Signing up

Retro Play is a network for games on machines that stopped getting new software thirty years ago: leaderboards, awards, who is playing now, friends and notes, a store and a client — over a wire the machine speaks itself, with no PC in the middle. This guide is the path a developer walks from an account to a game on sale. Every chapter is true of the service as it runs today; where something is not there yet, it says so.

An account, an organisation

You need a player account first — the same one anyone has — from Register on the site: a gamertag of 3 to 10 characters (A–Z, 0–9, _), an email address, a password. The verification link arrives by mail; then you can sign in. Under My account → Network security you can turn on two-factor sign-in — a six-digit code from an authenticator app beside your password, with eight one-use recovery codes for the day the phone is gone; the admin pages of an organisation, and of the service, need it on. While the network is by invitation, the Register page takes an address for the waiting list instead, and an invitation's link (/register?invite=…) — from the service, or from any player, who may invite one person — registers one account.

On Developers, read the terms and press I AGREE. Agreeing costs nothing and registers nothing; it lets you register a game. The first game you register makes an organisation for you, named after your gamertag — every game belongs to one, and it is where a game's testers, visibility, store page, builds and payouts live. You can rename it on its Profile tab, add a second admin by gamertag, and the service's admins can rename its id if you ask.

A developer's own organisation waits for approval by the service. You can register games, name testers and write store pages meanwhile; a game cannot be approved — and so cannot say HELLO — until its organisation is. Organisations the service makes for a developer are approved as they are made.

The terms, in short

The page has them in full. The parts that decide things:

• Registering is free, and the boards, the awards and the presence stay free whether or not you sell through the store.
• If you sell through the store, Retro Play takes 10% of each sale, with a floor of 50¢. Payment processing is charged on top at cost — Paddle's 5% + 50¢ today — because it is not ours to keep. Your game is sold through Retro Play as reseller; your share is paid monthly by transfer, and the ledger on your organisation's Payments tab shows each month's sales, the cut, the processing, what is owed and when it was paid.
• Your game's service answers honestly. Scores it accepts are scores its rules could have produced. You do not post other people's scores, or your own by hand.
• Your key is yours to keep. It is shown once, it signs everything your game says, and a leaked key is a game we have to turn off — you ask for a new one.
• If the service closes, your game keeps working (nothing here is required to play), your boards are exportable on request without a reason, and you get notice, not a dead host.

What you get

Leaderboards by mode, awards, presence, friends, notes and a daily — from the machine. A page on the site with your words, pictures and news, which the client shows on the machine. A listing in the client. Beta groups. A store page, if you sell.

Registering a game →