MissingSeven - GameDev

Self taught illustrator - Graphic Designer - Game Designer
5th ERA here: ✨

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

Hi! My game is finally on Steam!
https://t.co/EjTd30xz1y
Well, you should definitely wishlist it now 🤣
A new demo will available reeeeally soon!
#gamedev #gamedevelopment #indiedev #rpgmaker #indiegame #indiegames

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

@judemathis45 Thanks a lot! You made my day ♥

[chicken fillets @cfilletsYT]

These 9 JRPGs you NEED to wishlist right now!

Link on comments 🔗 Please share! 😁

[O'Hana-chan✿ @Zomia_Studio]

🌑 メインメニュー画面を大幅刷新

🔹 コマンド配置：上部 ➔ 左側（縦リスト）へ
🔹 表示形式：アイコン ➔ シンプルなテキストへ
🔹 アクター選択：アコーディオン式を採用
🔹 ソウルにゆらめきとパーティクルを実装
🔹 背景に舞う火の粉みたいなパーティクル演出を追加

#RPGツクール #rpgmaker #indiedev

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

@TheDavidVinc It's reeeeally cool, but I'd prefer a HD2D Octopath-style, ngl

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

The 5th ERA demo is finally LIVE on Steam & https://t.co/PlzWQaPaSi!
Play the Demo here: https://t.co/6vWLrIYgJF

If you love it:
- Wishlist on Steam!
- Tell a friend!

Have fun! 😁
#JRPG #PixelArt #SteamDemo #gamedev #gamedevelopment #indiedev #rpgmaker #indiegame #indiegames

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

@clemmygames Done! 👏
https://t.co/1g7NrSf4jK

[Dogs Understand @DogsUnderstand]

✨GOBBLE FANTASY 2003 IS 100% FUNDED!!!✨
Thank you, truly, to everyone who helped bring this project to life. Your support means everything. I’ll pour my whole heart into making the best game I can.
This is just the beginning.
LET’S GOBBLE!!!
https://t.co/ZxHgMiUNEe

[Blind / Rapturous Studio @BelovedRapture]

⚔️Beloved Rapture is on sale for 20% off this week, June 2 - 9, for the #TurnBasedThursday Fest! 🎉

Made by a small team, the game is an intimate #RPG with dramatic story beats, challenging combat, & many intense or heartfelt moments.

#IndieRPG #PixelArt
#indiegame #ゲーム開発

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

@LimogesMat22512 Oops. I just read this one, sorry! I wanted to make something but I had little time to develop the idea. I decided to focus on my main project instead 👍

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

A big picture of all the artworks I made for 🐍Ouroboros: A Dungeon Crawling Adventure! I excluded the UI + Tiles from this, but whatever.😅
I'll probably make a big collage and I'll hang it in my room😃

#RPGツクールMZ #rpgmaker #igmc2022 #gamedev #indiedev #sketch #pencilart

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

On January 15th, ten years ago, I released the first italian version of Theia: The Crimson Eclipse! I wrote a little post about it : )
https://t.co/40WY5aanQP

#gamedev #gamedevelopment #indiedev #rpgmaker #indiegame #indiegames

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

You can now adopt cats.🐈
Oh, and of course you can name them and, most importantly, pet them.

#screenshotsaturday #rpgmaker #gamedev #IndieGameDev #indiegames #videogames #jrpg #turnbased #Caturday

[RPGMakerSeries @RPGMakerSeries]

Register for RPG Maker Festival 2025 now!
It’s back! Coming this February, the next RM Festival is heating up this winter, and we’re looking for any games made with ANY version of RPG Maker or Pixel Game Maker to participate!
We hope the whole community is looking forward to it!

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

How to melt a dev's heart❤️
Remember guys: always give feedback to an indiedev when it's possible! These comments make our days.
#indiedev #gamedev #indiegame

(anyway, the game is this one https://t.co/wmJwELvDG1 🤣)

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

Hello! I just released a short game for this #Halloween
https://t.co/SXzvvLXK9R
A game about hungover cultists trying to make a coffee ☕️🎃
It's playable on browser, so give it a try and have fun!

#gamedev #gamedevelopment #indiedev #rpgmaker #indiegame #indiegames

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

@LunesisStudios Oh, ok, good to know! Thanks : )

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

@LunesisStudios Yep! On MZ, of course.

[MissingSeven - GameDev @missing_seven]

@LunesisStudios Nice, I like the effect a lot 👍
I was wondering if you used some plugins for that. For the slow camera movements too, actually. In my game I'm using action sequences for the skills but I still haven't found a way to move the camera while selecting targets.

[八野 @yano_gamedev]

Alright guys, I can finally come clean with this..

I'm not stating any names, but I feel this has to be said. A couple days ago I had a meeting I scheduled with my Publisher.

I'd been talking to this Publisher since early February this year. I scheduled this interview because due to some poor communication, I was starting to get suspicious (and a little nervous)

I went ahead and played a few of their old (2 years ago) and recent (this month) games on Steam. I was very shocked to see that all of the Japanese had been machine translated.

Mind you, in my package they sent me I was told word for word "Our network of native speakers, specialized in video games can localize your game in 10 more languages."

I was quoted over 15,000$ for this localization into 14 languages. All of this money would have to be recouped (along with countless other expenses)

The total cost of their "service" for marketing, porting, localization, etc, was 176,000$

Meaning, I make ZERO rev-share money until 176k in revenue is made. After that, I would have got 50% PC, 30% console (digital), and 0% console physical. There was a 15k buyout for physical, no royalties

These terms are already kind of a big redflag, but I kind of sweetened it over thinking "well, Dokimon is just half of my product, MonMae being the other half.. so maybe it's ok to sacrifice some funds in exchange for exposure"

The other thing I noticed was, not only were nearly all of the Japanese comments complaining about the translations (from all of their games), but there was also very very few of them (only 5-20 Japanese reviews even on some of the bigger games).

This leads me to believe their marketing budget is also a lie, because they ensured me Japan is a very big market for them that they target after I had expressed the importance about my games awareness in Japan.

This kind of lead me down a rabbit hole, and I won't get into too many details, but I came to find almost everything they told me was a lie.

It made me very angry with the world, the state of the publishing scene in video games, and angry at myself for not doing better research earlier.

Another lie I was told was 20,000$ in development funds, which I was okay'd in a month or two after our first contact in February. This has been delayed continuously, and now that the game is practically finished, they basically told me:

"oh, it's finished so you don't really need the development funds anymore right? We'll give it to you as an advanced royalty instead"

I don't even know what that is or what it's supposed to be but it sounds extremely vague and sketchy

Thus I scheduled an interview, and there I feel as if all of "my fears" were confirmed. I decided not to bring up the machine translations until the end of the interview, which I'm very glad I did.

This is because the interview started out with them basically breaking, and changing a lot of their promises they had made to me.

When I finally dropped the bomb that I had played several of their games and all of the Japanese was machine translated, they were extremely wide eyed, and shocked, and they gave me very poor excuses that seemed to be made-up on the spot.

The two people I was interviewing with also were giving conflicting answers to my follow up questions

I was extremely polite throughout the entirety of the exchange. However I did ask if I could be given the name or company name of the Japanese translator (I wanted to confirm it existed), which I was denied.

We ended the interview on "good terms", still being polite, "talk again soon" and etc, and so far it's been a while and there's been no response to my email I sent an hour after the call.

I believe it is very clear that I will never hear from them again. I assumed this would be the case when I first found out about most of this dirt of them a month or two ago (basically, 2-3 days before I did my Steam page announcement for Dokimon).

I dodged a bullet. A big one. I think it is perfectly practical to say that this company lies about nearly all of their "costs" which they recoup 100% of, and prey on indie developers with big promises at the start that fall off and become less and less as the game launch date gets closer, where developers are most desperate.

Developers get a 15,000$ buyout for "console physical" and no other funds until the publisher makes back their 6 figure recoupment (unless they planned on lessening this EVEN FURTHER, which is possible)

The original buyout we discussed in February was 80,000$ + 20,000$ dev funds, but I was told in this interview it was dropped to 15k "bc reasons" and as I mentioned earlier the 20k dev funds became a royalty (3 days before the interview)

Meaning, it is extremely likely they are essentially buying people's games for 15,000$ (or less), doing a hackjob marketing phase, DeepGL translating into several languages, making 100-150k off the game (potentially MUCH more, since developers don't keep a cent of physical sales), and the developer never makes a cent more than that initial 15k as they never surpass the recoupment cost.

This is also reflected in the fact that after 3 months my requests for (a VERY minor) edit of the contract were not answered. They finally discussed it at the beginning of the call, this is where promises were falling short, and I was told "but if all this works out we can finally get the contract signed this week!"

I think this is extremely predatory, and damaging towards indie developers. Years upon years of your, and potentially several peoples lives may amount to nothing more than 10-15k, and a sullied reputation in several countries where your game had god awful translations.

I think it's extremely important to share this information and supply more resources to indie developers to ensure they don't get once'd over. I got extremely lucky.

It's been very challenging and time consuming to work with them and provide them with updates, builds, meetings, promo materials, appeal to requests and etc, but thankfully I never signed the contract (mostly due to their incompetence) and was able to get out before I was in too deep

However, this publisher has worked with countless developers, sometimes releasing several games in a month. I really feel bad for them. I've also gotten some friends from other countries to confirm these games were machine translated in other languages, so it wasn't just Japanese..

Anyway, this is the story about 1. Why my Steam Page release was "bittersweet" and 2. Why Dokimon wasn't released earlier this year..

Since last month I've had to start putting together so many plans to market and produce my game I thought would be taken care of for me.

I spend all of my time working. Even on the train, I'm hand translating the game's 12,000+ word script line for line on my phone in Google documents.

This game is the cultivation of 3+ years of work, countless sleepness nights, countless 80-100 hour work weeks, countless hardships, and one of the most stressful things I've ever had the fortune to work on,

and I almost just lost it. I'm very thankful that I was able to find out right in time and get out of this deal. It's stressful translating the game on my own, and marketing, especially with such little notice.

But I'm going to do my best. If there's anything you can do to help spread a word of warning to indie developers about predatory publishers, please do it.

If there's anything you can do to help me market my game, or any advice, please let me know. I'm currently in crunch mode aiming for a late-November release and every bit of help and advice will count.

This got very long, if you read until the very end, thank you. Please share this to spread awareness