YoYoGames launches Marketplace (early access)

YoYoGames has opened its new marketplace to early adopters. Now is the best time to get a product up, as there’s not much competition right now.

It seems the going price for most things is $.99-1.99. Some things are free, and larger products cost more. It seems that the marketplace is currently geared toward selling singular assets a la carte, rather than larger bundles and collections. I’d like to see the sellers create bundles for certain types of assets, rather than try to nickel and dime their way to maximized revenue. I’m also curious to see if the marketplace will allow sellers to use a “choose your price” model a la the Humble Store.

All sorts of assets are available, from graphics, sounds, and fonts, to shaders, scripts, and extensions. Not every category offers something yet, but I expect this to blow up quickly as developers rush to market.

I have some mixed feelings about this, but overall it’s a positive development. On the positive side, it enables GameMaker developers to see their work to each other, which should encourage the aspiring professional by providing a way to make money and an incentive to produce. On the negative side, I’m not sure that the community needs such an incentive — there’s a huge amount of freely available stuff that has been openly shared in the GameMaker Community. Creating a marketplace will tend to introduce greed and cause developers to guard their secrets, or at least want to be compensated for sharing them. In the long run, this could prove more detrimental than beneficial.

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