Comparisons

Side-by-side comparisons of the decisions operators actually face — starting with the one that decides how you buy.

Delivery models

The one comparison that decides everything else about how you buy.

  • White label, turnkey, or API Three names, two products and a delivery option. What each term means here, why vendors use them interchangeably, and which decision you are really making.

Decisions before you buy

Three pages about running the purchase rather than about the product.

  • Choosing a providerA selection process rather than a feature list: the two things to settle before you shortlist, what actually separates suppliers, and the three answers that should end a conversation.
  • Build or buyWhat building actually includes in this category, the part of it that never finishes, and the narrow circumstances where building is the right call.
  • Supplier evaluation checklistEvery question worth putting to a supplier in this category, grouped by subject — including the ones we answer badly, with links to where we answer them.

Coming

Stated as intentions rather than as links, because a page of dead links is a worse advertisement for a section than an honest short list. One intention that was on this list is not coming, and the note says why.

  • A comparison of named suppliers, including where they are better than us

Two of the three intentions listed here previously are now built and linked above. The third — aggregator versus direct studio relationships — is not coming, because the comparison already exists in full on the game aggregation page and a second version of it would have been the same argument in different words. Saying that is more useful than leaving an intention on a list until nobody remembers it.

How we write comparisons

Three commitments. They are the reason a comparison published by a supplier is worth reading at all, and they cost us something — which is the point.

  • No competitor is named until we can be accurate and fair about themNaming a vendor means describing their product correctly, including the parts where they are better than us. We are not there yet on anyone, so nobody is named.
  • Our own offering is disclosed as oursWhere we appear in a comparison, we say so in the same sentence. A comparison that hides which column belongs to its author is an advertisement wearing a table's clothes.
  • No comparison we would not show to the vendor being comparedThe test is simple and it is the whole standard: if we would be uncomfortable sending the page to the company described on it, the page is wrong and gets rewritten rather than published.
  • The comparison we have committed to writeA comparison of named suppliers is the page a buyer most wants and the one this standard makes expensive: it means researching each product at source, publishing where they beat us, and being willing to send the page to the company described on it. We have committed to writing it on those terms rather than a cheaper version, and it is not published yet. Until it is, this section is the honest answer to why not.

Reviewed . Corrections are made visibly rather than silently.

Comparisons on this site name no competitor, and say so. If you want us compared with somebody specific, send the comparison you have been given and we will tell you which parts of it we would dispute.