Commercial Game In Development Subforum?

Right now, we only have one subforum for in game development. So, for presenting our game that's currently on dev, we use this. However, it's mixed with games that are aiming for both commercial and free.

The first problem might be, some commercial projects put on this subforum, and some of them didn't have a preface that later in full version you have to pay to play. There're some cases that I thought "Are you really going to share it for free?" then later I found out that it was a commercial game. Expected, but mixing them with the same of free games subforum sometimes rub me in a wrong way.

The second problem might be about accessing the classified forum. What if the OP is a new member with only a few post, then when the game is complete and it's a commercial game, it should be moved to commercial game released. How about their access to the thread? Or do they need to increase post count first for them to publish the game? Or it doesn't matter / it only applicable in classified offers - request?

I have not much expirience in this Topic, and what i now say is just assuming not knowing.

How many of those Posts pop up per Year? around 12? i dont know.
How many Bots and spamm Bots and Trolls register per year? 500? 5000?
I believe its easier to manualy give a Dozen People access than removing all the Bots.

If iam wrong just ignore me or correct me.

I can understand a bit how it might bother you, but really, I don't feel there is a justified need for a separate "in development" forum for games that will be released commercially. All we can do perhaps is encourage members to somehow disclose this information somewhere in their thread. And if you are looking at a game's development thread and question it, feel free to ask the developer.


It is only the Classifieds subforum that cannot be accessed until 30 posts. The Commercial and Crowdfunding subforums can be accessed by new members.


I'm honestly not sure what bots has to do with this discussion. The 30 post limit is not to prevent bots (we have other measures in place for that) but to discourage people from using this community as a drop-in money making place rather than being a part of the community.

One thing that I recall that is being worked on is giving people access to Commercial Game Releases but not Classifieds. Supposedly it works that way now but I can't exactly downgrade myself back to that point to test.

Edit: Ninja'd by @mlogan

No, but there are threads that show it is the case:

https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/hybris-pulse-of-ruin.96428/

https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/inde...patreon-or-incorporate-into-my-old-one.97801/

Either could work. The reason why I was suggesting a new subforum is to "force" the dev into "giving the information beforehand" by putting their game in different subforum. Many of people just usually fail to give the information on their development thread. Some expected to be released commercially, and some are unexpected. If gamedev subforum rules is changed so that they encourage people to give this information, I'm also fine with that.

Honestly, this is a bit unethical for me. I don't feel it right to ask every games I'm interested whether it's free or commercial. Because if the game turned out to be a commercial one, there's chance that I will lose interest to the game entirely. And I don't want to give the dev a false appreciation after I found out it's a commercial game. Which is why I'm looking for a way to "filter" games in game in development whether it's free or commercial.

I think part of the complication of having a separate sub-forum is that a developer might start off thinking their game was going to be commercial, but over time realises that it's not going to be. Or sometimes it's the other way round. Then the implied information of being in one or other sub-forum will be incorrect.

Right. When I started I remember someone said that it was much easier to go from commercial to non-commercial than the other way around in development. So I started my game out as commercial for that reason.

Plus, the bar is set higher for commercial games too, which is why I started there. Shoot for the higher standard so you don't just say "Eh, it's a non-commercial game. Good enough."

There is nothing wrong with asking a developer if they plan to release their game commercially or for free. It's no different to asking if they are using XYZ plugin or sprites from a certain artist. If you're going to split up into subforums, you may as well have one for RTP resources and one for custom, because there are also people who won't play games with RTP resources. And then split it up by genre, because there are people who won't play horror games. You could make specifying it a requirement of posting in the forum, but I don't think that's necessary ("you can't post unless you say if it's going to be free or not" seems a bit of an arbitrary rule), and there are people who just don't know by that stage whether it will be or not.

Fair enough for having complication for the release, yeah I've seen some games that used to be free for years then the dev decided to go commercial for the final version. We can go route of moving thread here and there, but I think I understand why we don't prefer that way.

I'm sorry @Shaz I hope my suggestion is not offending you in any way, because I have an impression like that once you brought up genre and RTP. But let me response. You know why some ToU from people are split into two categories of non-commercial only or free for both? Why they didn't said "you can not use these resources in RTP games bcz I don't like RTP". Commercial game is something you need an "extra effort" to play the game. They are a "different game".

And as for genre, it can easily be filtered just by looking at the thread. I saw this game is a horror game, so I can pass. But I can not tell if this game is commercial or not sometimes by looking at the thread. Sure there is nothing wrong with asking it, but I just don't feel like it. This suggestion is an "extreme" way of splitting both type of games because of inability to tell which game is planned for free or commercial, but as I stated above, either could work, like telling people this game will be commercial beforehand in the topic thread which as far as I know, people didn't tell.

I wasn't offended by your suggestion. I agree, it would be good if people would make it clear. I imagine the majority are free, so unless there's a reason to suspect otherwise, it would be fair to make that assumption if the developer doesn't state otherwise.

The point is, not playing commercial games is your personal preference. There are plenty of people here that are more than willing to support good commercial games, myself included. So we can’t create subforums for every member’s preferred style of games.

There are specialized concerns pertaining to commercial games only. The Commercial RPG Maker Discussion forums covers them adequately imo.