The Math: doing business on itch.io vs. GameMaker Marketplace

Following up on my previous post comparing itch.io vs. the GameMaker:Marketplace, here’s some math that explains the difference in costs for selling an asset through each store.

YoYo Marketplace Itchi.io
base price  $1.99  $1.99
store’s cut  $0.60  $0.20
paypal’s cut  $0.36
net income  $1.39  $1.43
net income % of gross 70% 72%

As can be seen, the transaction fees are not included in itch.io’s cut, while they are included in YoYoGame’s cut.

For low-cost assets, this eats up much of the 20% difference between YYG’s 30% cut and itch.io’s 10%, resulting in just a 2% difference after the per-payment transaction fees are factored in on a $1.99 asset. A difference of 2% may not sound like much, but in business that’s actually huge.

The gap only widens with more expensive assets:

YoYo Marketplace Itchi.io
base price $19.99 $19.99
store’s cut  $6.00  $2.00
paypal’s cut  $0.88
net income  $13.99  $17.11
net income % of gross 70% 86%

For assets that are priced higher, the cost of transaction fees will be less of a factor, meaning the advantage of itch’s service model will only grow as the sale price increases.

In the end, it will come down to which marketplace is more effective at generating a volume of sales that makes publishing there worthwhile in the first place. With the current glitch affecting the performance of My Library, causing “large” purchase manifests to take several minutes to display in GM:S, it seems to punish GM:S users for purchasing a lot of assets, and this would seem to concede the edge to itch for now. I keep hoping that YYG will fix this bug, but I’ve been waiting over a year since I first reported it.

But clearly, there’s a need for transaction costs to go lower in order for low-cost items to be worth selling. I’ve been waiting for a viable micropayment system for going on two decades now, though, and nothing seems to be going on in that realm. (PayPal does offer a micropayments option to merchants, at $0.05 + 5% per transaction, but it does not appear that this is an option through either itch.io or the GameMaker Marketplace, and this fee schedule replaces ALL transactions paid to the account in question, not just microtransactions, so it’s not really an ideal solution.)

Of course, you can also adjust the cut that itch.io takes from you to as low as 0% if you want, but it seems fair to allow them to have something for the benefit they provide you, so they can keep operating. Bottom line, a 10% cut for the services that itch provides is a very good deal compared to what you can get elsewhere.

Itch.io also offers greater flexibility with payouts, allowing sellers to have access to their money immediately after every transaction if they wish, or to receive a periodic payout. YoYoGames holds seller’s income until it reaches a minimum amount of $100 before you can get paid, so essentially you get paid in $100 chunks, and YYG may end up holding up to $99.99 of your earnings indefinitely. Two years on, and I’m still waiting to collect my first payday from YYG — I’m a little over 3/4 of the way there now.

A great feature that itch.io offers but the GameMaker Marketplace currently doesn’t is bundle sales. Bundle sales can help by cutting many payment transactions for multiple assets down to one. I offered my four paid assets in a bundle at a 33% discount, and so far all of my sales through itch.io have come this way. Such an option would be a welcome improvement to the GameMaker: Marketplace.

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