GameSalad announces GameSalad Direct, publishing model outside of Apple's dev program

We've posted about GameSalad here before -- the company offers up a third-party development and publishing solution that allows anyone, even non-coders, to jump into the GS SDK, make a game, and then quickly publish it out to the web or platforms like Apple's App Store. The company has been narrowing its focus recently after a round of funding -- last week at GDC, it announced that the Gendai Games brand was no more, and instead it would be consolidating everything under the name "GameSalad."

This week GameSalad continued in that focus with a service called GameSalad Direct. Previously, developers could pay a fee to simply remove GameSalad's branding from apps created with the software, and sell those apps on the App Store under their own Apple developer accounts. That will still work for GameSalad developers for now, but when those accounts expire, everything will move to GameSalad Direct, which instead will either be free for devs publishing free games, or part of a revenue share for publishers wanting to sell paid apps.

That means GameSalad game devs won't use their own Apple accounts any more -- presumably, everything created by GameSalad in the store will need to be published under the GameSalad banner. That has raised some hackles on GameSalad's forums, and Apple might not be too happy with it either (since if developers do sign with GameSalad, that's potentially a lost developer connection). We've contacted GameSalad to get some more information on the change and an official perspective on the reaction to the news.
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