‘Publishers don’t want 50 digital retailers’

75 per cent of PC download stores won’t make enough money to justify support from publishers, Gamefly says.

The US retail rental firm, which acquired Direct2Drive 12 months ago, opened its .co.uk site earlier this year. And co-founder Sean Spector believes the rush to open rivals to Steam has ended.

I don’t see there being more and more digital download retailers because for publishers, it is a lot of work for them,” he tells MCV.

There’s Steam, there’s Gamefly, there’s Origin, there’s Amazon – those are the bigger brands – and then there’s the smaller brands like Green Man Gaming and GOG.

The publishers don’t want 50 digital partners. That’s too much to manage. The reality is, the bottom 75 per cent won’t bring in enough revenue to justify the effort. It’s a lot ofwork. We work every day with publishers, over 300of them.”

Gamefly is heavily pushing into the digital space. It last week announced plans to develop and publish its own Android and iOS titles.