
Launch HN: Dropleaf (YC S17) – subscription service for indie PC games - VikramR
I&#x27;m Vikram, one of the founders of Dropleaf (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dropleaf.io" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dropleaf.io</a>), a subscription service for all-you-can-play indie PC games.<p>Zi (Rygeko) and I started Dropleaf because, as gamers, we feel that space around games could be so much better. With the rise of tools that make games easier to make, more people from diverse walks of life are creating games. That means the potential for more games that speak to a wider set of people, and we think that’s really good for the industry. We want to encourage that trend in a few ways:<p>Discoverability: It’s hard for smaller developers to find people who love their games, and it’s also harder for gamers to find games that will resonate. Our focus on indies and our discovery tools mean that we’ll be able to connect devs with the players who will connect with their art.<p>Diversity: We think the industry wins when gamers, devs, and media are more diverse and inclusive. One of our goals is to encourage that with our community and the way we think about what we do (You can read more about our community here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;2uyCsFK" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;2uyCsFK</a> ).<p>Dollars: Pricing trends in the industry don’t favor smaller developers or gamers. Gamers are less likely to take a risk on buying a game they don’t know much about, so it’s harder for indie developers to gain traction. And when indie devs can’t make money, they can’t make games. So our customers play a flat monthly fee, and devs get paid based on time played. This means games people like to play will be rewarded, and players won’t have to worry about the cost of entry.<p>We’re really excited to launch Dropleaf! We’d love to hear any questions you have, or learn about your favorite games!
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guftagu
Sadly I think game developers will now optimize towards wasting as much times
as possible without convincing the user to quit. Longer loading times, more
cut scenes, more fluff essentially.

Short games with a small but great single player story campaign will die out
against the rocket leagues.

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rygeko
Our revenue model doesn't focus exclusively on global time played. So we hope
to minimize time wasters that aren't fun. But you're absolutely right, there
is definitely risk there. We hope our curation will also help combat that,
since it's something we want to actively avoid.

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quadcore
One of the most common mistakes in the industry is to think that games are
different than other types of software. That people "consume" them and move on
to the next game. That's wrong. Only a very few games get all the play-hours.
Most people ever really play one game. The "game of their life". For some it's
starcraft, for others it's minecraft. Games _are_ software, the same rules
kind of apply: there are only 15 (say) unicorns per year.

A subscription service doesn't make sense in this context because it doesn't
make sense for the unicorns to collaborate with you.

What I wish would exist however, is YC for games.

~~~
VikramR
That's definitely an interesting perspective, but I think steam stats say
something a little different, there are hundreds, if not thousands of games
that move 100K+ units (and see significant played time from their users) each
year. That's a whole bunch of games that a significant number of people fall
in love with.

But beyond that, I think you just made the case for those games to sign up for
a subscription model! If someone's playing a game, say minecraft, month over
month, then that developer is getting paid month after month. In other words,
if a game takes over someone's life, it'll almost definitely do better per-
user on a subscription platform than on a store front.

By the way, check out Flare: [http://www.flaregames.com/flare-
accelerator/](http://www.flaregames.com/flare-accelerator/)

~~~
quadcore
You - and your YC partners - gonna learn again what a killer app is :)

~~~
VikramR
I totally acknowledge that we're going to need to find a couple of those to
get really big, and it's something we're working on!

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justinian
I applaud your goals with your community, and wish more game developers and
game-adjacent companies would think similarly. I've worked on games that
didn't care, or didn't put the effort in, and so ended up with fairly toxic
communities. When I was at Runic Games, I was amazed to see how inclusive and
positive a gaming community around the Torchlight series was, but it
definitely took work from the very beginning to make it that way.

~~~
VikramR
Thank you! I really appreciate hearing that :D

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erik
When you say that devs get paid based on time played, I'm assuming this is
platform wide hours, and not per player?

Have you considered alternative rev share models? Whenever I see this sort of
service, I'm concerned that it is going to make shorter games and genres with
low replayability even less viable than they currently are. Games that people
play for hundreds of hours, like Terraria, Rimworld, or Factorio are going to
get the dominant share of the revenue.

You can argue this is fair, but I hate to see the industry moving in a
direction that makes games like Inside less viable.

~~~
VikramR
Actually we agree with you wholeheartedly.

Revenue is distributed on a per-user basis, we think that's hugely important!
Thanks for the question :)

~~~
imtringued
You should try to categorize the games by replayability. Story heavy games
will be weighted differently than sandbox games.

~~~
VikramR
That's a potentially interesting idea, how would you see a system like that
working?

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sboselli
How does the split with the Indie devs work?

If I pay a 5 USD subscription and just play 2 games, one for an hour and the
other for 10 hours; who will get what and when?

Also, being a subscription model, does this imply now all of these games are
online-only? If I'm offline, a game does not know if my subscription is
valid/active. How is that handled?

What happens later, when I cancel my subscription? I don't see an easy way for
you to protect the games once a user has downloaded all of them and cancelled
your service.

~~~
VikramR
We're not going to post our revenue split numbers exactly, but what I will say
is that we distribute revenue based on played time on a per-user basis, each
calendar month. We share revenue with our devs, with the supermajority of it
going to them. In other words the developer portion of revenue will be split
10:1 in your example.

You do need an internet connection to launch games, you're right about that!

We use both an API and some encryption to make sure that a game which is saved
to your computer is only launchable through the client. If you cancel your
subscription, you're going to have a bunch of files you can't use.

However, we don't ever want you to lose the characters you've fallen in love
with, even if you leave us, so your save files are yours to keep, and should
be compatible with any other windows or steam build of the game!

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mysterydip
As a hobbyist indie dev, I think it's a great idea. My main concern for the
platform is the same as indies in general: discoverability. How do you plan to
grow the platform and make people aware of it? People won't subscribe without
games, and devs won't spend time modifying for a platform with no audience.
Seems like a chicken and egg problem. What's your goal in subscribers for one,
two, five years?

~~~
VikramR
It's a great question - first of all, we require very, very little(usually
zero) technical integration work for games that aren't heavily dependent on
steam!

As far as growing our brand, we're going to use all of the typical avenues
that a games company might! Twitch and Youtube influencers, physical presence
at cons, and twitter/fbook/instagram.

It's taken some work to get things moving, but now that we've got great games
like Evoland, Cluster Truck, Redout and tumblestone, we think we've got a
virtuous cycle instead of a chicken and egg problem!

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hmhrex
As a full-time employee, husband and parent of 4 children, I love this idea.
Currently, buying games is a huge time risk for me. There's a very large
chance I won't ever play it. However, paying only $5/month and being able to
try a game out with no strings attached (psychologically) is a really nice
idea.

~~~
rygeko
One of our teammates said the same thing! He loves playing Pankapu with his
kid.
[https://dropleaf.io/Catalog/Game/?Id=19&GameTitle=Pankapu](https://dropleaf.io/Catalog/Game/?Id=19&GameTitle=Pankapu)

I hope you will give us a try and let us know what you think :D

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dylz
I hope you will be picky curators - I hate how so much of steam EA/ex-GL/etc
is literal trash when it comes to indie games. Not talking about one person
pixel art games, but talking about what's effectively cruft autogenerated
rubbish to try and profit for $0.99 a copy.

I would love to subscribe if so.

~~~
kin
In your opinion do you think those games should be omitted entirely from
Steam? Or, do you think platforms like Steam need to organize their
storefronts better from their front pages?

~~~
dylz
50-50 IMO

One example:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/581200/Nash_Racing/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/581200/Nash_Racing/)

This is literally just the demo for
[https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/advanced-tuning-
car...](https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/advanced-tuning-cars) being
sold for money. It's unmaintained and runs like crap.

Some of the ones that are obvious beginner games that aren't really polished
have their place in EA/ex-GL, with people actually passionate about it and
trying to build a product. Kudos to them for trying and good luck. This is a
great thing, provides visibility for these creative minds, and all that.

And then you have
[http://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Tero%20Lunkk...](http://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Tero%20Lunkka)

This publisher deserves to be removed from Steam completely. It is not
beneficial to the platform or to the players, and would probably cause
increased refund request support load / chargeback or dispute load.

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favadi
Steam offers refund? Last time I bought a game that I can't play due to
technical reason, they refused to refund.

~~~
stordoff
They have for a while now. If you've played for less than two hours, and
aren't requesting multiple refunds in a short period, it's automated now
AFAIK.

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stephengillie
Really cool idea. Glad to see the subscription model being used in video
gaming. How do you install and control game software? How do you uninstall it
when someone unsubscribes? Do you use an application manager similar to AWS
WAM to manage the application locally?

~~~
rygeko
Our client acts as a downloader, installer, and launcher. So the game is
installed on your local machine entirely. We don't remove the games when you
unsubscribe, they just become locked. That way you can pick up where you left
off easily.

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b_ttercup
What's the process like to get a game on the platform? Are there any
requirements for exclusivity? Any expected monthly revenues for a reasonably
popular game? This sounds like a good idea and I'm looking to publish a title
at some point within a year.

~~~
VikramR
Hey! Shoot me an email at distribution@rootsoft.com

Our process isn't super formalized yet, but we think we make it pretty easy
for devs. We don't really have expected revenue numbers, since we just
launched!

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tarr11
A lot of games are more like "one-play" movies or tv shows these days.

Given that it's so much easier to create "video game content" than in the
past, it makes sense to treat it more like Netflix, for the casual consumer.

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altano
Looks interesting! If your service gets popular, won't the price have to go up
to scale with the time spent playing games and the number of games in your
catalog?

$5/mo seems like way too little to go around.

~~~
VikramR
5/mo is just introductory pricing. It's our thank you to our earliest users
who sign up while we're still working some things out!

We expect the full price to be 9.99 a month, but for anyone who signs up now,
they'll keep their plan for the life of their subscription!

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JVIDEL
What's the difference with playonjump.com?

TBH there wont be a "netflix for games" until the big ones sign up for that

And they wont since such a service would be a big pay cut from selling games
for 60 bucks

~~~
stordoff
We're seeing the big companies move in that direction as well (Xbox Game Pass,
EA/Origin Access, PSNow)

~~~
VikramR
Definitely - subscription means recurring revenue, which is a whole lot easier
than having to sell individual copies of anything!

Even if you end up doing a little worse per-unit gross, chances are your COGS
goes down a fair bit.

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navalsaini
Cool - do try [https://halfchess.com](https://halfchess.com)

How much revenue could I make if I were a part of your program?

~~~
VikramR
Hey! Thanks for reaching out. It looks like halfchess is a mobile game
entirely, does it have a windows build?

~~~
navalsaini
Thanks for responding. Not currently.

It's ReactJS; so possibly can be wrapped with electron (etc) or do you mean
windows smart-phone. In which case, it can have windows build.

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chaostheory
humble bundle ([http://humblebundle.com](http://humblebundle.com)) has a game
subscription plan as well. While they hook you in with AAA games, most of
their bundle is indie. I feel most people subscribe because of the price, but
I wonder how many people actually play their games in the age of Steam?

~~~
VikramR
I know what you mean, I have north of 200 games in my steam library. Finding
games that seem interesting enough to buy isn't a problem, but finding the
games which are going to most deeply resonate with me is almost impossible.
It's like opening the fridge, seeing all the stuff you have and then closing
it again because you have no idea what you want to make for dinner.

We're hoping our discovery system will fix a lot of this. Instead of wall o'
games, we want to show you games that are specifically on the list of things
you're going to love!

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fishtoaster
That seems like a really cool idea. I know at least a few of those games
support OSX - any plans for a mac client?

~~~
rygeko
It's on our radar. Right now we're focusing on a solid Windows experience
before we build a client for both Mac and Linux.

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Elixyrs
Are you hiring ???

~~~
VikramR
Not quite yet, but very soon!

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FrobozzElectric
This looks very interesting!

What does your Linux support look like?

~~~
rygeko
Non-existent currently. But a Linux client and games is on our radar.

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navalsaini
Whats your tech stack at Dropleaf?

~~~
rygeko
It's .NET, Azure, SQL Server, Windows. We're definitely an anomaly in the
start up space here but all of the engineering team worked at Microsoft at
some point in our careers, some of us on those very products. So all else
having been equal we went with a stack we had a hand in building and we were
familiar with.

