6waves Lolapps guaranteeing $100,000 in marketing to mobile dev partners

I never knew about the Triple town situation. I just Googled it now. I would never trust 6Waves again.

 

Reserving judgement on 6waves/Lolapps til the final court decision is made on the whole Triple Town/Yeti Town case. The legalese for this marketing partnership will also be a critical factor as well.

I must admit though, that $100,000 guaranteed marketing dollars is a hefty sum for us smaller developers and is a very tantalizing carrot.

DP

 

well it would be interesting to know how and when the development of yeti started at esc and if and how much it was influenced by 6w.

sound fishy that they just acquired a developer who by chance developed a clone of the game they where currently negotiating a publishing deal..

this must be a huge coincidence, like throwing a puzzle into the air and by chance all tiles fall into their correct spot on the floor and complete the puzzle.

 

http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Spry+Fox+News/news.asp?b=related&c=37593

http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/29/spry-fox-sues-6waves-lolapps-for-copying-triple-town-game/

 

It is, would also be interesting to see what that 100,000 is supposed to be for? Are there consulting fees in there? Is it some funny unquantifiable facebook marketing or is that actual advertising spend costs?

I do not think this is as attractive as it sounds and in the meantime a lot of cool concepts and ideas will be shown to try to get that 100,000. Maybe ask for terms before showing the product? Anyone try here yet?

 

What's the $100k for?

It's straight up marketing spend for player acquisition through mobile acquisition channels. No funny unquantifiable FB marketing, no consulting fees, etc.

Regarding what happened with Spryfox, I'm limited in what I can say given the legal proceedings, but I am confident that the court case will be settled in 6L's favor as there was no breaking of NDA and no passing of game info. That said, I understand the concern among the developer community and I'd just ask that people reserve judgement until the court case has been decided and people have taken a look at our past track record of working with independent developers as well as our partnerships on the upcoming portfolio of releases.

At the end of the day, our company and team's success is based on successfully partnering with independent developers. We've worked with several Developer teams on multiple games (Kabam, Game Insight, Large Animal, Grab, Socialinus, and additional devs with unannounced games) and those teams wouldn't continue partnering with us if the claims were true.

If talented teams out there are working on quality titles, reach out to us to start a conversation and figure out what's right for you.


Jim Ying
SVP, Publishing
6L
[email protected]

 

@JY Thanks for coming in here to provide some clarification around the marketing spend. I'm hoping that this initiative spurs other large publishers to step-up their game when it comes to publishing partnerships by providing more tangible benefits to developers.

DP

 

actually not spending 100,000 dollars is kinda impossible theres tons of ad places out there so that would be great.. also if they somehow scam you with some legal bullshit you better get ready to read all the terms and conditions and hire a good lawyer AND have $100,000 dollars at hand... or else your in deep shit...

 

sad for all of us

Regardless of how the actual lawsuit pans out, this is definitely a sad state of affairs for our industry.

When it comes down to it, there is a game out there called YetiTown that is incredibly similar to Tripletown. And if this becomes the norm or standard by which our community operates, it will stifle innovation and risk-taking. That will be highly destructive to all of us.

I think Daniel Cook has a great article about this, called "Plagiarism as a Moral Choice"
http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/11/plagiarism-as-moral-choice.html

We should all ask more of ourselves and of each other.

 

Agree with this, there is another great perspective on this from Kevin Dent at http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Tiswaz+news/feature.asp?c=37381&srch=triple+town

It is not only the publishers but also the developers of course who share the blame in this copycat game.

 

I'm sorry to hear about the recent news http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/19/6waves-lolapps-layoffs/ does this in anyway affect the marketing plans or your mobile strategy?

The decision today seems to undo some of what that merger agreement created last July and we hear it had to do with a limited runway of cash. Last summer, social gaming company Lolapps merged with game publisher 6waves to form a new entity that was a dual producer and publisher.