Manticore Games has just announced that its democratized game development platform Core is getting a financial boost to help would-be developers using their service. For the remainder of the current alpha period, the Creator Payout Pilot Program will be paying out approximately $1 million to creators. Pay will be received based on the popularity of the game, calculated by the average number of unique logins per month. Manticore is expecting to pay creators $3 per daily average player.
The Core platform was initially launched earlier this year. Using the Unreal Engine as a foundation, Manticore created an environment where users could download a client, explore pre-made games, and use assets to create new games. In this respect, Core bears a more-than-passing resemblance to both Roblox and Media Molecule’s Little Big Planet series.
It is, however, a resemblance which Manticore cofounder Frederic Descamps was quick to dismiss. In an interview with game industry site Gamasutra back in April, Descamps stated, “You wouldn’t be the first person to compare us to other services out there, of course…this is not at all [how] we started the company or thinking about Core. The way Core came about was more like, ‘hey let’s make a new form of real-time multiplayer game!'”
Core does have a code of conduct that outlines what is and is not acceptable in terms of content, and it makes it clear that they will be cracking down on any sort of deliberate or intentional IP infringement. They seem to be avoiding (for right now) the heavy-handed approach Blizzard is taking with their “Custom Games” in WarCraft III Reforged. However, there is still at least a bit of uncertainty about a DOTA-style scenario where a single prototypes a game in Core and then go off the service to develop standalone successors or sequels.
There’s also some uncertainty about how the recommendation algorithms will work in a live deployment. While Manticore has said that they are not looking to promote only the top 1% of games on the service, how their algorithms plan to be looking for those less-obvious titles is still a question mark.
