clause. We also could be said to run afoul of the anti-glorification clause even if we did fit the historical documentation exception.

In short... CDV's legal department was right to not want to push the issue. How things work now with EU laws I don't know, but 3 years ago they didn't seem to matter.

Steve

[Von Lewis]

Originally posted by Moon:

[QB] Small correction: CMAK has not been released in US retail until, uh, last week thursday in a Special Edition, distributed by CDV USA

That is no coincidence by the way - Battlefront always releases games online-only first and goes retail much later usually. The T72 tank simulation for example has been released a couple of months ago here, but you won't see it in stores in most countries until next year (through Strategy First).

[Steiner14]

Regarding the bigger profit from an online sold copy:

i want to give my money BFC AND want a german version, not only because BFC will deserve every cent, but i don't want to support the (anti-)german state with my taxes if i can avoid it.

Is there hope?

Ot at least hope to mod & patch it to a german version, maybe inofficially?