Matrix Games Forums

Judging from a recent discussion on the’ Steel Panthers: world at war’ board there seem to be quite a few overseas customers wanting to buy your products as downloadable files.

Shipping cost to Europe is quite high, just about doubling the cost to consumers of buying your games. Partly this might also be due to VAT taxes. Have anyone given any thought to the possibility of selling games as files to be downloaded? I for one would be buying your mega-campaigns if that were possible.

Unfortunately the files are too big and the internet (overseas in particular too unreliable (and costly). IT would likely cost more for bandwidth (they pay by the minute there mostly) than for shipping. And then we open ourselves up to the problems of "I spent 20 hours and 30$ to download after I paid my money and it timed out on me, now I have to try to download it again !!!" or "I downloaded it and my (wife, child, small animal) deleted it and now I need another copy".

For files less than 10MB it works OK. Future, smaller MCs may be avialable as a DL, but these two (Lost victories in particular) are just too big!

THere is also the issue of piracy. Sorry to say far more people get games form friends than buy them. At least with th a CD one needs a CD burner to make a copy. With a DOwnload they can be shared easily. OUr "big games" will have some form of copy protection to complicate CD duplication.

What about European-based store? Wouldn't it earn enough to pay for the investment?
You could transport hundred of games at the time. Transport costs and all additional fees plus cost of the store could be included in the price of the games (sold in Europe). Would it be possible to do that with reasonable increase of price?

Regards
Tomek

Speaking of euro store i noticed that combat mission is now available at Net4war.

Has Matrix been contacted already by them ?