You Don't Need a F-ing Publisher

[Music] okay I mean that's not at all what it's about by the way uh oiro another round of applause for [Applause] oiro the reason I have him up here is so he I'm not going to look at him he can secretly get of you guys a thumbs up and thumbs down if I'm talking [ __ ] and making lies up here okay cuz that's the whole point so um I'm going to try and make this quick I'm not that great of a public speaker but if you hopefully we get to the questions quick and start thinking of them now um so it's called you don't oh I should introduce myself again Nigel Lowry I work at devolver digital uh so you don't need a [ __ ] publisher um but if you do ask questions and that's what this really is about it was a little misleading of a title um I think that one of the biggest things that people need to know is that uh you don't need a publisher I think everyone knows that by now and this is what this discussion is about that if you do start asking questions um mostly like I said it's going to be about asking questions not right now no one go to the mic

but um the fundamental part of getting any sort of business deal at all uh including getting a publisher is to uh kind of ask questions know everything you can possibly oh people are still coming in welcome oh wait I'm just kidding um this might be a short presentation actually I'll end up being long because I I'll Mumble a lot but I invite you to start thinking of these questions now because I think I'm here I want to answer them um this is a form in which I can kind of give you some information but I do want you guys to think of questions cuz I'm I'm happy to uh answer as many as I can and I'll stay late I don't I have nothing else to do I'm a really I'm a really sad person uh so a few disclosures uh the first being I also you know I work at an indie publisher like I mentioned before and the reason I wanted to do this talk is we get a lot of pictures literally dozens and dozens of [ __ ] [ __ ] please do not tell my wife I said that and it's become very clear that a lot of developers don't really know either to even ask questions or the right questions to ask and who to ask

them to uh like in the industry gaming is fantastic but there's good guys there's bad guys and there's good guys that don't what the [ __ ] they're doing and and maybe you know aren't providing all the information that they should so maybe I can make some decent points today talk about what we're uh what we look for what to look for excuse me and what to ask about before signing an agreement so this is the agenda AKA last chance leave before it's rude um with that said you know um this is not going to have a lot of charts and data this is almost all entirely anecdotal stuff my intention here is to pass on information to everybody here from my side of the fence from the evil publish publisher side of the fence and bring to light some of the issues and challenges that crop up even in our business and things I hear from developers I talk to so Indie Publishers one board in every minute right oh I'm going to back up the things I'm going to talk about actually are Indie Publishers what is that what the [ __ ] does that even mean um publisher partner are those things uh you know the same thing are they different I think that's kind of the

Crux of this conversation and then uh common issues common issues we just kind of see so any Publishers AKA one born one born every minute um when I was thinking about what I was going to say here I kept coming back to this inherent struggle uh that small developers have on why they might even look for a publisher uh the game Market is wonderful amazing but you know you're all pouring your heart and soul into these in these games and it can become pretty terrifying when it's time to either really work on it or it's getting and you want to launch right so often times developers don't want to go it alone and this kind of made me think of this famous scene from the opening moments Legend of Zelda where link is about to embark on this Grand Adventure right and uh he walks into this room and some old dude tosses him a sword and gives him a warning right link takes it and doesn't ask a single question just rolls out assumes because this guy knows what he's done he been there knows what he's doing is going to give him all the information he needs um what do we find out yes the sword was helpful but it was not the only tool that actually needed

he needed quite a few things to finish his his Adventure um and uh there was more things necessary to complete this task than just this sword so he didn't ask questions he doesn't know who this guy is or what he did um and he doesn't know what kind of cut this guy has taken off the back end of this adventure right maybe maybe this guy's getting 75% of all the rupes that he collects we don't even know and what happened to link he didn't ask questions and he ended up in a shitty sequel I'm saying it all the two sucks so so Publishers have been around for nearly as long as game developers but I did zero research on the subject so that might not be true but what I'm certain is there's always been this animosity between uh developers and Publishers and you know rightfully so um the latest I think most obvious thing is at the end of every Kickstarter people mention you know why are they doing this Kickstarter well CU you know they want to avoid Publishers because they're bad they they'll ruin creativity they'll take a hold of the game they're going to cheat them out of money and honestly you know public have behaved badly for years

and this is a an absolutely perfect like rational thing to say um but this happens all the time and it's unfortunate and there's some good people out there and there's some bad people like I said before but this happens all the time but I do think the game has changed I think everyone in this room this is not news the game has changed uh digital distribution I put the little exclamation marks cuz I'm not as good as ajiro at Graphics but I put these sweet exclamation par marks up there because digital distribution is a point that really changed a lot of things it uh bestowed an unbelievable amount of Leverage with the developer that changed everything because you can get directly to your consumers um this is an important moment and for now like I said has shifted this kind of perceived power so we've seen those bar graphs those charts where uh there's huge acceleration in the number of games being released on Steam the App Store everything like that and you can argue a lot of different reasons digital distribution is one um accessible tools less stringent curation on these storefronts but that's not the news

everyone knows there's a lot of games out here I especially think this audience knows there's a shitload of games out there right but what's interesting to us is hey Evan I just saw you sorry um what's news to us is that or not what's interesting to us is there a lot of service providers now people uh whether it's a publisher or a localization company there's a lot of things being built up around indie games and any game developers uh a service provider like I said can be anyone from a localization company to a testing Studio but there's more and more of these right and game Publishers are no exception the Indie publisher Market has lots of options now okay uh devolver being one and in the middle but as you can see this is a small example of of of the different Publishers you can go with um what's important is to understand each one's Direction their strategy their capabilities and uh know what's right for your game the names up on this screen these two screens I didn't know there was going to be two screens the names up on these two screens are just a handful of companies to consider um they're Publishers they're game labels

they're whatever but they're all have their own kind of thing of taking your game working with your game and getting it to a large audience uh Sony Computer Entertainment obviously has their kind of angle to do it Indie fund specialized in obviously funding Indies and having really really friendly uh uh developer agreements and folks like Team 17 Adult Swim and double fine are fantastic groups that can release your game but they're developers themselves and they can offer a lot of uh Insight in the game development my point here is a publisher can mean a lot of different things so I'm going to lump them all together but they all have you know their own minutia and details of what they might specialize in water sorry okay so I want to get to the meat of this we know that there's a shitload of options I'm cussing a lot I'm apologize there's a ton of options out there uh when a developer wants to find a publisher to work with and now you need to get to this vetting process right what's going to work for you what's going to work for your team and what's going to work for uh the game itself s so most of the developers that

we talk to the discussion starts around what is what is the publisher going to do for me and then it kind of works its way towards what can you do for my game and that's kind of an important kind of evolution of that discussion so the best way I thought when I was thinking about what to say here is to frame this uh by categorizing categorizing this into what are things that a publisher should do for you and what are things that a partner should do for you now these things aren't necessarily at odds with each other but they don't also necessarily always come hand inand so this is what I want people be careful to when they're talking to Publishers Partners game labels whatever it's being called These Days um you need to find out um the potential publisher you're working for and find out what they're going to do for you and what that you are looking for in a partner and reconcile those two things okay because that's what's really really important you don't want to uh pay for things basically that you're not going to use and you want to find uh a publisher can do all the things you needed to do okay so what can a publisher provide um these are the basic things that

people think about when they're talking about a publisher um a developer can hypothetically do all of these things themselves actually not hypothetically they can do all these things themselves and that's why it's called self-publishing and a lot of people do it the reason people like ojiro uh work with us is because they don't want to do them and they think that a publisher can do them better and more efficiently right so they can focus on making the game give the thumbs up right now okay your royalty check is it's due uh so these are the base level things though okay these are these aren't things that should excite you these are what you should be expecting from a publisher um I don't really want to dwell on all of them um and I'm not going to go in too much detail but I do want to talk about marketing distribution is I think these are the areas that are maybe most foreign to developers and uh maybe distinguishing characteristics I guess between different Publishers you can talk to so marketing um marketing is like saying I'm a game develop it's game development

like what does that mean there's a lot of things in marketing there's a lot of different disciplines that's PR that's advertising that's events it's everything that's going to position and communicate your game uh out to the world and this is where you need to start asking questions you're going to see this theme throughout my discussion you need to start asking questions about everything that this publisher that you're talking to might do so the pr uh the pr teams for example understand is it them doing the pr is it a team of people doing the pr are they Contracting this out all of these things are valid but finding out where are their PR teams when they say they're going to do PR is it just North America that's that's not good there's a lot of people outside of North America that buy video games and they want to be talked to in their own kind of with their own cultural nuances and localize you know the information you're giving them into their language um do they include streamers and YouTubers when they're talking about PR uh if they don't include YouTubers and streamers walk out of the door lock that door and set the building on fire cuz they don't know what they're doing uh advertising how are they going to spend this money like I think a lot of times

we talk to folks and we'll mention advertising they don't even ask what that means right I think that's and we then give the information or at least someone should give the information to them but you need to ask how this money will be spent okay they don't look at the lineup and go great we got a great advertising budget you need to find out what that means and how they're going to spend it and then what events do they go to do they go to events do they have people that go to events outside of North America I think that's important too there's a lot of amazing things like bitsummit in Japan Ojo went to and there's a lot of amazing events to go to that are going to spread your game outward so just be mindful of where their PR activities are really happening um and then of course a cohesive campaign right you need to look at what they've done what is their strategy what have they done in the past how do they customize that for different games there's not a template to marketing there's not a template to game development I guess there is if you're making some really clones you know clone mobile games or something like that I didn't look at you for a reason not you not you um but you need to find out what their strategy is find out what their

beliefs are in marketing the other part is distribution you know let's I'm going to be honest like 5 years ago Publishers that we know or people I know or any publisher could tell you well I can get your game on Steam and that was a lot of times enough for people to get excited and sign up with them and I don't think that's right and that's definitely not right anymore I mean anyone can get your game on Steam or you can bypass steam or or you know you go on Playstation there's itch there's all sorts of amazing places to get your game directly to Consumers um but I will note when I was thinking about this it's fa you know fair or unfair Publishers do have their advantage so you should ask them about what these advantages might be cuz one of the things I talk about um is Publishers get direct lines sometimes to a lot of people at them because they have a lot of content then people that you know steam or valve or Playstation or Xbox or whoever um you have a direct contact there and there's advantages of having that for placement store placement things like that and there's things like publisher sales like again right or wrong there's publisher sale that devolver digital will get and it will increase revenue for these games so

you need to ask your publisher what they do and how they're going to make more money than you would make on yours alone when it comes to sales and distribution um and the last thing I'd say on this distribution is look what else you're going to be amongst when you know what the game what the the catalog of games that publisher has um to see where you sit there's some games uh there's some Publishers out there or or um you know Partners or whatever you want to call them at this point in the discussion um that specialize in things there's Point click adventure folks that do really really good have a lot of point and click adventure and you would sit amongst them and there's some Synergy there um so these are what a publisher like I said should provide and I like in this this is the basics when you're buying a car and the car salesman says well it's got four wheels it's got windshield wipers and it'll take you from point A to point B like yeah I know that like sell me on what's next I think this is the crucial moment for a lot of developers that don't keep asking questions or the publisher doesn't provide more more answers of what they're going to do Beyond those things I I I don't know how to emphasize this

enough but these things that you see up here that's the base level thing you should be expecting so what do I mean so what's next what's after that right and this is where I kind of got in my head this discussion that was going on discussion with developers we work with and discussion with the the folks that I work with at my company you know what's next step and then we think it we think it's a being a true partner and what I what do I mean like that um well let me actually let me back up those are all the questions you're going to ask that publisher ask them about funding ask them about things but these when you're finding a partner you're going to ask them you know some questions I'm going to get into but you also it's very important to start asking questions to the developers they worked with previously right that's where you're going to find a new angle a new um a new way of of of maybe assessing this publisher because they're going to tell you what happened whether it was good or bad um find of and here's another thing when you're talking to developers from this publish shirt that you're speaking with um find don't just talk to the

people that sold a lot of copies cuz they're probably going to be pretty happy right and um they're probably going to be pretty pleased with it go find the uh developer that maybe you know the game was fine but it didn't sell a ton of copies because you maybe can find a new dimension to that discussion and uh you know find more about how that develop excuse me how that publisher carries themselves when maybe things aren't as Sellar as you know you had hoped so what can a partner provide uh a true partner and again this is I think a developer needs to start looking and start assessing more um and not stop at what does a publisher provide um these things like I said aren't easy to ascertain and um the publisher is going to you know there's a Salesman you're basically talking to they want to sell you on them as a company and um I'm going to speak to creat creativity enthusiasm AKA giving a [ __ ] about your game and that's I mean it's I know it's you know language but like that's important part because you don't want to sign up for somebody that really doesn't care about your game once it's signed on um the stage and a spotlight a personal

relationship and brutal honesty so when I say cre creativity I don't just mean good ideas for launch trailers I don't just mean like hey what about some slow-mo action and some slow-mo music it's going to be beautiful like I'm not talking about those kind of things I'm talking about they're creative enthusiastic about every element of your game that's just marketing that's distribution that's production that's uh funding working with you you and the way you may have money already and doing things smart and different uh to make sure that you're happy and that you're comfortable so don't just check stuff off a list these are people that are thinking and being creative about every part of your game um again look at the Publishers body of work that's the easiest thing to do you can scroll through their YouTube channel you can scroll through their website you can scroll through Metacritic you can see what they've worked on you can see where they've been successful and where they maybe of Applied creativity to everything they do um you need to find out if they've done what you've you know done things that are successful before

and how that might apply to your game I mean frankly they're going to show you all the best things they've ever done and the big fancy launch trailers um or they could I'm just saying a good one's going to show you some smart thinking and I'm not going to try and pimp us out as a publisher that's the whole point I just want to talk about in general but one thing I would do want to reference because I use this in my discussion with developers um as a point of when you're thinking about every aspect of it and this is a game called Hotline Miami that we worked on um in 2011 2012 um and this is the point I want to make is this ridiculous phone number we set up for Hotline Miami it was just late one night and we're thinking of fun things to do and if You' played the game part of the game is you get these crazy calls um from a telephone he gets these crazy messages so we thought it would be fun to um we found a Google Voice number in hotline or excuse me in Miami Florida and uh we grabbed it and we left a weird message and we start leaving this phone number in uh uh you know press releases

website social media so we just we sent that out for a week never checked it that that'd be funny what if people start calling it what if they leave messages to open it up it's got 4,000 voicemails and like 600 text messages which I didn't know you could do on Google Voice and was very concerning what people were writing um but the cool thing my point with this is is it's not don't just look at the high level fancy things that's going to you think are I mean those are very important trailers are important booths are important but look for where people are thinking of things like this that cost nothing and really like this engage the community and get them excited and talking about it um because that's where I think you're going to find that difference in creativity um the next thing is stage and Spotlight a good publisher should put this developer first right this is important for your your personal fulfillment as a developer but it's also very important for you as a studio and you as maybe a loan developer that when you're done with this game people know about your work and that you did it and you were the one that made this and that when you're ready to to your next thing that they know who you are um it's it's

it's not about necessarily whose logo is bigger but just make sure like that you are always Center Stage whenever your gaming is being presented and not the develop excuse me not the publisher putting their name out there first and a good partner will will do this and I will be you know Frank with you like we fight for this have to fight you know platforms and first- party people to say I know what your rules are but you got to take devolver digital off this you need to put the developer on on there because I think it's very important that people understand that they made it I can't make games I can barely put together a PowerPoint I promise you that and and I think it's important for you and your studio to have that kind of Spotlight put on you um the one thing I will note and I think you know ojiro is up here it's a really good example not all developers necessarily want that Spotlight when we were first working together we were had to go to a twitch stage was it paxi we had some twitch thing and you know he came to me he was

like you know I'm not necessar I'm not super excited about being in the spotlight on this one and so um you're publisher your partner needs to understand that need understand what your little ID idiosyncrasies might be what you are comfortable doing and maybe you the publisher the excuse me not you the developer you the the publisher might need to speak for your game okay and and not talking about marketing bullet points from a fact sheet I'm talking about knowing your game inside and out being able to demo the hell out of that game in front of somebody speak for you and represent you in your studio well um I think this is a pretty crucial crucial part because the whole idea is you guys can focus on your game you're not going to be able to go to every show you're not going to be able to go to every event and you need to make sure that Partners out there that you trust will represent your game well and speak kind of in the tone that you want it to be uh presented okay this one is me almost tearing or tearing up over there when ojiro was up here because um it's a personal relationship like you

need to make sure it's this is a very aspirational thing but you're looking for personal relationship with this folks um this this person this partner you're going to work with um they're going to be a part of your lives for 18 months 2 years 5 years whatever it is and you need to make sure that you can develop some you don't have to necessarily like them but you have some sort of personal working good relationship with them you don't might I'm sorry you may not want to have a beer with them and spend the night at their house and staying up all night playing NBA Jam um but you do have to have have some sort of personal relationship with them and you need to understand the organization of the company itself right the guy that me let's say me that is signing your game or let's not say me I'm not supposed to use examples of me um the person that's signing your game uh you need to make sure if that's not the person you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis who is that understand how that company Works how that publisher works and who are the people you can go to and speak with when uh things need to get done and you're not talking you know to the the person's just your Handler the person

that can actually execute and make things happen for you oh the other part I think I have it up here yeah can they work uh can they contact them at night weekends or mid qutis I know it's kind of a joke but like you need to understand that I we you know you guys don't work 9 to5 in fact I'm pretty sure it's more like 5 to n based on the people I work with like it's you guys have insane hours right so you're going to need someone there someone you can be able to talk to and contact uh at any point and I think you need to talk to the other developers they work with to see how that goes because if it's say 9 to-5 company and you know you're going to get an answering machine or you're going to get you're not going to be able to get a hold of them that's something important you're going to need to know because things go wrong constantly as you know and then what are the lengths that people are you know this this this publisher this potential partner is willing to go for you um you a lot of the people I know I'm talking to and a lot of people you work with they're very small companies and they're the same people that are making the game or the

same people plugging in the computers to the events and so you need to understand how far this partner this publisher will go and they're not uh they're not too fancy to you know go get your breakfast tacos when you need them when you're setting up your setting up your demo kiosk and then the last thing is brutal honesty if you have those other things um a personal relationship for example uh the brutal brutal honesty won't be a problem and I mean this this is going to be a two-way street when I talk about brutal honesty um there's there's got a lot of uncomfortable talks that might happen when you're working with uh you know a business like a publisher right uh money is an uncomfortable subject uh not just the initial talks about money but ongoing talks about needing more money and then when money starts rolling in from uh the game being sold you know understanding and being very clear how that money is coming in and where it's going being able to talk about these things is plainly and openly is very important and then talking about about I put on here tell each other that you

suck you need to be able to um the the publisher the partner that you're talking to needs to be able to tell you what they think honestly about the game and you need to be able to accept that criticism and either take it or dismiss it I know we talked about quite a bit it's little I was watching your your your your talk and there's a lot of elements that were like eh I personally didn't like that no jir was like cool [ __ ] you I'm keeping it in there and it's great and that's the kind of things you need to be able to say to a real partner right this same time um he needs to be able to tell me um I'm sorry I'm picking on you there were supposed to be other developers up here that are now sitting in the back I see um the the the other thing that I would say here is that um you need to be able to uh tell the that partner that publisher that you uh don't like what they're doing you need to speak up if you don't like how the game's being presented you don't like the trailer you don't like whatever it is the steam page whatever it is speak up it's your game take a hold of it and tell them that doing a bad job on something um and the last thing I want

to say on this this brutal honesty thing is um this comes up in a lot of discussions when I'm talking with developers and they tell me they're talking to another publisher if a publisher guarantees you success they're [ __ ] lying to you okay there's no guarantee of success um I talk I got the clearance to talk about this but this guy Paul Hart who made the game called Fistful of gun um it was a great game it didn't sell really well and we talked about it we were honest with each other the whole time what these uh what these projections are looking like and then once the game wasn't doing well what could we do to hopefully you know the game recouped made money but how we can maximize it cuz he spent a lot of time on this game and we maybe didn't do a good job and he maybe didn't make the best game he possibly could no one needs to point fingers here you need to be brutally honest like how do we [ __ ] make this work now that the game isn't going you know as well as we' hoped so I think that you need to talk like I said to other developers and see how they handle not only success but not success

I'm not going to say failures but not success um there are a lot more things in this there really I just have some things I thought were important to bring up um but this extends like this you need to find this deeper level of commitment that extends past this kind of publisher developer relationship it's this is not an all-encompassing list um but my point is I think you just need to look past the basics and what the publisher should give you and look beond on like what you really need as a person because you all have different situations you all have different circumstances which you're running operating so you need to look past that and ask as many questions as possible so this leads to this last little piece about some common issues that crop up right um this is all again anecdotal but I thought they were worthy of um these amazing slides that I put together um clearly some of these are related to the publisher partner kind of elements that I just talked about um so I'll make it kind of quick intellectual property IP um if the game is is your baby the IP is

its Soul okay so you need to take care of both and hold on to both do not sell your IP do not make it part of the agreement um there's a lot of reasons why um obviously you know sequels and things like that but just that's ends up being one of the most important parts of this and it strangely still comes up in conversations we have like do you guys want IP and if they want IP that's that's a whole another level um you should absolutely hold on to it but owning it is just kind of a part of it and need to be mindful how your IP is being presented right um and how it's being positioned overall um if there's damage done to it while you are promoting the game marketing game it doesn't just affect that game it affects your studio and it affects any future games in that series and the last part is from the best movie All Time movie of all time space balls and the idea is your IP is not just your game remember that it is about any sort of opportunities that exist within it so whether it's t-shirts uh comic books that are made Movies

featured length film downwell the movie which is coming to theaters next year um is it apparently okay good I got the IP so um but it's something important to keep in mind that it's not just the game itself and that you know these things do not let a partner whoever it is mess with how your game's presented and how your IP is presented um do not this is like I want to have a whole another quiet talk in a room with each and every one of you about agreements do not settle do not assume anything in agreement okay ask the questions it's your right to do it um one example please please please be very clear on how the money flows into the game and back out of the project when it's done there's there's a whole another talk that would be way more boring than this one but it's really important of understanding how your game is going to be recouped how the cost the publisher might put out there might recoup them how they're going to recoup when they're going to be recouped because it could be the difference between um how much money you're making

like not only short-term but long-term as well uh it can be very tricky so ask for examples uh one thing that we do is we provide a spreadsheet where you can literally see like where the money is going in and then you type in the unit sold and the average unit price and it tells you shows you exactly how it it comes back out I think this is so important because you do not want to be wrong on something like that especially after the fact um and then I put lock your [ __ ] up to developers like make sure you have clear agreements uh amongst yourselves and the Freelancers you work with um we can't help you if you had an agreement a handshake we chest bump or whatever it is that about the music or about some freelance work you know that if you don't have an agreement there's nothing we can do about it as a publisher like that's the agreement you made and often times people start asking you know well what do I do I need to can you guys pay them this money and that's not an our agreement it becomes a really tough conversation have so make sure that you understand you know have very clear

understanding ideally and agreement with other people you work with and the last piece is poor communication do not save changes to the very end when you're working with a partner like um or a publisher or partner you need to uh if the game's going to be late bring it up as soon as you think it's going to be late because that helps everyone including yourself involved having you know making knowing who the decision makers are talking to them and being very informed back and forth of what's going on is super important I know it's pretty generic to say like have good communication but it can't emphasize it enough um you are in charge of your game make sure you're in charge of your game stay in charge of your game and the last part is related to what we talked about before sustainability I think that's a huge thing that people don't think about um at least we you know we see it with developers we work with and developers we don't is uh understanding sustainability of your publisher and your sustainability uh if you sign on with somebody like I said there's lots of them out there that call themselves Publishers uh you need to do your research like we're talking about that

they're going to be around when your game launches because if you sign a deal and they go away that's really really going to hurt you and your situation so kind of know who funds them right who's funding that develop excuse me who's funding that publisher how do they have money and um what are they going to do are they going to be around right but also don't plan for yourself plan on your funding when you're pitching do not lowball a publisher that helps nobody you need to understand what's going to take to launch your game and then what's going to take for those two or three months after your game is launched when people start when the money starts coming in you know steam PlayStation they all pay not it's not like someone buys the game and they hand you your money right it takes months sometimes you 6 weeks to two months for your money to come through so if you've only funded your game up to release you might have two you know two months that you don't have any money coming in and we see this time and time again and you know it's fine we can keep advancing people but I think it's good because if you're in an agreement and the one runs out and you really need money and you ask them for more they could ask for you know royalty

change and things like that things you don't want to get get into and then also have an idea what your next project is if possible it's always good to like if something doesn't go well you're not spinning your wheels for a few months wondering what am I going to do next I know that's easier said than done from the publisher up here um what do I have up here oh provocative recap um so there's lots of publishing options that a lot of people that do a lot of things it's very important to understand why what that publish you're working with what they do what Their angle is you know what they do well what they might not do as well um understand your partner complete and you know everything you can about that partner and the last part or second last part is you're in charge so stay in charge never forget that never forget you're the one that made this game um ultimately they need you more than you need them you could self-publish if you want to and that's my last point self-publish I mean every there's a lot of people that do it very successfully um and it's much better than getting into a bad B deal I know there might be tough situations you

might be in but you know you don't you don't need a [ __ ] publisher so you can self-publish if you need to it's better than being in a bad agreement and now if you have any questions I'm I'm happy to answer oh no questions apparently no [Applause] questions but thank you very much for coming out