Check the portfolio and the recoup order before you sign
Think again before you sign with a publisher.
Publishers to stay away from:
The ones that have “published” games in 850 different genres and brag about it
The ones with contacts in a single geo only, and/or whose games’ review distribution is weighted towards a single geo
The ones that treat you like your boss rather than your partner, never let the studio name into their announcements, and present the game you made as their own
The first thing to look at when you pick a publisher to work with is the portfolio. Work with publishers that run 1 genre or theme, 2 at most.
Questions to ask in the first meeting, with proof:
1 - How much is the marketing spend?
2 - Which marketing channels, and which content creators and press are they in personal contact with. Do they have Chinese channels?
3 - Who is going to produce the game’s promo materials?
4 - IP rights, Discord, sequels, payment schedule?
5 - If there is funding, what the milestones are and what gets recouped in what order and at what percentage
6 - What the penalties are if performance drops, and that they run both ways
The answers to these questions broadly tell you what percentage the publisher deserves. Do not be taken in by line items like localisation and playtesting, both their cost and their importance are relatively low. Some of them pull a fast one and write those items up far above what they are worth, then want to recoup them first. Try to check all of these questions with other teams that have worked with the same publisher before, most of them are open to answering as long as you ask properly.
The recoup order and its percentage in particular are what decide when you can move on to your next games. The split usually stays intact, but some publishers can take 20% for you and 80% for themselves until the spend is recouped, and some take all of it and only move to the split after recoup
The industry default split is 70 (studio) / 30 (pub) on net revenue. In some cases it can go up to 50/50 with niche publishers, depending on what they put into development and what they bring. But if any publisher asks you for more than 50, laugh in their face and move on.
Ask specifically whether net revenue is based on Steam or whether other items like marketing get deducted from it too. The normal one is net revenue after Steam’s cut
Remember, if you are making a good game and you have the proof to back it up, you do not need the publisher, the publisher needs you.
A bad publisher can put you through a long, toxic relationship and turn you off the industry, while the right, genre-focused publisher pulls your chances of success way up.