World of Goo "Pay What You Want" Sale a "Huge Success"
2D Boy's "World of Goo First Birthday" experiment - allowing gamers to pick up the acclaimed indie title for as little as a penny - is being hailed by the game's creators as ridiculously successful.
Last week, 2D Boy announced that it was pulling a Radiohead and giving away the critically acclaimed World of Goo for as we see on the official 2D Boy site [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95453-World-of-Goo-Holds-a-Pay-What-You-Want-Sale].
All in all, approximately 57,000 people bought the game last week, and a graph of how many people paid how much money can be found here [http://2dboy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/histogram.png]. Unsurprisingly, the most popular price was the cheapest: Almost 17,000 people picked up World of Goo for $0.01. The second most popular price range was between $1.00 and $1.99, with further spikes at $5.00-$6 and $10.00-$11, and little bumps at $15-$16 and the game's current retail cost of $20-$21.
Ignoring that most people opted to pick up the game as cheaply as possibly, it's hard to see this as anything but a success. In the span of a week 33,741 people acquired the game for at least $1.00, and many paid more than that (7347 people buying the game at $5 equals a not-too-shabby $36,735, for example). So at the end of the week, there is a lot more money in the pockets of the 2D Boy duo than there was at the beginning - pretty good for a game that's been out for a year, huh?
Also interesting was the impact that the sale seemed to have on other channels that didn't have the "pay what you want" deal going on: Steam sales of the game rose 40%, and while weekly fluctuations on Steam are certainly not unheard of, an increase of that magnitude (coming on the heels of a 25% increase the week before) is rather rare. Meanwhile, WiiWare sales of World of Goo jumped 9% - not quite as big, but not insignificant, either.
There's a lot of interesting data over on the 2D Boy site, including results from a survey about why people chose the price they did (the most common answer? "That's all I can afford right now") but the data all points down to this: By letting consumers pay whatever they want, 2D Boy made a ton of money off of a year-old game in the span of a week. Oh, and the sale was so successful that they're extending it a few more days - if you still haven't picked up World of Goo, you have until October 25 (Sunday) to pick it up for as cheap as a penny. What's stopping you, man?
(Via RPS [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/20/world-of-goo-sale-provides-fascinating-results/])
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![](http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/galleries/display/53/53603.jpg)
2D Boy's "World of Goo First Birthday" experiment - allowing gamers to pick up the acclaimed indie title for as little as a penny - is being hailed by the game's creators as ridiculously successful.
Last week, 2D Boy announced that it was pulling a Radiohead and giving away the critically acclaimed World of Goo for as we see on the official 2D Boy site [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95453-World-of-Goo-Holds-a-Pay-What-You-Want-Sale].
All in all, approximately 57,000 people bought the game last week, and a graph of how many people paid how much money can be found here [http://2dboy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/histogram.png]. Unsurprisingly, the most popular price was the cheapest: Almost 17,000 people picked up World of Goo for $0.01. The second most popular price range was between $1.00 and $1.99, with further spikes at $5.00-$6 and $10.00-$11, and little bumps at $15-$16 and the game's current retail cost of $20-$21.
Ignoring that most people opted to pick up the game as cheaply as possibly, it's hard to see this as anything but a success. In the span of a week 33,741 people acquired the game for at least $1.00, and many paid more than that (7347 people buying the game at $5 equals a not-too-shabby $36,735, for example). So at the end of the week, there is a lot more money in the pockets of the 2D Boy duo than there was at the beginning - pretty good for a game that's been out for a year, huh?
Also interesting was the impact that the sale seemed to have on other channels that didn't have the "pay what you want" deal going on: Steam sales of the game rose 40%, and while weekly fluctuations on Steam are certainly not unheard of, an increase of that magnitude (coming on the heels of a 25% increase the week before) is rather rare. Meanwhile, WiiWare sales of World of Goo jumped 9% - not quite as big, but not insignificant, either.
There's a lot of interesting data over on the 2D Boy site, including results from a survey about why people chose the price they did (the most common answer? "That's all I can afford right now") but the data all points down to this: By letting consumers pay whatever they want, 2D Boy made a ton of money off of a year-old game in the span of a week. Oh, and the sale was so successful that they're extending it a few more days - if you still haven't picked up World of Goo, you have until October 25 (Sunday) to pick it up for as cheap as a penny. What's stopping you, man?
(Via RPS [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/20/world-of-goo-sale-provides-fascinating-results/])
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