About

Who runs d2c.guide, and how we work

d2c.guide explains how game studios can sell direct to players: the platform rules, the costs, the tax and the contracts. It is written for the people who sign off the decision, usually a CEO, CFO or head of monetization.

Who runs it

The site is owned and operated by Tebex. Tebex is a merchant of record for games: it sells in-game items and currency to players on behalf of studios, and handles the payments, tax and chargebacks. That makes Tebex one of the providers this site discusses, and you should read the site knowing that.

We built it because studios asked us the same questions in every sales call, and the honest answers were scattered across court opinions, tax authority pages and a dozen providers’ fee schedules. Most of what ranks for these questions today is a vendor’s blog making the case for its own product. We would rather studios compare providers on published facts, because we think our pricing holds up when they do.

How we treat other providers

• We quote each provider’s own published pricing and terms, with a link and the date we checked it.
• Where a provider does not publish a fee, we write “not published”. We do not estimate it and present the estimate as theirs.
• In the calculator, every provider, including Tebex, is costed on the same lines with the same formulas.
• Provider lists are alphabetical. We do not rank providers or award “best of” titles.
• In guides, Tebex appears as a disclosed example in a box marked “How Tebex handles this”. In tables and the calculator it appears alongside other providers, labelled as the operator of this site.

How we source and date what we publish

Every fee, threshold, ruling and statistic links to the document it came from. We prefer primary sources: the platform’s own guidelines, the court’s opinion, the tax authority’s guidance, the company’s filing. When only a news report or a vendor’s survey is available, we say so in the sentence. Each guide shows the date it was last reviewed. Platform rules pages are reviewed after every ruling or policy change that affects them.

Nothing on this site is legal, tax or accounting advice. The guides explain how the rules work; your advisers should confirm how they apply to your company.

Corrections

If you find a mistake, an out-of-date figure, or a provider’s fee that has changed, emailcorrections@d2c.guide with the page and the source. Providers are welcome to write in about their own entries. We fix confirmed errors and update the page’s review date.