Positech Games Boss Calls For An End To Deep-Discount Sales

[Cingle]

It's a bad thing (and I argue this point primarily as devil's advocate) because it hollows out the industry: You have major triple-A launches like Titanfall on one end, and low-budget indie stuff on the other, with no sustainable middle ground. Indie devs are effectively forced to sell their games at sub-$10 prices almost from the day they launch, and while some of them have done quite well for themselves that way, it's not entirely clear what the long-term effect will be. But it's not unreasonable to suggest that at some point, when these prices become the de facto norm, they'll no longer have the impact they do now. And then what? Free-to-play everything? That's where we're headed already, and it's not a future many people care for. So what's the alternative? What happens to indie devs when gamers finally decide that nobody is worth more than 99 cents?

Then the indie devs will know what it's like to be a musician.

 

[Armadox]

Steam and other platforms should just have a devotion button. Games that a player bought on the cheap, can tip the game designers a few bucks more with the devotion button. The tips help the game makers, without hurting sales. There's a few games I'd tip on, that I know I bought cheap, then realized I would like to support the game makers more without wanting to purchase another copy I can't use. Or DLC that is more then I want to spend on a "tip of the hat" for a product.

 

[Ragnar47183]

Yesterday I went to our basement to pick up some apples we stored there from last fall. If you keep them dry they remain edible well over half a year. Sure, they get a bit wrinkly, but overall we can pretty much each apples from our garden all year long.

Those apples from my garden keep their value longer than the average video game these days. Half a year after a game is released, it'll be 50% off, if not more. My apples don't spoil that fast.

My apples also don't required hundreds of people to work for them or millions of dollars. That makes me think that there is some sort of point to this.

Sir, You are comparing apples to oranges here.

.... Im sorry I just had to.....

 

[Cerebrawl]

That's not necessarily related directly to Steam sales or Humble Bundles - a lot of developers would no doubt say they're very empowering - but people seem too eager to say "these games aren't worth full price" when the truth is they just don't want to pay that much.

Those people are right, by definition.

Games are only worth what people are willing to pay for them. It's not a difficult concept.

If people aren't willing to pay full price, then it's not worth full price, the market has spoken. Adapt or die.

A company isn't entitled to sell things at a price higher than the market is willing to pay, they don't get sold, so either they lower their prices or they go out of business. There's absolutely no law or rule that says you're entitled to get sales at the price you set.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

I see a lot of people talking about what games are and aren't worth. It just makes me curious about what the common consensus says a $60 game should be to be worth that price. I think that should be the focus of the conversation first and foremost. Just what are people expecting a $60 to provide them in order to justify the price.

Bioshock or Borderlands 2 at minimum, Skyrim or GTAV on average.

A $60 game should be a sign that you're about to be playing something far bigger and better (in general, of course) than any $10 - $15 game could ever hope to achieve. They should be more-or-less the pinnacle of what gaming can achieve. An 8-hour SP linear campaign with no replayability and a focus on being cinematic is, as a rule of thumb, not worth $60 in the slightest. The only games I know to defy this are Portal 2 (in my own personal opinion) and apparently South Park: Stick of Truth if everyone is to be believed, though whether or not those even qualify is debatable due to Portal 2's separate Co-op campaign and South Park's somewhat-open nature.

 

[softclocks]

I think Gaben did an interview where he shed a little info the sale-pscyhology or something. Apparently a game barely sells more if it's on 50% sale (assuming it's not a huge title), but as soon as it dips into the 70-80% area then it sells a thousand times more than it normally would, or some obscene number like that. Games like this jerkoff's Democracy, and other "minor" titles are never going to sell outside a very small niche unless there's a huge sale. I understand that it creates a kind of culture that the bigwigs aren't comfortable, but it seems like they really are making a lot of money off it. It's also the only way people are ever going to revisit a lot of older titles.

On the other hand it puts a lot of pressure on the developers who aren't putting their games on sale.

Thank Gan for that.

They create the perception that games are only worth $5 or $10, which in turn encourages gamers to ignore them at launch and walk away from them the moment they run into difficulty, rather than persevering and finishing them.

Ooops - button up, there, Cliffy! Your sense of privilege is showing. Your game has no right to anybody's time, at any price point. If your game, given away completely free, cannot keep players' interest, I'd say the failure is yours. Relying on people wanting to get their money's worth to drag them through your game against their own disappointment? Not good.

This guys is so right.

 

[Kathinka]

oh noes! gamers only paying what a game is worth for them instead of shelling out 60 bucks pre-launch for preorder-dlc-scams, broken promises and half-broken games? oh the horror! the humanity!

if your players don't think your product is worth 60 quid at launch, maybe you should increase the value of your product? crazy idea, i know..

 

[Zacharious-khan]

I have dark souls 2 bought and paid for full price on steam right now. Trust me if your games were worth $60 i'd be paying it at launch. If they cant make games that i literally can't wait to play then you shouldn't be surprised when i don't want to pay full price.

 

[Stabby Joe]

On one hand I see where this line of thought is coming from... however I don't think that is genuinely the case here. Care to offer a solution? Thought not.

I am perfectly willing to pay around launch (not pre-order, Maxis screwed with their last Civ V add-on 10 hours after release) if it is the game I want. Would they rather me pay 50 to 80% off later or NEVER at full price.

Apparently some companies want all or nothing, not any other amount.

 

[Ipsen]

I would like to see a greater appreciation for the value of games, for the work that goes into them, and for the need of the people who make them to earn a decent living off of them. We're in a really weird place right now: Guys like Notch and Garry Newman can make millions from indie oddities, while an artist or a coder who worked on BioShock Infinite has virtually no job security. And no, we don't owe anyone a job or an income, but if we want the kind of gaming experiences we've come to take for granted, we have to be willing to pay for them - and that requires a respect for their true worth.

That's not necessarily related directly to Steam sales or Humble Bundles - a lot of developers would no doubt say they're very empowering - but people seem too eager to say "these games aren't worth full price" when the truth is they just don't want to pay that much.

But developers unfortunately cannot ask for more appreciation, when gamers only do what they're ask of in buying games. Granted, this is in terms of a game staying the same in content, and the dev asking for nothing else but money.

As much as I'd like to show more tangible appreciation or value into games and their development (*cough*-ATLUS-), when the message of expression is by money, I'm clearly limited, and it's often beyond reasonable if I were to give more money than asked for in exchange for a product, no matter (and considering only) how much I respected said developer. Long story short, money only says so much for how much a game is valued, by either the consumer or the developer.

Really, at this point of social media, there's so much information on how much of a struggle it is for game development. EDIT: The human empathy is clearer now. But as far as some semblance of a business relationship being in place between me and a developer, regardless of extraneous appreciation, I can't even begin to reasonably value your game until I buy it. Which is at least a bit unfair.

And the thing about Notch is that he and Mojang made millions by crafting a work that resonated with more than just the currently passionate in games; They've done what AAA industry is effectively KILLING itself to do: reaching a broader audience than typical or ingrained gamers.

Mr. Harris is free to bring up this argument with the entirety of gaming consumers(I know, impossible). Indeed, it could be pretty disastrous if all gaming consumers bought only on 70-80% sales. But the argument is made to the Escapist community, and we're at best a subset of gaming consumers (closer to a microcosm, but not quite). Factors considered, we're not the core of the issue, nor is any particular subset of the gaming community, and thus I felt the article was a bit unwarranted, if not misdirected.

 

[muningris]

"We are no longer selling products, we are selling discounts. The endorphin rush is now from getting a bargain, not the fun of actually *playing* the game. This is bad."

This is deluded thinking that fails to understand why gamers choose not to buy games at full price. The only reason that I do not habitually buy games at full price is because I have so often done so, and found that the experience of those games fell short of the value that I paid for them. I don't pass over games and think "I'll just buy it once it's on sale". I pass over the game entirely, with no intention of ever buying it at all. And then, likely after hearing some positive feedback, I see it on sale and think "Well, for X bucks, I might as well pick it up and see for myself." This is, of course, excluding the many games I never buy, full price or no, because of how terrible the reviews and feedback are.

We don't buy discounted games for the thrill of the bargain. We buy discounted games because we are trying to get "the fun of actually *playing*" a good game without wasting our money on full price pieces of shit.

 

[Cerebrawl]

Indeed, it could be pretty disastrous if all gaming consumers bought only on 70-80% sales.

Not necessarily. It means you have to reach sales figures 5 times higher to reach the same revenue. But here's the thing: you do! Actually more than that, steam sales at 75-80% often sell for upwards of 80 times the normal REVENUE. For an 80% off game that means you're making 400 times the normal sales. Adding to that there's an increase in post-discount sales as well, because of exposure and word of mouth.

Valve has even come out saying some games even sell 1000 times more during the deep sales. That means the revenue you're pulling in during the sale is 200-250 times the normal. 2000-2500%.

So I ask, where's the disaster? Especially since this doubles as promotion/advertisement and the games often keep selling after the sale ends. Because now more people have heard of you. This doesn't apply to huge triple As but it does for indies.

And despite all this, we also know that new releases stay on the top seller list for weeks, sometimes even if they're not even done yet, just early access. At undiscounted prices.

So I ask again where's the disaster? All I see at the moment is a come one come all feeding frenzy with more successful games than ever before in the history of gaming.

I mean I can see the conundrum for small niche titles that have a tiny target audience because they're glorified spreadsheets, like the author of this blog post is selling, but it's not a problem with the market. I see the market as more alive and vibrant than it's ever been before, and I've been gaming since the 80s.

You don't have to sell games for $30-80 dollars because you only have a target market that's a few hundred thousand strong(or even just tens of thousands) like in the old days, you can sell it for $10 and make literally millions of sales. Consumers are more likely to take risks on cheap games, and will buy them en masse. And since they've now only spent a little bit on it, they can do so for a bunch of other titles too. So there's room in the market for many more games.

 

[lord's voken]

with dlc the way it is, its almost always seem smarter to buy the game super cheap and then buy the dlc.
for example mass effect. i preorder that crap for 60 bucks, but then 50 dollars worth of dlc came out for it, thats just the single player story dlc too. no way is that game worth $110 and i wouldnt pay that much for it. but mass effect two and one i got used for like super cheap and thus had no problem buying all the mass effect 2 dlc, in fact you might say i was happy to purchase it, though it was so good.
so while day one dlc and overpriced dlc, dlc that was cut from the main game and ect are still a thing, then any thinking customers,not just consumers, are going to keep such discounts a required thing as they should.

 

[Ipsen]

Indeed, it could be pretty disastrous if all gaming consumers bought only on 70-80% sales.

Not necessarily. It means you have to reach sales figures 5 times higher to reach the same revenue. But here's the thing: you do! Actually more than that, steam sales at 75-80% often sell for upwards of 80 times the normal REVENUE. For an 80% off game that means you're making 400 times the normal sales. Adding to that there's an increase in post-discount sales as well, because of exposure and word of mouth.

Valve has even come out saying some games even sell 1000 times more during the deep sales. That means the revenue you're pulling in during the sale is 200-250 times the normal. 2000-2500%.

So I ask, where's the disaster? Especially since this doubles as promotion/advertisement and the games often keep selling after the sale ends. Because now more people have heard of you. This doesn't apply to huge triple As but it does for indies.

And despite all this, we also know that new releases stay on the top seller list for weeks, sometimes even if they're not even done yet, just early access. At undiscounted prices.

So I ask again where's the disaster? All I see at the moment is a come one come all feeding frenzy with more successful games than ever before in the history of gaming.

I mean I can see the conundrum for small niche titles that have a tiny target audience because they're glorified spreadsheets, like the author of this blog post is selling, but it's not a problem with the market. I see the market as more alive and vibrant than it's ever been before, and I've been gaming since the 80s.

You don't have to sell games for $30-80 dollars because you only have a target market that's a few hundred thousand strong(or even just tens of thousands) like in the old days, you can sell it for $10 and make literally millions of sales. Consumers are more likely to take risks on cheap games, and will buy them en masse. And since they've now only spent a little bit on it, they can do so for a bunch of other titles too. So there's room in the market for many more games.

Well, I wanted to make 'all customers' key to that point. That would be, conflating every sort of subset of gaming consumerism under blanket trends, like Steamesque off sales. So no, you wouldn't have any figure like 400% of 'normal sales', because everyone is considered; they all fall under the normal 100%, with all the pressuring factors that come with that. THIS scenario I think would be pretty disatrous.

But you can easily see how imporobable this scenario is, right? I have to make these stretches of imagination in order to see Harris' point making any sense. Not every sector of the gaming market puts up sales like Steam does, but him picking on them as an issue paints targets (Steam sale consumers) who may not be the only factor to his problems in marketing his game, places burden of responsibility on that target to fix it (essencially telling them, 'buy my game at full price more so we can float!').

... And all of that under ultimately a leap in judgement; that we don't value the games we buy because the price tag is slashed tremendously, but perhaps overlooking that, especially considering economic times, we just value the money that we do have.

I wonder if someone has touched upon the opportunity cost of waiting for such sales already...

 

[Cerebrawl]

Well, I wanted to make 'all customers' key to that point. That would be, conflating every sort of subset of gaming consumerism under blanket trends, like Steamesque off sales. So no, you wouldn't have any figure like 400% of 'normal sales', because everyone is considered; they all fall under the normal 100%, with all the pressuring factors that come with that. THIS scenario I think would be pretty disatrous.

It's also a completely a completely unreasonable fantasy hypothetical that completely ignores everything we know about human psychology, flying against every data point ever collected. It's not even worth addressing as a reasonable point because it's not. It's never going to happen.

A large subset of people are far too impatient to wait for sales. That's not even counting those who don't care about price at all and always buy the collectors edition and all DLC when it's released, like the so called "whales"(you know the ones who spend $500+ on F2P games). Or the people who buy full price to support the developer, or just feel better about themselves for paying full price, these people exist too.

It's on par with when the RIAA, MPAA, etc claim every pirated copy of everything as the loss of a full price sale. It's pure fantasy.

So given that it's an unreasonable scenario, I can't really take it seriously and why I didn't treat it as such. Because getting 'all costomers' to do anything is like herding cats, millions if not billions of them.