Introducing Leadwerks Marketplace
Steam Workshop was a compelling idea to allow game asset authors to sell their items for use with Leadwerks Game Engine. However, the system has turned out to have some fundamental problems, despite my best efforts to work around it.
- Free items are not curated, causing the store to fill with low quality content.
- Some people have reported trouble downloading items.
- The publishing process is pretty tedious.
- The check-out process requires adding funds to Steam Wallet, and is just not very streamlined.
At the same time, three new technologies have emerged that make it possible to deliver a better customer and seller experience through our website.
- Amazon S3 offers cheap and reliable storage of massive amounts of data.
- Paypal credit card tokens allow us to safely store a token on our server that can't be used anywhere else, instead of a credit card number. This eliminates the danger of a potential website hack revealing your information.
- Invision Power Board has integrated both these technologies into our commerce system.
it would not have been possible to build a web store a few years ago because the cost of server space would have been prohibitive, and storing hundreds of gigs of data would have made my website backup process unsustainable. So at the time, the unlimited storage of Steam and their payment processing system was very appealing. That is no longer the case.
To solve the problems of Steam Workshop, and give you easy access to a large library of ready-to-use game assets, I am happy to introduce Leadwerks Marketplace.
The main page shows featured assets, new content, and the most popular items, with big thumbnails everywhere.
When you view an item, screenshots, videos, and detailed technical specifications are shown:
How does Leadwerks Marketplace improve things?:
- Easy download of zip files that are ready to use with Leadwerks. You can use File > Import menu item to extract them to the current project, or just unzip them yourself.
- All content is curated. Items are checked for compatibility and quality.
- Clear technical specifications for every file, so you know exactly what you are getting.
- Cheap and reliable storage forever with Amazon S3.
- Any DLCs or Workshop Store items you purchased can be downloaded from Leadwerks Marketplace by linking your Steam account to your profile.
- Easy publishing of your items with our web-based uploader.
We're launching with over 50 gigabytes of game assets, and more will be added continuously. To kick off the launch we're offering some items at major discounts during the Summer Game Tournament. Here are a few assets to check out:
Get "The Zone" for just $4.99:
Or download our Mercenary character for free! Just create your free Leadwerks account to gain access.
Other items will be featured on sale during the Summer Game Tournament:
After purchasing an item, you can download it immediately. All your purchased items will be shown in the Purchases area, which you can access from the user menu in the top-right of this the website header:
Here all your purchased items will be available to download, forever:
If you are interested in selling your game assets to over 20,000 developers, you can upload your items now. Sellers receive a 70% royalty for each sale, with a minimum payout of just $20. See the content guidelines for details and contact me if you need any help. If you have a lot of good content, we can even convert your assets for you and make them game-ready for Leadwerks, so there's really no risk to you.
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