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Hey Chelsea, I've signed up to register interest here: https://build.amazonalexadev.com/AlexaWebAPIforGames1.html Are there any use-case examples, demos or documentation to have a look at in the meantime?

To be honest it has never crossed my mind to consider this an issue, as long as a game is not being licensed with any degree of exclusivity (whether it be time/client/platform limited) then you are free to try and make money from it any way you can. Portals acquiring non-exclusive games will assume and probably expect the content to be spread as far and wide as the developer can achieve and are mostly just looking to increase site content in the cheapest way possible. If the games you are talking about are a few years old then even less reason to be morally concerned as their window of use as 'new content' to the portal will be long gone and are now just propping up their back catalogue. I say go for it and try and squeeze as much income as you can from your hard work!

I'm confused as to why this is an issue if the games were licensed non-exclusively?

Complaining about a bunch of IP infringing 'Mario' games being removed from a distribution network? Ballsy move bringing attention to that!

an update on this - apparently it was a bug in the payment settings section for some users and has now been fixed

Good to know I'm not the only one then! I checked this morning and now it's displaying my previous (correct) details in the payment settings + I am able to update and save them now. All very odd! Will be interesting to hear from them what the issue was.

I've just discovered someone has changed my payment details in Game Distribution's dashboard to a PayPal account originating in India. Not sure how long ago but probably recently as I received a payment in November. If you have been missing payments you might want to check your own settings in case this has happened to you too. If it's not just me and the platform has been hacked in some form then it might be wise to change your password while you're at it! edit - actually on logging out and back in to the dashboard it appears that I am unable to update my payment settings and remove the thieve's PayPal details!

smart re-use of your hockey game, looks good! The inclusion of Finland completely ruins the realism though 😉

For previous games like this I've taken a few different approaches: if the game is based on a competition where the number of national teams are fixed and displaying all of the flags as individual options/buttons doesn't feel too unwieldy then I've taken the 'customisation' route as you described (all teams, all colours, no clashes). In this situation, users who do not have their specific country represented do not feel aggrieved because their team wasn't in the actual competition it's based on. For games where you already have a user specific image asset (eg. Facebook profile image) I've used that instead of choosing a country as a visual representation (but still have opponents displayed as a national flag). This allows you to skip the flag selection screen and get straight into gameplay. For games where there would not naturally be a limit to the number of countries to choose from I've let the user choose their flag but from a limited selection that represents the predicted audience, eg. in a sports game I display flags from countries that (a) would form the core audience based on data from previous games and (b) Are known for being good at that particular sport. Obviously there are going to be some people not happy their country is missing but I didn't really want many pages of flags before gameplay! One of the good things about having user selected countries is that it allows you to have country based leaderboards (where scores are totalled up for each location), this is useful on several fronts: the leaderbaord is a fixed length, avoiding potentially thousands of entrees which can be discouraging to players it really taps into that patriotic fervour to beat your opponent as it aligns with how we approach national sports in real life has a nice 'team' based approach to gameplay where you are essentially playing alongside your countrymen rather than just yourself for the highscore In general, personally I think it's worth adding user choice countries and team colours where possible as it does make the game take on a more personal flavour, particularly if you feel your own performance can improve your team's standing on a leaderboard

cheers, yeah - that appears to be the same page I used - hard to tell as different links seem to lead to the same pages on FB for reasons I'm sure make sense to them... On the plus side, I've been impressed with the instant games tools and documentation + the upload/test process is pretty painless

aha good tip thanks! Yes - once you've played it on desktop or mobile you get a little icon as a shortcut on your home page (or whatever you call it on Facebook) and that links direct to the game with it's own URL. I've requested to join the 'Instant Game Developer Community' group on FB but I am still 'pending' apparently I've got to admit I am finding Facebook very unintuitive to navigate - I don't know how everyone and their Auntie is able to use it so much

Predictably now that Facebook are letting anyone upload content to the 'Instant Games' platform - it's being flooded with stolen HTML5 games The copyright form https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/1758255661104383 needs a URL leading to the specific content but the games open in an overlay so there is no direct link to them (beyond inspecting the element), nor is there a way to effectively search by 'developer' or game title within Facebook Was wondering if anyone had found a way to report and remove games within this platform yet?

fantastic - love this game!

Oof! No one came out of that discussion looking pretty!