Less money for bad licensed games

Warner Brothers wants to charge video game publishers that license its brands a fee that fluctuates according to what reviewers think of their games. Basically, publishers must pay more royalties to WB for licensed games that get poor/bad reviews (less than 70%) from the game industry.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"The problem, according to Hall, is if game publishers license Warner Brothers intellectual properties and then build low-quality games, which not only degrades the intellectual property involved but contributes to the bad reputation among gamers of titles made from movies.

Hall's strategy now is to turn to game review Web sites -- such as GameRankings.com, Metacritic.com, and GameStats.com -- that aggregate scores given to games by critics at game sites and magazines. Games based on Warner Bros. licenses must achieve at least a 70% rating, or incur an increase in royalty rates.

"An escalating royalty rate kicks in to help compensate us for the brand damage that's taking place," says Hall. "The further away from 70% it gets, the more expensive the royalty rate becomes. So, frankly, if the publisher delivers on what they promised -- to produce a great game -- it's not even an issue."

But it is an issue for some game publishers, including Atari, whose slate of recent titles includes a game based on Warner Bros.' "The Matrix Reloaded" called "Enter The Matrix." (The shooter title scored 66.8% on GameRakings.com for the PC version and 66.9% for the PlayStation 2 version.)"


Full article: here

I think this is retarted. If they make a bad game, sales will not be good. This alone will teach them a lesson to make better games. Charging them will not help in any fashion. Stuupid

I think this is retarted. If they make a bad game, sales will not be good. This alone will teach them a lesson to make better games. Charging them will not help in any fashion. Stuupid

I totally agree Milk!! They are like "Hey, let's make a bad game that won't sale good. YEAH!!"

I say FU on them!!

Worse aspect of this is that it goes by what the game is rated by reviews rather then sales. Enter the Matrix got VERY poor reviews yet grossed over 200 million... great sales but poor review still gets the developer less money... TOTAL BULLSHIT

What if the reviewers made the company lower the price to say.. 10$, and 50 or so people every day happen to have 10$ extra and think the game doesn't sound bad for 10$ ... I imagine it more depends on the consumer's oppinion..

I'll all for WB... people KNOW in advance if a game will score 70% or more or not, this is just a possible idea to defend their brandings... they must be pissed at getting some of their best selling characters together with words like "stinks", "sucks"...

what companies need to do is to stop rushing crappy games. many new developers are hired to throw together something to milk a brand, and that's essentially the problem. it's very easy to tell if a game doesn't stand a chance, so to be honest i'd prefer that publishers avoid project they know aren't going to make it, and instead make fewer, but better games. it's good that young developer houses are hired, but in my opinion it'd be wiser to assign them to different projects.