We get a lot of emails about becoming a reseller for LGP. So, after dozens of individual answers to people, I’ve decided to write it all up into a blog article, so that the customer service guys can just point people here instead. Also, I thought it may prove interesting to those who are thinking ‘what can I do to help the awareness and spread of Linux games’.
We have tried to make it as easy as possible to become a reseller, and we encourage any company or individual who is interested to apply. You do not need to be rich to start a store, we have resellers that started with no advance money needed.
The different types of reseller
When you decide to become an LGP reseller, you have a number of different options open to you.
- Traditional reseller
This kind of reseller operates in the time honoured tradition of buying stock from us at a discount, and reselling it to their customers. The same kind of reselling that has been going on for centuries in all industries. We offer these resellers a discount of around 40%, and we ask that they buy at least 10 games at a time. Not a huge amount, we like to set the barriers to entry low.
Of course, for the bigger buyer, there is incentive to buy more and get bigger discounts. The more games that you buy at once, the bigger your discount. - Dropship reseller
This kind of reseller is the type with the lowest barriers to entry. If you have a website and would like to sell LGP games, you can simply list all our games, right now if you like, and if you get any orders, simply have us ship them to your customers. You simply login to your reseller account, and buy the game with your credit card, and leave the rest to us.
This system was set up specifically for those who want to ‘give it a try’, and who don’t want to spend money buying games they aren’t sure they will sell. Of course, with less risk is less profit. The discount for this kind of reselling method is around 30% instead of the 40% we offer for standard resellers. - Download resellers
This is, as many of you will know, our newest method of game distribution. We offer the ability, with some of our games, to buy a downloadable version of the game. The system for this works a little differently.
When you sell a downloadable copy of a game, it is the responsibility of the reseller to supply the download to the customer. Whether that be as a disc image (which is how we supply the data to the resellers), an RPM, or any other method, that is up to the reseller. The reseller also needs to supply a key to unlock the game.
The keys are the bit that you as the reseller would pay for. The discounts on keys are similar to the discounts for standard resellers, but they work a little differently. Instead of asking resellers to buy keys in advance (which they may of course do if they wish), we offer them the ability to buy ‘key credit’ and then buy they keys in real time when a customer orders a game.
The simple web-based system involves sending a request to our webserver, and if you have purchased enough key credit, then a new key is returned, and you can then provide that key to the customer. - Private groups
While not quite a reseller, private groups are also welcome to apply for discounts. Examples of such groups would be Linux User Groups, or companies that run Linux desktops who want to buy lots of copies of games for internal use.
Private groups receive the same benefits as traditional resellers. The same discounts, but just aren’t listed on the website as places to buy our games (for obvious reasons). If you are part of a group that would like to buy games for your group at a discount, you should set up the standard reseller account with us.
So, now you know what the options are, lets get into the mechanics of how.
The task of creating an account is actually very simple. You simply go to our website and follow the ‘Account’ link that you will see on every page of the site. From here, you can follow the correct path, and apply for an account.
Once accounts are created, we check them out, and authorise genuine resellers or groups. We are happy for anyone to apply, but if you are an online reseller, we ask that you have some kind of web infrastructure available for us to examine before you create your account. We generally do not open accounts for people who ‘will make a website soon’. Accounts that are authorised are generally authorised within 24 hours, or we will send you an email to let you know why they have been rejected (which happens rarely).
Each account is capable of any of the resale options described above, you do not have to open a type of account for downloads or for dropship. Just a reseller account.
So, now you know what is available, and how to do it. The last thing to know is why would you.
For three reasons:
- For You
If you own an online or physical store already, our products make a good addition to the lineup, and with the dropship system, you can add them at no risk.
Even if you don’t, then starting reselling LGP games as a part time website owner, or even to your local Linux using friends, is a nice second income, and probably better than all these ‘get rich quick through Google’ ads that you see all over the place. - For Us
Simply, because LGP needs as many resellers as we can get. We need as many people talking about our products as possible. The more games we sell, the more games we can make, and the more games we can make, the better it is for you, us, and everyone. - For the Community
Because games are, without doubt, the big block to Linux adoption on the desktop. Do you want everyone running Linux? So do we, and games help to make that happen.
Great! :) I think I will start reselling soon :)
I wanted to ask about this about a month but never got time and and.. you know :P
So, I should have working website before I apply to be online reseller? But there is not need to have already selling something, just have web site where I will put your games, right?
Thats correct. Just so long as we can see you are seriously intending to do so. We used to accept people if they said ‘they were about to set up a website’, but of the people that said that, not one of them actually finished setting it up, and none of them ordered a single game.
Hey, nice blogpost. So the entry barries are really low.
It’s also interesting to see that discount option for private groups. How many people would such a group need to have, to qualify for this? 10, 20, 30?
I’m checking this blog almost every day, waiting for new posts. Now there finally is one. I’m so keen to see what’s the next title or rather keen for the release of it. Well, I also still have to buy SG: Survivor. I rented it and played through and compared to Shadowgrounds which I had bought right away, the story of Survivor was kind of weak. The physics and the survival mode were kind of nice though. I guess I’ll finally buy Survivor next month, I should have some spare money by then.
There is no barrier in the number of people in the group, as long as the group is buying the same 10 units of games, they qualify.
I also got a question concerning the DRM. (meh, and I hate DRM…)
How does a key get locked out in the first place anyways?
There are several ways a key gets locked out.
Things like, the password is changed on one computer, leads to all others being locked out till the password is re-entered on the rest.
The hardware on the machine changes (we dont care about that but it is usually an indication that the game has been copied wholesale from one box to another)
Plus, we do occasionally google for keys online, and any we find we can lock out manually.
There are other ways, but those are examples of.
Ah, alright. So basically the only way to lose ones rights would be to post the key somewhere on the WWW, eh?
And I got a general question about the copy protection. Say I have a PC that has no connection to the Internet. will the key always work? And now lets say I have a locked out key. Wouldn’t that one work on a machine without an Internet connection? (and wouldn’t a key always work on a System without Internet connection anyways? Without having to enter any password or anything, even if it’s already registered with LGP?)
And then the case where I have a game installed. Then for some reason I have to reenter my key. If I reenter the stuff and have no connection, it can’t verify my password, so would I be able to play or wouldn’t I be able to play?
I seriously hate DRM. It’s messing with customers. If someone wants to get a pirated version, he could always write some fake verification server and reroute the connection of the DRM.
Provided that the person knows what information is sent and so on. But with some time, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem to find out.
And most likely the information between the games DRM and the verification server isn’t encrypted anyways…
Because we decided to make sure it was ‘innocent until proven guilty’ then yes, it means a machine without net access simply does a check to see if the key meets a checksum. However the system does a number of checks to try and be sure it isnt being blocked from our keyserver by packet shaping or other such thing, and if it finds it is being specifically blocked, then it tries to work around the block, and then locks out if it cant.
And yes, the comms between the servers are encrypted.
Well, at least your DRM is not as invasive as other DRM in the industry. I understand that you want and need to make money and I can’t understand how people constantly copy games, download music and movies and so on…
Still that doesn’t make me like DRM any more. :P
I also had minor trouble with the DRM once. Where the local data somehow got corrupted and I had to reenter all the information and some of the savegames were also corrupted afterwards. (which is most likely not connected to the DRM but rather to the data corruption that occured for no reason and just surfaced on LGP stuff)
Btw. is it possible that you add VSYNCH to the LGP games that don’t have it yet via a patch? I’m having trouble with that NVIDIA card and X3. The card is always squealing when playing X3. VSYNCH reduces the squealing drastically. (it does that for every other application that uses the 3d mode of the graphics card) The NVIDIA-settings VSYNCH doesn’t work somehow. X3 was way more enjoyable, back when I had a non-squealing card.
Well… obviously it’s possible. But would you also do it?
Thanks for the clarification on how your DRM works.
It would be nice if some place in the US became a reseller because I don’t think we have any.
We do have a couple, I’m not sure how active they are though
Can you make patch 1.08 for Mindrover? I played in demo and I want buy this game:)
We have someone working on the patch but progress is slow. However the game is still perfectly playable at 1.07b
@Max: “I understand that you want and need to make money and I can’t understand how people constantly copy games, download music and movies and so on…”
Well I don’t know what country you are from, but it’s a right in mine, (Spain). Well, It doesn’t count for software but anyway, we’ve created the biggest library in the world (Internet) and I think we should use it. And then you decide how to contribute each company on your way. I can download games but I prefer to support the industry and above all the developers because I can, because I want.
@Michael:
There’s s something I haven’t fully understood. If I want to lend a copy of yours to a friend, can I do it? Even if it means that meanwhile I can’t play.
WRT your first response: Thing is, isn’t it up to the creator of the work to decide how much to charge for it. You know the value of yourown work, and it is human nature for others to UNDERvalue it. If the consumer doesn’t like the price, they vote with their wallet and don’t pay. In the end a fair compromise is reached that people are willing to pay, and that will make enough money for the creator. Either that or the demand wasn’t sufficient for the industry.
If you let the consumer set the price, it will tend towards zero, because people as a whole don’t think longterm.
But as for your comment specifically to me, yes of course you can. You can play it at the same time too, there is no limit on that. You just have to be sure that you trust that person with your copy, as once they have it installed, they can, using the keytool, change the email address, request a new password, and then your game is their game. If you trust them, feel free, its just the same as lending the boxed copy in that way. We aren’t trying to stop people lending, we’re trying to stop people from putting it online {:-)
Greetings
I wonder if a future reseller buys from you a lot of titles so he gets the 40+% discount, what permissions does he have later when seling the games? Can he decide the price by himself? Can he sell them more expensive or cheaper than LGP or TuxGames?
thanks in advance
Apopas
BTW Why don’t you have a penguin on you games boxes? There is one on the disk, but noone on the cover box :)
A reseller can set any price they like. Tux Games is just another reseller, competing against them is expected {:-)
We do have a Tux on the box, look on the spine at the top, when the games are side on, on a shelf, Tux will be seen as the thing right at the top of the box {:-)
Isn’t LGP just way overpriced? Only die hard Linux fanatics are going to pay 30€+ for a game they could get Windows version for 10€ from Steam, since most Linux gamers dual boot. You guys should just drop the resellers and sell the games directly as download versions to compete with more realistic prices.
Just opinion.
Please have a look at /2009/04/11/why-do-linux-games-cost-what-they-cost/ for the rationale behind the pricing.
I opened up my shop a few weeks ago: Fun4Tux, http://www.fun4tux.ch/
Downloadable games coming (hopefully) soon.
I have no idea how the vsynch would help, but then, Im not an expert on the graphics side, I’ll bring it up with the devteam though.
It definitely helps. The squealing occurs when the framerate goes too high. You could also just add any (optional) framerate limiter. Guess VSYNCH would be the most logical though.