Royalties for game still in development

Hello there.

I am the sole proprietor of Not A Company, currently working on Hoverloop.
http://www.not-a-company.com/

We recently had a successful Kickstarter campaign, where we offered different packages. The package where you got the game, was €15. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078815302/hoverloop

How does this work with royalties? As the game still is in full development and will not be fully released untill January 2018 (PC+Xbox One). The Early Access on Steam is scheduled for early July.

Kind regards,

Philippe Mesotten

Generally speaking, crowdfunding revenue is considered royalty bearing revenue to the extent that the money gets the user access to the game or some other in-game benefit. To the extent it gets you a thank-you, shirt, soundtrack, poster, etc., it’s not royalty-bearing.

In your case, this is basically a game pre-order, so it’s revenue for your game that’s subject to a royalty even though the game doesn’t come out right away.

@atypic thank you for your answer, that’s exactly what I’m looking for!

  • You only have to fill in the royalty forms, after you have a $3000 gross revenue for the game, in a calendar quarter, am I correct in assuming this?

On a per-Product basis, that’s correct.

Thanks a lot!

It’s NOT a game PREORDER. Most of the pledges DO NOT INCLUDE a copy of the product. Only some of them inlclude it. So do you take royalties only from those pledges that get a copy?

There would only be a royalty on pledges that get access to the game or some other in-game benefit.