CuriousFactory responds to Lewdgamer on taking money from devs.

[Ironstrom]

Dear LewdLogic:

Thank you very much writing your detailed article, “CuriousFactory Monetary Practices with DLsite Questionable.” Your concerns are very important to us and we would like to take time to address them. Additionally, we apologize for any confusion concerning our services and would like to clarify them.

CuriousFactory does indeed take an addtional service fee in addition to the basic DLsite service charge. As DLsite.com English sites show the combined pricing of basic DLsite service charges and our service fees, when compared to other services such as Steam, our service fees appear higher. However, for this service fee, CuriousFactory offers addtional services not offered by companies like Steam to international creators in order to distribute their works in Japan. The following lists the services we provide:

• We go through Japan market specific requirement check, localize the product introduction, then go through the product registration tasks
• We have a special customer support team to assist international creators (in English) so that we communicate every submission & follow-up inquiries to DLsite and other channels (in Japanese)
• We offer accounting / payment consolidation service so that Creator can receive one consolidated sales report & payment from multiple JP channels

With regards to your suggestion for the use of yen as payment, as CuriousFactory is a company based in the United States of America, all the sales are consolidated into USD first, and basic accounting transaction are done in USD due to our accounting policy. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause for some circles.

Concerning the yen rate buffer, in the past, we had a smaller yen rate buffer. However, recently the Japanese yen rate fluctuation has been very aggressive and unpredictable. Due to such unpredictability, especially over the past couple of years, we have had to increase the buffer a little more. (*For an example, from 2012 to 2015, only within 3 years, we have experienced raipid yen rate fluctuation rate of 76 yen to 124 with sometimes montly change of almost 4+ yens). We understand this can be troubling for circles with large sales each month and will take your feedback into consideration. We will review our approach and will come up with a better method.

Lastly, we have checked our email inquiry history, and we did not find any inquiry regarding this topic from LewdGamer.

We are happy to set a time to explain more about our service to you in person to resolve any misunderstanding. The best way to contact us is via email at [email protected]. If you have any question at any time, please do not hesitate to ask us.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience and confusion concerning our services and role with DLsite.com.

Sincerely,
CuriousFactory

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Read the bottom response.

My current reaction to this is their stating a possible problem that can arise when the yen dramatically changes in a month then applying that value all the time instead of only when things might go wrong.
I'd be a lot happier if they communicated this and said this month its this % because of this change and the next month another number. No one wants that upper 15%?? when they could have a 5% What their doing right now is getting away with taking a constantly higher amount of money to make a profit on it.
The consolidated sales mention really doesn't apply to everyone and they only offer it to the best selling products anyway. They offer/provide all these services that I suspect very few developers ever wanted in the first place. Localisation of a summary is very little localisation at all and is pretty big misuse/exaggeration of the word in general.
That's my reaction anyway.

 

[erobotan]

Re: CuriousFactory responds to Lewdgamer on taking money from devs.

You must be registered to see the links

Read the bottom response.

My current reaction to this is their stating a possible problem that can arise when the yen dramatically changes in a month then applying that value all the time instead of only when things might go wrong.
I'd be a lot happier if they communicated this and said this month its this % because of this change and the next month another number. No one wants that upper 15%?? when they could have a 5% What their doing right now is getting away with taking a constantly higher amount of money to make a profit on it.
The consolidated sales mention really doesn't apply to everyone and they only offer it to the best selling products anyway. They offer/provide all these services that I suspect very few developers ever wanted in the first place. Localisation of a summary is very little localisation at all and is pretty big misuse/exaggeration of the word in general.
That's my reaction anyway.

you should post your reaction as reply to curious factory's post in lewdgamer's page. That way it will act as a feedback & hopefully they might consider to change the policy

 

[Spastus]

Re: CuriousFactory responds to Lewdgamer on taking money from devs.

It's difficult to argue against a monopoly, ultimately they can do whatever they want and there's not much we can do about it, I think is not a good idea for "Kirye" to get on their bad side, don't bite the hand that feeds you, at least not until there's more options available, but I'm super comformist so what do I know. Also, at risk of sounding like devil's advocate, I think the business side of the company it's a bit more complicated than just what the client sees and "is not the exact rate as google says" it's never like that, but then again, they can easily just be very very greedy, I just like seeing both sides first.

 

[meh65]

Re: CuriousFactory responds to Lewdgamer on taking money from devs.

It's difficult to argue against a monopoly, ultimately they can do whatever they want and there's not much we can do about it, I think is not a good idea for "Kirye" to get on their bad side, don't bite the hand that feeds you, at least not until there's more options available, but I'm super comformist so what do I know. Also, at risk of sounding like devil's advocate, I think the business side of the company it's a bit more complicated than just what the client sees and "is not the exact rate as google says" it's never like that, but then again, they can easily just be very very greedy, I just like seeing both sides first.

"don't bite the hand that feeds you, at least not until there's more options available"

This is why the world is fucked, and why people get pissed "when the pet dies" in movies and stuff.

 

[Mikufanboy]

Re: CuriousFactory responds to Lewdgamer on taking money from devs.

Well the alternative to Dlsite would be DMM seeing as how the also accept international buyers. Just wish their English page wasn't such a joke so we can take them seriously...

 

[HentaiWriter]

Re: CuriousFactory responds to Lewdgamer on taking money from devs.

By the end of the year, there will be a lottt more alternatives, but that's all I can say for now; that said, DLsite is still going to be the main site to sell hentai games on.

 

[Ironstrom]

Re: CuriousFactory responds to Lewdgamer on taking money from devs.

It's difficult to argue against a monopoly, ultimately they can do whatever they want and there's not much we can do about it, I think is not a good idea for "Kirye" to get on their bad side, don't bite the hand that feeds you, at least not until there's more options available, but I'm super comformist so what do I know. Also, at risk of sounding like devil's advocate, I think the business side of the company it's a bit more complicated than just what the client sees and "is not the exact rate as google says" it's never like that, but then again, they can easily just be very very greedy, I just like seeing both sides first.

I guess the issue with this is that they've not been clear about why they chose to take % instead of their stated other value. If they can put fourth a compelling reason or actually communicate we wouldn't have had the reason to take this angle in the first place. They have a dead twitter account for example and still advertise it from their main site. They lack accessibility or public awareness sure you can "attempt" to contact them. But their ability to front themselves as a company that's out their and doing things seems to be a bit lacking. For a company that does PR & Marketing & Localization I'm not impressed. If they did all these things I could see reason for an average of a 15% take.
All in all these things together still leave developers that use Dlsite with only around 35% ?? of their money unless they really chose to double mark up their game price. The whole Your price (our price) is a little weird. This is only inches from what the AAA contract studios get percentage wise just without the upfront investment & bonuses for success.

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