DayZ Price Increases by 15%, Immediately has "15% Off Sale" - Update

[lunavixen]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Australian consumer watchdogs went ballistic. I'm just glad I don't actually want DayZ

"How dare they give me a game that is cheaper than what it should be in the first place but then pretend like theres a sale when it should be a sale price of the already arbitrary price that it is, I'm entitled!" - People everywhere

I'm confused

It's disingenuous to offer a "sale" on something that has just been marked up to sell more copies and it's actually an illegal practice in Australia and many European countries, what the dev should have done was either mark the price up a few weeks ago, or waited until after the steam sale to do so, doing it this way (legality aside) is only going to generate backlash against them.

I mean your supermarket doesn't tell you when they mark down the price on fruits and vegetables most times.

Fruits and vegetables that don't have a best before or use by date (i.e. not prepackaged) are marked down on judgement calls based on their freshness or if the store has excess stock. Fruit and veg that goes on sale or special price for catalogues or weekly specials is determined by the distributor and head office and whether the item in question is in season or not, that's not actually controlled by the supermarket themselves. In Australia, it is actually required to put the "before" price on shelf stickers and in catalogues.

Any store could simply say that the hiked price was the items true price and that it had always been on an unpublished markdown.

Nope, that's illegal here.

Didn't Steam just give some new rules (or at least guidelines) regarding Early Access, stating that customers should be buying the game based on its current state?

It then logically follows that all Early Access games *must* gradually become more expensive or they'd be breaking those rules.

They do have new rules regarding Early Access, but it doesn't say that the price must rise as the game becomes more complete, I think it just means that there is a price cap on Early Access games in different stages to stop devs overcharging for alpha stage and beta stage games compared to the finished product. Basically the price must equal the value of the game in its current state and not on future promise.

[/quote]

How is it false? They raised the price based on the planned updates and then had a sale on the new price. It's stated in the product documentation and these price raises are par for the course. It's a sale on the new price. When the sale ends, the price will remain raised. Also considering I have seen dayz on sale a few times without pulling this "trick" (I don't see how this is meant to work) It backs up the supposition that this was a timing issue.

In Australia, there is a period of time after a product has had in increase in price where it can't go on sale for the previous price (I think the grace period is a few weeks, I'd have to find the legislation to be sure), the poor timing of the price increas IS what's raising the legal issues.

 

[camazotz]

So doing a tiny bit of actual --you know-- research, I checked out the DayZ page on Steam to see if they had actually discussed their pricing strategy. Among the early development releases on Steam it is more common to have a cheaper "alpha or beta" participation price and then a "final product" retail price planned so this doesn't surprise me.

So sure enough they do, in their latest news bit posted on Nov. 26th:

Along with the remaining updates this year you can expect a new price point for DayZ, a slight increase to 27.99 EUR/34.99 USD. This is part of a gradual price change as we progress with the development and reach the goals that we along with your help set for the project. We would like to avoid a sudden increase in price once we hit 1.0. Don`t be discouraged by this increase however, the current price of 23.99 EUR/29.99 USD will still be available during the Steam fall sale. If you want to jump into DayZ, now is a good time.

Now, people getting upset about this increase seem to me to be getting pissed at the wrong thing. I am personally sick of Steam letting developers crawl onto their service with pre-alpha, alpha and beta product and selling them to consumers who get the joy of being quality assurance testers that actually pay for the privilege. DayZ hiking the price as it moves to a final release state (although I should point out that they haven't actually gotten there yet and are still listed as early release) isn't what bugs me; its the fact that this game is even available for sale when it's in alpha/beta.

I know that there's a mindset out there that this is a way for smaller companies to get their games out the door with early funding, but all it's doing is hurting the consumer who buys a product either in ignorance of its playable condition or as a means of supporting the dev, then the devs let the game linger in a half-finished state for a year or three, possibly never completing it, and then kicking it out the door one day in a "final" release that may barely be advanced from the beta state....at a higher price, typically.

Consumer advice: wait until the game is "final," properly reviewed, out a few weeks or months and on sale and you'll never go wrong. Any purchase prior to that point is just willing participation in the consumer victimization process.

 

[TheAsterite]

It's basic reading comprehension, I don't get how you don't get it.
The steam sale hit, they jacked up the price of the game to $34.99 when right before the sale it was $29.99, and now they mark it as 15% off which puts it at $29.74 thus making the "15% off sale" pretty much a lie. They are abusing the system of having a "sale" tag to sell more copies.

I don't see how you don't get it. If, after the sale ends, the price is higher than the sale price, it's still a good deal. That's what happens with early access games, they get more expensive as development goes on.

 

[Sol_HSA]

People should just ignore the whole "X% off" thing, you should judge something by it's price, not by how much it costs relative to some imaginary price it's not being sold for.

Unfortunately, steam's systems don't ignore it. Having something on discount will show up in the "specials" list. (Then again, there always seems to be 100+ items in the 'specials' list, so that's not so much of an advantage anymore..)

 

[KenAri]

Is it so bad? It's pretty scummy to look at, but if someone looks at the game and thinks 'Oh, I'm willing to pay that price now it's on offer', they would've been willing to spend the full price anyway. If they buy it because 'Omg discount, must buy', then they deserve to not have their money.

Edit: My point is that we should be blind to 'x% off' values. We should consider the value of each game and then the price of it, and see if it's worth buying. This game's value nor price have not changed, and if the full price was 'too much' before, nobody should see the 15% tag off and think 'Yeah, now it's worth it'.

 

[Bindal]

"fire currently shows a lack of flames"? TBH, i didn't know people were complaining about that.

Well, then stop acting like it. Because that's EXACTLY how you sound.

The loot system is awful (re spawning? Then why is it impossible to find a can of beans in a small town, even if I'm playing on a relatively small server with no-one around?)

Just because Loot is respawning doesn't mean it's plentyful. It just means servers don't always need to restart to refresh the loot (even that still is common practice as it's faster). And you finding nothing has nothing to do with the loot system but more with you just being unable to find things. I never had any noticable problems with finiding loot (before the last reset, I was running around with about 600 rounds of caliber 5.56, several 60-round-mags to load them in and a fully modded M4 - I could start a small war on my own and, assuming I stay alive, hold out for a while)

and so is the path finding - seems all that's needed to lose a zombie is to dart into the nearest house for a couple of seconds and exit through the backdoor.

And that's how it should be? It's a zombie. And before they updated it, those guys would chase you forever BECAUSE they were unable to lose you (and able to clip through doors) - which was annoying. They improved the pathfinding on the server-side noticably.

You've said yourself they haven't even finished one of them, and most of the cities in Day Z are relatively small anyway.

No, that's not what I said. What I said was that they are currently working on a CITY. What you're talking about are TOWNs (which they also added several new ones already).
http://dayz.gamepedia.com/Novodmitrovsk

Besides, these new locations are mostly uninspired filler;they're not interesting to explore in the slightest.

And? Not everything has to be "flashy shiny awesomeness send by god". A town is a town. All you have to do is get some loot (which is probably WHY you're never finding anything to begin with)

Furthermore, the addition of new weapons isn't really that significant of an update, especially when some (like the revolver) were glitchy.

It is. Especially when there are now about twice as many weapons (two new assault rifles, a bow, two sub-machine guns, a pistol...). And I didn't even bother to mention new equipment in general (new backpacks, new food)

It shouldn't have taken this long to get crashed helicopters back

And why not? When other, more important things need to be added or fixed first, than this takes the backseat.

and the small addition of an extra 'flavor' of skin isn't a sufficient excuse for their late implementation

And here you show your ignorance once again - it's not two "skins", its two complete different types of crash sites. The old ones like in the mod (with a new set of loot to spawn there, primarily western military equipment). And new ones that have complete different, lesser loot which spawn at complete different locations (and are also consistant, not random)

Combine this with awful hit detection (melee is laughable at best) that was actually adequate in the mod and a lack of vehicles, and I'm afraid to say this is a poor game with a slow, monotonous update schedule.

The hitdetection they are aware of (but also released several updates to improve it) and vehicles I never noticed the lack of, personally (as in 'I never needed them')

 

[jklinders]

Day Z is still "early access?" That is one hell of a long lead in for an "early" game.

*shrugs* Shady pricing is shady. But not nearly as shady as making people pay for a game that is unfinished for literally years after they pay for beta access.

 

[Lillowh]

Arma 3 and several other early access games had the same pricing plan and no one complained. It's arguably not a good idea, but it's not in any way shocking. And as for "deceptive advertising" or whatever. The price is the price. If you see the game is on sale and decide to buy it you are going to look at the price and make your decision based on the information at hand. If the game enters another pricing stage (as has been stated and is common practice) then it is still a sale. I don't understand why everyone is so hopped up.

Slow news day I guess.

I don't understand why people assume that because they think something doesn't seem bad to them means breaking very important consumer protection regulations is an okay thing to do. Refer to my previous post here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.865943-DayZ-Price-Increases-by-15-Immediately-has-15-Off-Sale-Update?page=2#21643158] (or even just scroll up the page) and you'll see the exact legal text and it's source that matches such a situation almost to an identical degree.

 

[shadowmagus]

Yet another reason to not buy "early access". You're not even buying a complete game. I don't pay for beta releases of good games let alone "early access" of shitty games by shitty companies. Companies only do this because they know people are stupid enough to give them money for a half-finished product.

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

So, who is going to be getting the ACCC sent after them? Valve or the developer? It sounds to me like it's the developer who's at fault, so it should probably be them.

The developer sets the price, so they're the ones responsible. Valve just provides a storefront.

OT: This is the same shit retail stores have done for ages. They'll jack the prices up a few months before hand, then they'll drop the price down to the original price and market it as a "sale". I know there has to be some kind of law against it seeing as it's an extremely anti-consumer practice.

 

[chocolate pickles]

"fire currently shows a lack of flames"? TBH, i didn't know people were complaining about that.

Well, then stop acting like it. Because that's EXACTLY how you sound.

The loot system is awful (re spawning? Then why is it impossible to find a can of beans in a small town, even if I'm playing on a relatively small server with no-one around?)

Just because Loot is respawning doesn't mean it's plentyful. It just means servers don't always need to restart to refresh the loot (even that still is common practice as it's faster). And you finding nothing has nothing to do with the loot system but more with you just being unable to find things. I never had any noticable problems with finiding loot (before the last reset, I was running around with about 600 rounds of caliber 5.56, several 60-round-mags to load them in and a fully modded M4 - I could start a small war on my own and, assuming I stay alive, hold out for a while)

and so is the path finding - seems all that's needed to lose a zombie is to dart into the nearest house for a couple of seconds and exit through the backdoor.

And that's how it should be? It's a zombie. And before they updated it, those guys would chase you forever BECAUSE they were unable to lose you (and able to clip through doors) - which was annoying. They improved the pathfinding on the server-side noticably.

You've said yourself they haven't even finished one of them, and most of the cities in Day Z are relatively small anyway.

No, that's not what I said. What I said was that they are currently working on a CITY. What you're talking about are TOWNs (which they also added several new ones already).
http://dayz.gamepedia.com/Novodmitrovsk

Besides, these new locations are mostly uninspired filler;they're not interesting to explore in the slightest.

And? Not everything has to be "flashy shiny awesomeness send by god". A town is a town. All you have to do is get some loot (which is probably WHY you're never finding anything to begin with)

Furthermore, the addition of new weapons isn't really that significant of an update, especially when some (like the revolver) were glitchy.

It is. Especially when there are now about twice as many weapons (two new assault rifles, a bow, two sub-machine guns, a pistol...). And I didn't even bother to mention new equipment in general (new backpacks, new food)

It shouldn't have taken this long to get crashed helicopters back

And why not? When other, more important things need to be added or fixed first, than this takes the backseat.

and the small addition of an extra 'flavor' of skin isn't a sufficient excuse for their late implementation

And here you show your ignorance once again - it's not two "skins", its two complete different types of crash sites. The old ones like in the mod (with a new set of loot to spawn there, primarily western military equipment). And new ones that have complete different, lesser loot which spawn at complete different locations (and are also consistant, not random)

Combine this with awful hit detection (melee is laughable at best) that was actually adequate in the mod and a lack of vehicles, and I'm afraid to say this is a poor game with a slow, monotonous update schedule.

The hitdetection they are aware of (but also released several updates to improve it) and vehicles I never noticed the lack of, personally (as in 'I never needed them')

Come now: Do we really need to make this hostile? If you disagree with my opinion than that is fine. I just ask that you respect it as I have attempted to yours.

'Well, then stop acting like it. Because that's EXACTLY how you sound.'
Considering i didn't even mention fire in my original post, i have to say i disagree. All i was highlighting there was that i didn't know that was an issue. It didn't SOUND like anything to me

'Just because Loot is respawning doesn't mean it's plentyful. It just means servers don't always need to restart to refresh the loot (even that still is common practice as it's faster). And you finding nothing has nothing to do with the loot system but more with you just being unable to find things. I never had any noticable problems with finiding loot (before the last reset, I was running around with about 600 rounds of caliber 5.56, several 60-round-mags to load them in and a fully modded M4 - I could start a small war on my own and, assuming I stay alive, hold out for a while)'

I assure you, I put plenty of effort into searching for things: 90% of the time, all i get are books and maybe a new hat. As for you finding all that loot - mind telling what server this was? because in my experience, such a feat would be quite difficult, and not nearly as simple as you have made it out to be.

'And that's how it should be? It's a zombie. And before they updated it, those guys would chase you forever BECAUSE they were unable to lose you (and able to clip through doors) - which was annoying. They improved the pathfinding on the server-side noticably.'

Noticeably wouldn't be my word for it - a small step, maybe, but still awful. Also, 'it's a zombie' ...and? last time i checked, zombies were capable of following people through houses.

'No, that's not what I said. What I said was that they are currently working on a CITY. What you're talking about are TOWNs (which they also added several new ones already).'

you said (and i quote) 'added several new locations including one huge city (still in the work and not released - only the roadwork has been added so far)'. If your calling me out on the flame thing - something i didn't even mention in my original post - then I'm definitely calling you out on this one. It's called paraphrasing.

'And? Not everything has to be "flashy shiny awesomeness send by god". A town is a town. All you have to do is get some loot (which is probably WHY you're never finding anything to begin with)'

You know what was also a town? The town i explored after leaving the sewer in Last of Us. Was it "flashy shiny awesomeness send by god"? No. Was it interesting to explore? Yes.

'It is. Especially when there are now about twice as many weapons (two new assault rifles, a bow, two sub-machine guns, a pistol...). And I didn't even bother to mention new equipment in general (new backpacks, new food)'

It a new skin with some statistics changed. That all.

'And why not? When other, more important things need to be added or fixed first, than this takes the backseat.'

It wasn't even a major feature, just a small, interesting addition. This could have been slided in quite easily at any update point, especially considering it had already been done in the mod.

'And here you show your ignorance once again - it's not two "skins", its two complete different types of crash sites. The old ones like in the mod (with a new set of loot to spawn there, primarily western military equipment). And new ones that have complete different, lesser loot which spawn at complete different locations (and are also consistant, not random)'

I chuckled at the first line: Didn't know I could be ignorant when it came to my opinion. It's a reskin with some different loot. Again, not hard.

'The hitdetection they are aware of (but also released several updates to improve it) and vehicles I never noticed the lack of, personally (as in 'I never needed them')[/quote]'

Improving from an awful system to a slightly less awful is not an exciting prospect, and is an example of poor design. 'never noticed the lack of (vehicles)'. Genuine question here: Have you actually played the mod?. Because i can assure you, that being able to get from point A to B was a boring, arduous trek in which i would hold down the W key with one hand a read a book in the other. Without vehicles, the standalone takes this to a new high, with their not even being the hope that you might find a vehicle that actually made getting around fun. It also added something to do: Scavenging for parts/fuel became fun when you knew there would be an interesting end result.

EDIT: Just been announced the game won't be finished until 2016. Is the update schedule still running smooth now?

 

[hermes]

Isn't that the same gearbox did with Borderlands The Pre-Sequel?
The game is now listed as being discounted from 60 to 49.99 $ (a 17%) discount... which, funnily enough, puts it right at the price of a full game...

 

[EdwardBerner]

They do have new rules regarding Early Access, but it doesn't say that the price must rise as the game becomes more complete, I think it just means that there is a price cap on Early Access games in different stages to stop devs overcharging for alpha stage and beta stage games compared to the finished product. Basically the price must equal the value of the game in its current state and not on future promise.

You are right that it does not explicitly say that the price must increase. However, as I see it, it is an implicit and unavoidable consequence of the following statement:

Customers should be buying your game based on its current state, not on promises of a future that may or may not be realized.

Now, if you keep the price of your Early Access game the same from its Early Access launch to it being "complete", there is a problem, since you've efficiently sold less features for the same price to the early adopters. And if we also account for inflation, you've actually sold less features for a higher price! This is in clear violation with the customer "buying the game based on its current state".

So, while the rules don't explicitly state that you must increase the price of your game, it implicitly follows from the statement above. Although it is not stated when the price should rise or by how much, rise it must or you are breaking the Early Access rules.

 

[lawrencein]

They do have new rules regarding Early Access, but it doesn't say that the price must rise as the game becomes more complete, I think it just means that there is a price cap on Early Access games in different stages to stop devs overcharging for alpha stage and beta stage games compared to the finished product. Basically the price must equal the value of the game in its current state and not on future promise.

You are right that it does not explicitly say that the price must increase. However, as I see it, it is an implicit and unavoidable consequence of the following statement:

Customers should be buying your game based on its current state, not on promises of a future that may or may not be realized.

Now, if you keep the price of your Early Access game the same from its Early Access launch to it being "complete", there is a problem, since you've efficiently sold less features for the same price to the early adopters. And if we also account for inflation, you've actually sold less features for a higher price! This is in clear violation with the customer "buying the game based on its current state".

So, while the rules don't explicitly state that you must increase the price of your game, it implicitly follows from the statement above. Although it is not stated when the price should rise or by how much, rise it must or you are breaking the Early Access rules.

I think that quote just means that you can't sell a game based on possible future features, only on what is currently in the game and has nothing to do with the price.

 

[MCerberus]

Wow everyone is reacting like this is the first time anyone's used a sale to mask a price increase.
As opposed to reality where it's exceedingly common.

The only way this would be judged unethical or illegal is if:
1. there is no intent to permanently change the price to the new higher level
2. the sale goes on in perpetuity.

 

[Glaice]

Tell me again, why is this game still in early access more than 2 years later? Bohemia, you are wasting your time with moves like this and faux-sales the price here.

 

[KDR_11k]

I know here in Germany courts have ruled that the advertised discount must apply to a price that was actually in use for at least two weeks, otherwise it's false advertising and the store can be fined and customers can sue to receive the proper discount (in this case 15% off the pre-sale price).

The store in question advertised "20% off everything" (applied at the register) and raised the price of some items just before or as the sale started. The court ruled that since the item was not properly discounted by 20% off its regular price the statement "everything 20% off" was a lie.

 

[SJXarg]

Tell me again, why is this game still in early access more than 2 years later?

That would be because with a release date of December 2013, it hasn't been more than 2 years. The mod has been out for over 2 years, and is still free if you own Arma 2 Combined Operations. I say this as someone who was probably one of the first 10,000 sales, and still think the game went up too early, it should have gone early access 6 months later than it did, though with the amount of hounding there was for the game to release, I can understand why they let it go when they did.

 

[BoogieManFL]

It just happened to be an amazing coincidence that it just now was decided that it was in a state where it is now worth more money? Did it get a major content update at the same time? If so, did they deliberately decide to release it to coincide? I doubt that very much.


Regardless, it's a shady and slimy move that is purely intended to make it show on Steam sale without them losing any money in the "sale."

 

[chocolate pickles]

'Well, then stop acting like it. Because that's EXACTLY how you sound.'
Considering i didn't even mention fire in my original post, i have to say i disagree. All i was highlighting there was that i didn't know that was an issue. It didn't SOUND like anything to me

You're clearly not the brightest.
It's not an issue in the game - it's just how you would act if you would talk about actual fire instead about the game.

Wow. Excuse me for not knowing that an issue you made up as an example wasn't actually in the game. Next time, i'l make sure to trawl through every bug report so i know that your actually telling the truth.

Also, its pretty ironic how you can call me 'not the brightest' when you ignore every other point i make. What the matter, struggling to come up with any valid points?

Try not to insult people for lacking intelligence when you clearly lack any yourself.