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Thread: Anyone know a good place to buy games in bulk?

  1. #1
    ZaO
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    Anyone know a good place to buy games in bulk?

    Not sure if this is the right section of the forum to post this. But anyway...

    I was wondering if I might be able to start up an online business selling games. So I figured a good place to start would be to find a distributor that can sell new games in bulk for a discounted price compared to the retail cost. Just wondering if anyone knows of any good suppliers for this? It's pretty hard when you search around the net. I just see lots of places that want you to pay to see their catalogue and prices. I'm not prepared to give them any money, just to find out I don't like their prices lol..

    Thanks

    Edit: Somewhere UK based would be good btw!

  2. #2
    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: Anyone know a good place to buy games in bulk?

    Many distributors won't be interested in online - they cover that themselves and look for retail partners only. Online only you can go direct to publishers since the logistics are minimal.

  3. #3
    Senior Member walibe's Avatar
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    Re: Anyone know a good place to buy games in bulk?

    Physical game sales are about to go the way of music CDs and as above, the on-line market is full of resellers.

    You would be better off looking at it another way. Maybe a specialist publisher of independent games (on-line) or other platforms other than Windows but then again steams been there, done that and has the T-shirt.

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    Seriously casual gamer KeyboardDemon's Avatar
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    Re: Anyone know a good place to buy games in bulk?

    The only software disti that I know of is Koch Media but for some reason even their UK address sends you to the main company address in Germany when you look for the contact details. The best thing to do is to contact some publishers or look at their websites to see who they use as their main disti and then contact the disti to see if you can arrange terms with them. If you are planning on selling online see if you can arrange to trade in online codes and can get the codes ordered via email, that way you can set up automated emails so as an order comes in a request goes out for the email codes, you get the codes and then bounce them out to the customer without having to click a single mouse button and then billing will occur 30 days later. Or you might be able to get the disti to drop ship via email for you, I don't know if any disti is doing this though, but that is roughly how drop shipping works or at least should/could work.

  5. #5
    ZaO
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    Re: Anyone know a good place to buy games in bulk?

    Thanks guys. Yeh it does seem a bit iffy to get into at this point with digital downloads taking over. But there is always the serial key thing as suggested. That's gotta be way easier to run as well. And tbh - I have no experience at all in doing anything like this. I have just been trying to think up businesses I could run from home. So I thought that finding out prices on this kinda thing would be a good starting point.

    I haven't contacted any publishers directly. As I don't think I would be big enough/interesting enough for them to want to do business with. I would have to start out small and build up. So could barely offer them any sales at first. And from reading around I've done - it doesn't seem easy to actually get something setup with publishers. But I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try I could at least inquire and get an idea on prices if they'll tell me. So maybe that is my next step here. But any other suggestions/ideas are welcomed! Thanks

  6. #6
    HEXUS.Squirrel Output's Avatar
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    Re: Anyone know a good place to buy games in bulk?

    I think I've read in the past that margins tend to be tiny, with it being a very hard market to compete in. Especially as big sites such as Amazon etc. are able to sell games as loss-leaders at prices that would be cheaper than you could source them at yourself.

    No idea about the digital download method in particular, but one worry you'd have to think about there would obviously be the potential of someone getting the download and then issuing a chargeback (by claiming that they didn't get it, that it didn't work even if it really did, or saying it was an unauthorised transaction etc.).
    Last edited by Output; 19-04-2014 at 01:44 AM.

  7. #7
    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: Anyone know a good place to buy games in bulk?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZaO View Post
    Thanks guys. Yeh it does seem a bit iffy to get into at this point with digital downloads taking over. But there is always the serial key thing as suggested. That's gotta be way easier to run as well.
    Think about what you're saying A publisher who distributes keys would give you a discount why? Are you selling to a market that costs them too much to handle centrally perhaps? I'd suggest that looking for UK distributors in order to retail to the UK is not that scenario

    And tbh - I have no experience at all in doing anything like this. I have just been trying to think up businesses I could run from home. So I thought that finding out prices on this kinda thing would be a good starting point.
    I admire your spirit, but no. No chance. Figuring out prices is not where you start either. What are you going to offer that's not been offered before? And what makes you able to offer it that others couldn't?

    I haven't contacted any publishers directly. As I don't think I would be big enough/interesting enough for them to want to do business with.
    Think. Why would they want to do business with someone big or interesting? What are they gaining from that. It's not going to be just because they are big or interesting.

    If not the publishers, who are you going to get the games from? The terms get a little muddied in forum discussions because we used to have megalithic companies that rolled in several functions at once, or several different companies operating under the same or similar names. I used to work with one company which was part of a global organisation in this area. My (still somewhat limited) understanding of traditional game publishing is something like this (and this is just an example - there are many variations):

    Game developers pitch the idea for a game, how far along/how much work they need to do depends on the market and their reputation etc.

    Game publishers finance the further development of the game (the developers need to earn salaries while they code). They may do this in return for the profits from x copies sold, or an ongoing royalty % etc.

    Publishers often offer other services too - marketing, distribution, Q&A, support, ongoing server provision etc. - Anything which they have expertise on and makes sense to have central work on that can apply again and again for different games, freeing up the developers to work on their specialist game.

    Of course, they may just be 'hired' to do the above without needing to provide finance, in which case they act more like a customer of the developer. Alternatively the publisher might own the IP for something and contract a developer to work for them.

    Publishers unsurprisingly will outsource any of the above if it creates value to do so.

    In London, around Hammersmith, there are a whole bunch of the distribution arms of publishers: Capcom, Namco Bandai Partners (formerly Atari), EA etc. They handle logistics and distribution for both their parent/affiliated companies as well as other companies on occasion, mostly in the European area.

    If you were to open a new retail store, or online store, these are the guys you would want to talk to. They will not tell you prices, because there's no reason to know them from your point of view. You would put a business case to them for choosing your company to work with.

    But as you well know - the publishing world is changing - online distribution and other funding models have more or less killed the traditional way of doing things, so what can you offer the new crowd?

  8. #8
    ZaO
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    Re: Anyone know a good place to buy games in bulk?

    I don't know about all that stuff. I've just been trying to look into various things I could do to make money from home. I'm not making any assumptions about anything. All I was interested in is seeing what sort of prices you could pick up a bunch of games/keys for. And getting discount for buying in bulk is a pretty standard thing. A lot of shops offer that to standard customers. I saw what I thought was a pretty decent key store, fail lately. Because they were sourcing all their keys from the EU. And they couldn't compete with all those ones selling keys sourced from Russia and other countries where they can be bought much cheaper. So I already knew that this could be a tough thing to get into. But that's why I was interested in the price, and how easy it is to just buy a bunch of games/keys. That's all I wanted to know. Thanks.

  9. #9
    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: Anyone know a good place to buy games in bulk?

    Right. Game keys are not like physical retail products. To find out how easy it is to buy a bunch of keys contact the publishers and distributors directly. The price may well depend on the volume and credit model you're using. If you're too small to get volume of keys from them then you're only going to be able to get them from a competitor, so margins will be down to whatever markup you can put over them, which is dependant on what you can offer that they don't.

  10. #10
    ZaO
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    Re: Anyone know a good place to buy games in bulk?

    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    Right. Game keys are not like physical retail products. To find out how easy it is to buy a bunch of keys contact the publishers and distributors directly. The price may well depend on the volume and credit model you're using. If you're too small to get volume of keys from them then you're only going to be able to get them from a competitor, so margins will be down to whatever markup you can put over them, which is dependant on what you can offer that they don't.
    well yeh. that's why i was originally asking if anyone knew of any good distributors but what some of these key stores do is just buy lots of physical copies in bulk. then scan the keys off the back of the case and send you that, so you can redeem it on steam, uplay, origin etc.. that's what cjscdkeys do quite often. cheers.

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