Who's making the decisions on whether a game has a special collectors edition, and what's in it? Especially big bundles with figures or maps and other tchotchkes; is that mostly publisher side?
Developers are responsible for all of the game software. If it’s part of the game itself, we probably did it. This includes DLC or edition-exclusive in-game content like weapons, characters, cosmetics, etc. If there’s a special collector’s edition exclusive in-game reward like a special dance or outfit, we did that.
The publisher usually does everything else - making physical disc copies, printing manuals and cases, making pack-in toys and tchotchkes, distributing games to distributors or retailers, and so on. If the collector’s edition includes any physical objects - a statue, a cloth map, a soundtrack, an artbook, plane tickets, a weeklong stay at the Burj-Al-Arab in Dubai, a Lamborghini Gallardo, etc. - that was probably handled by the publisher.Â
Incidentally, this is also one reason why many crowd funded games with physical rewards often run into financial trouble. Small print runs can end up being extremely expensive on a per-unit basis. Manufacturing physical items like toys are really about scale - the bigger the manufacturing run, the cheaper the items are. Big publishers that can easily handle the financial burden of a collector’s edition with toys already expect sales in the hundreds of thousands or millions of that product. Crowdfunded games are much less likely to get those kind of numbers, which makes delivering any promised physical rewards much more costly, relatively speaking.
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