The developers of PEAK, explaining how they decided on pricing for their game.
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A reminder that you don't need to know advanced maths to be a developer. Just call the necessary functions to do the job
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I had my sewer line backing up into my basement a couple of months ago. My regular plumber was busy so I had to call in a company that I knew was an overpriced scam ("Dream Team" lol) but I had no choice since I had guests in the house for my father's funeral. They came and of course they couldn't clear the line and said they had to dig up and replace the whole thing. The guy had a special tablet that he showed me the three options and the prices on and it initially showed them all in dollars per month with "zero-interest financing". I was like dude just show me the total cost. The three options were $17K, $22K and $36K total but the monthly payments actually decreased with increasing total price (naturally the payment option didn't show how many total payments you would have to make).
Fortunately I called my regular plumber and he was so outraged at these motherfuckers that he came out that afternoon and cleared my line for me. Total cost $850.
Holy shit. Hold on to that plumber, lol.
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Good thing I didn't buy this game. Or continue to buy anything from steam. I got lost trying to figure out what this is even talking about, other than money money money.
What a way to reveal how stupid you are
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Holy shit. Hold on to that plumber, lol.
He does like to launch into racist rants, but sometimes you just gotta hold your nose and swallow.
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Yeah. I used to have a $20 shareware product back when kagi was a payment processor. Apple introduced $1 pricing as a dick waving contest and fucked the entire indy developer community.
I originally sold my app on Beyond.com (which was originally software.net). They took 10% which didn't seem too bad. One day they contacted me about giving my app a "freebate" -- basically the app was still $29.95 but buyers could fill out a form and send it in and eventually (like months later) get their $29.95 back. Per their data only about half of buyers ever bothered to do this so it was effectively a 50% off deal. Beyond.com was supposed to give me about $10 per copy sold instead of the normal $27 to cover the freebate and they would make $5 per copy instead of their normal $3.
I said OK and they featured my app on their front page and sales went up like 100X and I was of course pretty happy. The funny part was that their accounting system was all fucked up and I kept getting $27 per copy sold even though the freebate was still in place. I actually tried contacting them multiple times about this to get the situation corrected and I could never get through to anybody who had any clue about what was going on. Eventually they went bankrupt and shut down and years later I got one of those class-action settlement checks in the mail without any explanation of what it was for. Maybe sales of my app were even better than they were telling me, I dunno. I've never once met a person in the real world who has ever even heard of the app so that doesn't seem very likely.
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For me, it goes:
0 - hell no
1 to 5 - sure why not, that's about as much as a bottled drink.
6 to 10 - maybe once a month.
11 to 15 - better be a pretty damn good game, or I'm refunding.
16 to 20 - I'm waiting for a discount, not worth it.
21 to 60 - hell no
61+ - I'm blacklisting your company from my recommendations.
I get that this is Lemmy and users here are a certain way but calling anything over 16 dollars not worth it is genuinely insane.
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I get that this is Lemmy and users here are a certain way but calling anything over 16 dollars not worth it is genuinely insane.
Considering the huge number of games I have that I haven't tried yet, I don't think it's crazy at all to have a high threshold for buying yet another one.
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I get that this is Lemmy and users here are a certain way but calling anything over 16 dollars not worth it is genuinely insane.
imo over 16 it better have workshop support or an active online playerbase
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Good thing I didn't buy this game. Or continue to buy anything from steam. I got lost trying to figure out what this is even talking about, other than money money money.
I have to disagree. This quote would be super shitty talking about microtransactions, but if this is about Peak, I dont believe they have any microtransactions in their game. Its the full price of the game. And honestly, if you have friends to play it with, $8 is a steal. Its nothing ground breaking or like world changing, but it's a fun time-waster to spend time with people you like and accomplish a goal with decent replayability.
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Good thing I didn't buy this game. Or continue to buy anything from steam. I got lost trying to figure out what this is even talking about, other than money money money.
After work do you say to yourself "work work work for money money money", because those are the vibes you are giving off.
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The best bang for buck Steam purchase I've done is Halo MCC for 39,99€. Five great games plus Halo 4.
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This is just this scene from The Jerk in written form.
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Surprised Factorio 1 isn't free so they can hook you before Factorio 2 comes out.
Isn't factorio 2 basically the space expansion pack?
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So their greedy assholes that admit to price manipulation...
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Then I'd have to also tell you to never play a game or buy a product ending in 99 cents. Getting into the mind of the consumer is business 101 and is literally the difference between a game/product having any success or not.
And this has been proven, JCPenney tried to get rid of 99 cent pricing and led to losing 30% profits and bankruptcy. The people who want fair and square pricing won't be there to actually buy it.
This isn't getting into the mind if the consumer, this is manipulating the consumer. Also, where did you get the idea that changing their prices caused their bankruptcy?
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Just seems to be a basic commentary on how people think about prices in general. The x.99 thing seems stupid but there's plenty of data showing that it has an effect.
Its more the "how do we find the optimal price to psychologically manipulate the consumer" aspect that's bothersome, instead of just setting it at a price that you think is fair. The 99 cent thing has been in effect long enough that my brain just automatically rounds it up.
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A reminder that you don't need to know advanced maths to be a developer. Just call the necessary functions to do the job
Glances at this guy's main() function
Instantly dies
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So their greedy assholes that admit to price manipulation...
I got like 40 hours of playtime from Peak before taking a break. For $8 I'm very satisfied.
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I get that this is Lemmy and users here are a certain way but calling anything over 16 dollars not worth it is genuinely insane.
You can always do the XKCD trick
But even this seems to have gone stale over time, as retro game prices get sticker (even going up as vintage games come back into fashion).
One thing I don't see on this list is "piracy", which is a bit weird if your line is $15. I find a lot of bargain bin games to be as bad or worse than FTP games. $20-30 has historically been my sweet spot
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Saying indies are expensive seems wild, but I kind of get it since the Steam Sales on pre-2015 games go hard. And easy piracy of anything up to PS2.
The biggest challenge I have with pirated games - especially Nintendo games - is the controller.
Yeah, I can get Metroid Prime or Mario 64 or Super Smash easily enough. But I can't have that classic experience on a PS knock off controller.
It's not the end of the world, of course. But I feel it.
