Our COO recently held an AMA with one of our partners. Here are some of the highlights!
Question 1:
You’ve also negotiated a partnership with Unity (which seems to be huge), can you tell us a bit about how this partnership will allow you to grow even faster in Asia?
Answer 1:
Unity is the most popular game-making engine in the world. Its business model allows dreamers to become game makers. Our mission is to enable these game developers to have the means to monetize and distribute their games in Asia. A unused platform is of no point to us and that this why we partner with them. Think of it this way, we are like a recruitment talent agency parked right at the gate of the university, hope to grab the next big game into Asia.
And we reduced the “time-to-market” from 3–6 months to less than 30 minutes.
Question 2:
You will capture an even more important part of the market by connecting gamers and developers, can you tell us a bit about how blockchain will help you grow bigger? And faster 😄
Answer 2:
We have been publishing games and using digital wallets/currencies since 2007 when we first launched online games. Gamers are actually early adopters of digital currencies? So when blockchain technology comes, it’s a perfect fit. Let me explain. In the past, all payment methods comes with costs (rental of the shop selling prepaid cards, charges by banks, charges by telco, etc.). With blockchain, the middleman is missing. This is beneficial to the game makers as they bring home more revenue to fuel their game making.
Also, to be honest, when we were publishing games in the past, we (game dev and publishers) were making even less margin than the payment folks. That’s the sad but harsh truth.
Question 3:
Could you expand a bit (just a bit of detail; maybe a use case) on some of the benefits for game developers large & small to use you services??
Answer 3:
Sure. We do not actually judge the size of the game developers. Neither do we judge whether they are good or bad. That’s the whole idea of being a platform. It is neutral and provide tools for its users to leverage on. Much of the efforts come from the game owners themselves. However, we are more important to the small developers because we unearth for them, what they would have otherwise missed in revenue.
Question 4:
Someone asked me this question: “By definition Moo Store is a mobile gaming Steam Store for Southeast Asia, would you please tell us about the impact it will have on us crypto savage Europeans, Americans or Australians?”
Answer 4:
That would be a tall hat to put on now. But it is not an impossible dream to have. The whole idea is simple — enable monetization and distribution for the emerging markets for the budding game developers. In a nutshell, we will help the Europeans, Americans or Australians, bring them games into Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, etc. All within 30 minutes of integration time.
Question 5:
Speaking of revenue (whats the math). Per transaction (if thats the model you adopted) what is the breakdown percentage wise as to what cloud moolah retains for use of the platform by game devs?
Answer 5:
it depends on the cost of the payment channel. Using MOO token to transact would surely provide the best margin for the game developers. For the other 3rd party payment methods, we will charge 26% to the game developers. (Google/Apple charges 30%)
For the 26%, more than 90% goes to the payment channel owners. T.T
Question 6:
Does the company’s roadmap include global expansion at some point? If so, what actors could hamper/slow that rollout?
Answer 6:
Yes. In terms of payment range. We are next looking at including payment gateways from LATEM, Middle East and India. The main actors that can slow the process is technical integration. If you have done technical integration for payment gateways before, you will know that it is a lengthy and tedious process. It deals with real money and hence there are so many safety nets and testing to go thru.
Question 7:
Can you give us some info about your “go to market strategy”. How you plan to conquer the gaming world (at least the publishing side of it)?
Answer 7:
Our go-to-market strategy has a dual-prong approach. (1) Awareness and Adoption by Game Developers + (2) Gamer adoption towards our MOO Store. For (1), the key strategy is to be alongside Unity in all their outreach programs to their community. In 2017, I attended 8 Unites conference and gave speeches (about how sexy Asia is, as a gaming market) to thousands of Unity game developers. In 2018, we are already firmly in all their marketing and evangelism efforts. Starting from GDC next month and then Unite Beijing/Seoul/Tokyo in May.
Ruy, [03.03.18 21:28]
What are the biggest challenges you see for an expansion of the project in the first 2 years, please?!
Question 8:
What is your target? Is it just the entire game dev industry of is it a bit more specific, targeted, maybe a niche that u see cloud moolah doing well with (ex: indie game devs, etc.). Maybe your customers fit a specific profile
Answer 8:
The strategy towards the gamers is via our local payment partners. You might have noticed that all of them are incumbents (of game publishing) in their own markets. They have many resources and avenues to bring gamers into our stores. And they are incentivised to do this because it indirectly drives their own revenue up (via usage of their payment gateways with us). Our team have also build gamer communities in the past. Our experience will come in really useful in this effort as well. We built 25m gamers with FIFA Online 2.
We will start with the Unity indie devs. There are 5m of them with Unity now. These are raw diamonds, as I always tell our biz partners. They are the next gen of successful studios.
As for gamers, we do not seek a certain profile. All gamers have their own preference for various genres.
Question 9:
Hi Jonathon, is your integration solely with Unity (and gaming platform agnostic) or will you have to launch individually on each Unity platform (android, PS4 etc)?
Answer 9:
Our integration with Unity now is only for the Android platform. We do have plans to include other platforms depending on the popularity of it.
Question 10:
Give us a 3–5yr snapshot. Where do you see CloudMoolah… (growth rate, number of games on the platform, market share, revenue, etc)
Answer 10:
In terms of revenue, I have been advised not to discussed by our legal and advisers. However, I can share that we are planning to onboard at least 100,000 games onto our MOO Store by end 2019. This is very possible considering there are 5m developers. To add on, in 3–5 years, my vision for the company is to become the largest 3rd party appstore for the indies. The “kickstarter of game developers” if you allow me to….
Question 11:
I’ll sneak one in then, could you tell us about feedback you have had from the development community so far?
Answer 11:
from every game developers that I spoke to (100s of them) last year, all 100% are interested to use our platform. They are surprised by the Asian landscape and they are excited that it presents a fresh opportunity for them. And with it integrated within the Unity editor, it’s heaven sent for them. Truth is, they hate making different builds for different integrations/platforms. So when they heard what they can do with one, the case is sold. :)
Thank you all. Feel free to reach out if you have more questions. Have a pleasant day ahead.
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