Why Patchkit?

Piotr Korzuszek

09 September 2016

Because you need a way to distribute your game with freedom, and we’ve got one!

Deliver your game with confidence

Game distribution ain’t easy. How your game is delivered to your players is in fact the first experience players have before even playing it. Fail here and you may lose many potential players and your clients.

These days content delivery is done using CDNs. Getting a file published to the CDN is an easy task, getting a game published on the CDN is not. You have to either publish each version content as a whole or to struggle with your own patching system. It’s neither safe nor effective.

With PatchKit you don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. Just get a zip file of your game content uploaded, and PatchKit will make sure that you didn’t make any mistake in the process (like forgetting about including an executable file or uploading a wrong archive). If that happens, PatchKit will refuse to publish the faulty content and will ask you to upload it again. It makes the use of PatchKit a good part of your distribution pipeline.

When the process is done, you will get a customized launcher application that can be send to your players. It is a single-file app which when executed will download and launch your game.

If you’re interested to learn more about PatchKit technical side, please visit the overview page.

Keep your players happy

People are quite lazy by nature, especially when they don’t quite understand why they’re asked to do something. You should never ask your players to update your game by themselves – they just won’t do it. And what’s more, they will complain about having issues that are long fixed in the newest available version.

Each PatchKit application comes with the launcher. Launcher is a small portable application that is enough to download and start the game. But it does one more thing – it checks for updates and applies them quickly using binary difference files. This way you can be sure that shortly after the release all of your players will be playing the latest version available.

Player’s won’t be complaining about being asked to install any additional software. Launcher application is portable and white-labeled. This means that it’s a core part of your game and your clients will be happy to see that your company has managed to setup a standalone self-upgradeable application.

If it comes to player verification, the choice is yours. You can decide on DRM-free game or licence keys-based security. We won’t force any of these on you, you have the freedom to choose what you believe in.

Stick to your business model

Many application/game marketplaces out there may be forcing a specific business model on you. They do that because they’re making profit based on a cut of your sales, and to make it possible they have to set up a system that will process that payments model. This might not be what you’re looking for.

If your application business model doesn’t fit to what existing marketplaces have to offer, you have to either change your business model or distribution platform.

PatchKit won’t force any business model on you. It doesn’t matter if your game is free, free-to-play, pay-once or subscription-based. It totally your choice and we don’t care. Feel free and happy with it!

It’s not “instead”, it’s “along with”

PatchKit is not necessarily a replacement for your distribution channel of choice. It can be a great supplementary to it, an additional distribution channel. Popular game delivery platforms are giving you a lot, but they are also requesting something in return (a cut of your profit). PatchKit gives you the opportunity to reach those clients, who are willing to get your game and to skip the “distributor”. Also we don’t care about how do you intent to charge for your product, it’s your money!

Get it tested

PatchKit is a great solution if you need a distribution platform for beta tests of your game. Get it to PatchKit and share your launcher. Everyone who care about testing your game will get the latest possible version and all the updates. Within minutes you can distribute your new version, and your tester will deliver to you the precious feedback about the changes you’ve made.

Don’t spend too much

Distributing terabytes of game data through a CDN can cost quite a lot. How much will it cost to get your game distributed then? You may be surprised when I’ll tell you that PatchKit distribution costs are much lower when compared to any popular CDN on the market. We’ve managed to make it by focusing only on game distribution which is followed by smart transfer optimizations.

PatchKit is and always will be free for all users to a certain usage volume (welcome indies!). If you’d like to know more, you can easily get a quote!

More questions?

If you have more questions about PatchKit, please don’t hesitate to contact us: contact@patchkit.net. We will be happy to provide any information you need.

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