Indie Game Development Company - 8 years in business - Taking Offers!

Hello,

I own Stormcloud Creations (URL in sig), an indie game development company with 7 finished games, and a website that has been around (in various forms) for almost 8 years now with one owner. I'm considering starting to take offers for someone wanting to purchase the company, including fully developed website, and exclusive rights to all 7 games (some of which have been reviewed in major game magazines!). Well known in gaming circles. You would be getting an established indie game brand with none of the elbow grease that went into building it!

Site is heavily indexed by the search engines with various game related terms, and averages 10,000+ hits per month (could be much higher with more muscle and push in the promotion department). All pages are Google PR 0-2 (was 4 recently, but due to lack of time in promoting the site, it's dropped a bit; could go back up higher very easily - and no it wasn't because of sketchy techniques - no link farms or "invisible" text or keyword spamming).

Income: varies, but not as much as it could be. Average last 4 months is around $200/month or so. Could be a lot more with more time and push behind it.

Offer Details: PM me or e-mail me with your best offer. The decision will be mine whether the highest and most suitable offer will be accepted; i'm mainly just determining interest and offer levels right now. E-Mail:

Payment, if offer is accepted, will be made with personal check or cashier's check only. No, not Paypal. I do not trust them with higher amounts of money.

I'm open to being paid to stay on and develop for the company - and you get to keep all the earnings besides my fee for working.

Thank you and have a great day!

 

Can i see a list and proof of your 8 years. As well and magazines and dates they were published in.

 

Look here:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.stormcloudcreations.com

Alexa has my earliest full web site recorded as Nov. 2001, all the way through. I only got a domain about 10months into its history (I used a tripod site before that). I conducted business only thru that site up until then.

 

Current traffic is 50-150 unique visitors per day, mostly organic (through Google and other search engines).

No BIN really in my mind; i'm taking people's best offers. Not sure of the exact worth, though I know long-term established things like this with unique intellectual property do hold a little bit of a premium.

Games:
Interstellar Trader 1 - Great seller: you control a space merchant business, fight pirates, etc. Spent $90 on it and sold over 60,000 copies in its history. Now not being sold.
Interstellar Trader 2 - Sequel to the 1st, better graphics and improved gameplay. Great seller, over 200,00 total copies with Shrapnel Games publishing it and my own sales combined. Reviewed in PC Gamer and other mags (Computer Gaming World, etc) in 2005 I think.
Overlord - strategy management game. Decent seller when it was being sold. It's still sellable I think, but I just haven't offered it for awhile.
Domain Wars - board/strategy game. Sold decently, but hasn't been offered for awhile.
Nanotech - board/cyberpunk strategy themed game. One of my best games, but didn't sell great for some reason.
Coliseum - sports management/strategy/sim. Published through Shrapnel Games, but now is my property exclusively. Sold pretty decently. Reviewed in several PC magazines in 2006; has cult following even today.
Voyager - RPG/Card game with very unique design and lots of music and very high-quality graphics. Sold pretty well.
PathQuest 1 - change of pace adventure game, with plans for sequels that continue the story.

Full exclusive rights to sell and/or change these games would be included.

 

No end date, but by the end of the month i'd like to pretty much see any offers so I can choose a buyer.

 

Does the source code for the individual games come with the purchase ?

 

Which languages do the games support? Have you place the software on any of the download sites (demo's of the software)? You said you spent 90$ on game? Did you personally create these games yourself or outsourced the creation? If you outsourced would you put us in contact with your outsourced worker? Is the source code included? What language are the games wrote? What type of database do you have of your customers - name, email, address, payment time, payment date, payment type, etc. Do you have a spread sheet / charts of yearly sales of each game broken down in monthly data? Are there any NDA that we need to know about? Have you promised your customers any extra's that we need to know about? Do you have any resellers of the software? Do you plan to resell the software again in the future? Is the software on any warez / torrent sites for others to download for free (takes away from possible future sales). What type of advertising have you done in the past for the website? Why do you want to sell the company? and if it is because you want to try something new. What are you going to try that is new?

What range of offers are you wanting to get for the company?

.

 

I've seen this site being sold 3 times now.... why have you not sold it to others?

 

exodus: No outsourcing; I designed and programmed everything myself. Games are all in MS VB6. I do have an e-mail database of 175+ double opt-in customer database that would be included. No NDA's. No extras promised or strings attached to the business. I do NOT plan to resell the software; it would all become your property and is not being currently sold by anyone else, portals, etc. I've done a little Adwords/Yahoo! Marketing in the past and it's worked, but I just don't have the personal funds to do it properly. No (extensive) warez distribution that i'm aware of.
Range of offers: just everyone's max offer. The variables for offers in this are too great, I think, to narrow down a range really.

Shedboy: Yes, source code does come with purchase. You may freely modify the games at that point.

Swiftchip: I decided in the end the last 3 times not to sell, but now I pretty much have decided firmly to do so. I will keep searching until I find a good buyer at a fair price.

 

I noticed you have an soon to be released one on your site that people have pre-ordered. Please, explain about that and that is something I was asking about when I asked about extra promises to customers. Soon to be released isn't released and it would be something we would have to cover.

Also, if you do not out-source. Why did $90 go into the production of the game? What did you spend $90 upon to create the game. I did some digging and noticed you made a comment on another forum about spending $700 to have a game created for your website.

Do you own any other gaming type of sites that we would be competing against?

.

 

That pre-order thing (Arcadia) is NOT included in the sale. I will deal with the change with that myself. It isn't close to being finished, and I can deal with that whole thing myself.

$90 made the very first game, but that was the lowest I spent. Budgets steadily went up as I added more and more art and music and other goodies to the games. I own all artwork and all code, so there isn't anyone else involved with the company, or attached to any of the earnings. Just me to deal with.

I own no other gaming sites at the moment, so no competition.

I await other offers. I've received a few already, but welcome more.

 

I've now set a BIN which I think is fair: $2,000
This includes 200+ customer e-mail database, source code of 7 fully developed games to do with what you wish, Google indexing that includes over 50,000 results just by typing its name (and in the 2nd spot just by typing "stormcloud" by itself!) with top 8 results for many game related phrases (pc rpg game, pc strategy game, etc), full website that is easily modifiable and attractive, ready to go business with a 7+ year history and a good reputation, no strings or any hidden weirdness.

Other offers welcome.

 

No employees, just me. No overhead at all really, except for web site hosting I have at $5 a month and a merchant account of mine I have going (you would have to supply your own payment processing, or you can elect to use mine with a 4% fee per transaction). Most sales you would make would just be profit in your pocket.

I work from home in the US, so no office rent or any other overhead.

 

Just a note: If you e-mail me about this, use temporarily. I'm migrating my old Comcast address to a new user account, and it's being a pain. Thanks!

I have 3 offers now, decent ones, but I still welcome any others. If you have other business proposals, i'm willing to listen as well.

 

Still looking for offers. Had a $1,500 offer, but that person has not responded today. I'd be willing to listen to offers in that range. Of if that person wants to respond, his offer would come first.

 

Still looking for offers...and a note that my normal address is back on and working. I'll be putting this on several other sites in the next few days otherwise, so please feel free to make any offers.

Site comes with:
7 complete coded games, all with past sales histories of selling at least decently, all with VB6 source code
E-Mail list of 200+ double-opt-in customers who have bought from me in the past, usually 2 or more games
Attractive website html files and graphics
Domain owned for 7+ years by one owner
Indexed by search engines in the top 8 with over 120+ terms related to strategy, rpg games, etc.
and 50,000+ listings in Google just by typing 'stormcloud creations'
Support for awhile converting the games to your company and payment links, if needed

 

PS I'd consider $1,500 to be a very fair BIN, in fact potentially a steal.