Game Discounts, Sales And Bundles Are Toxic

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I'm just going to leave this right here and slowly back away as you guys have your say on the subject.

Why toxic ? Because systematic sales and discounts contribute with other factors (mobile stores pricing, bundles) to decrease the commonly accepted prices of games to absurdly low levels. It’s now a standard gamer behavior to wait 3 or 4 months before buying any game because you know for sure there’s a major discount coming. It’s so systematic that it’s nearly stupid not to do so!
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LoL... Broken PC games on release doesn't factor into their equation I guess...:rolleyes:

Pre-Orders, DLC... Nevermind just waiting 3-4 months, I wait for GOTY editions!
 
I wait months and months to avoid getting my face stuffed with broken incomplete bullshit, hell, I wait years, just so I don't get nickle and dimed and can finally have a complete fucking product that's been properly patched to boot.
 
Yakk said:
LoL... Broken PC games on release doesn't factor into their equation I guess...:rolleyes:

Pre-Orders, DLC... Nevermind just waiting 3-4 months, I wait for GOTY editions!
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Yup. I tend to wait because for certain almost ever game I have bought has failed the first week and is sketchy for a few weeks after. If I wait at least a month because bugs or network issues keep me away I tend to forget about said new game until I see a sale. Exceptions to everything of course but yea I don't much like extremely buggy launch games for full retail price.
 
Please feel free to leave games costing the same in perpetuity and enjoy having ten percent of the sales you would've had.
 
Someone didn't play attention to economics class then. The free market determines the price you want to pay. The catch is that supply is limited only to the number of keys provided to Steam for sale.

There are folks who are very happy to pay $60 for a game. I'm not one of those people. I was watching the Steam sale for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (plus Season Pass) to go to a price that I find reasonable. Based upon the feedback that I heard from other people, I'm better off waiting. I got more than enough games in my backlog. Plus, how many games were distributed with major defects that had to be resolved with a day one patch, and some that still have bugs?
 
I paid full price for the Witcher 3. I haven't played it because I'm waiting for all the critical bugs to be resolved and the quest fixes to be applied.
 
Sure, go ahead and expect me to pay the same amount for a 5-year old game that hasn't seen any new content in 4 years that I would for a game that just came out last week, see how that works for you.

If those guys have their finished game out in the wild for 6 months and sales are in the toilet, you can bet one of the strategies they'll try to get sales up will be to drop the price.

That being said, the game that author is working on, Drifting Lands, does seem like it has the potential to be a decent-looking shoot-em up.
 
Boo hoo, we have done it to every industry ever. People are cheap, that is the real reason for the increasing wealth gap.

If you only want to pay 5$ for a shirt, the manufacturer has to get it to you for much less. Insurance, contractors, everything suffers from this.
 
So they don't close this gap with Early Access, Season Pass, etc, etc?

It seems to me that the industry has created all sorts of additional revenue streams to offset any issue that might arise from sale prices.
 
Aireoth said:
Boo hoo, we have done it to every industry ever. People are cheap, that is the real reason for the increasing wealth gap.

If you only want to pay 5$ for a shirt, the manufacturer has to get it to you for much less. Insurance, contractors, everything suffers from this.
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You honestly think the reason for the ever increasing wealth gap is that PEOPLE ARE CHEAP? LOL!
 
Toxic?

Upping the prices of new games to 80, 90, 100 bucks. At the same time lowering the quality to absurd levels. First day DRM that you also have to pay for which used to be, and should be already part of the actual game. Recycling the same content 1-2 times a year and expecting everyone to pay top dollar for a rush job of the same thing all over again.

A completely corrupt game media review process that prevents honest and balanced reviews of a game that hasn't yet been released.

Dishonest marketing that misleads consumers about what the content of the game will be when it is released.

Monopolistic tactics that make it very difficult for anyone but established game companies to make a profit.

DRM that punishes paying customers while having little to no impact on piracy.

The sales prices are toxic.
 
dewbak75 said:
Sure, go ahead and expect me to pay the same amount for a 5-year old game that hasn't seen any new content in 4 years that I would for a game that just came out last week, see how that works for you.

If those guys have their finished game out in the wild for 6 months and sales are in the toilet, you can bet one of the strategies they'll try to get sales up will be to drop the price.

That being said, the game that author is working on, Drifting Lands, does seem like it has the potential to be a decent-looking shoot-em up.
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Preach it, brutha!

We're tired of the graphics issues, the game play issues, the login issues, the hacker issues, delays in release, having to buy DLC...etc.

Used to be that you buy a game, install it, and play it. That was it. I miss those days.
 
Pretty sure some EA shill was spewing similar nonsense awhile back about how sales were destroying the industry or something...lol. :rolleyes:
 
mecra said:
I paid full price for the Witcher 3. I haven't played it because I'm waiting for all the critical bugs to be resolved and the quest fixes to be applied.
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I would say you are good to go. I haven't run in to anything game breaking yet.
 
ZLoth said:
Someone didn't play attention to economics class then. The free market determines the price you want to pay. The catch is that supply is limited only to the number of keys provided to Steam for sale.
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So very true. If the game is worth the price people will pay for it. Years ago, I had friends who started playing League of Legends, which costs nothing, then drop $50 on characters and skins because they loved the game and wanted the cosmetic stuff. It was WORTH it to them. There are some games I've played at a friends house and bought that night, sale or not, because it was WORTH it to me. When a journalist makes a statement that a game isn't worth a particular cost, it's not because he doesn't understand the cost of development, it's because the journalist sees so many other BETTER games at the same or lower price point. And that's how competition works.

I can see how one of the hardest part about game development is getting noticed. The lost revenue from being in these sales can easily be accounted for as an advertising cost. Putting your game on sale causes it to get noticed by hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people, which encourages those people to tell their friends to get the game, which often happens after the sale is over, which drives up more revenue by people who would have never noticed your game otherwise.

And what does "developers have absolutely no clue" the cost of creating a game have to with discounted sales? This doesn't add to the discussion at all!

Some games are going to easily sell at a $50 or $60 price point for months. Others won't due to lack of recognition alone. No matter where you fall here, holding your price so high really limits your potential customer base on digital sales, where there's no fixed costs associated with distribution after the initial r&d have been recouped. At that point, it's just gravy to fuel future games.

Besides, who's going to pay the same for a 15 year old game as they are for the next great Batman Arkham game? That's just ridiculous. Lowering costs keeps interest in old, yet still good, games.
 
disemboweler said:
You honestly think the reason for the ever increasing wealth gap is that PEOPLE ARE CHEAP? LOL!
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Nah he's right, you just have to look at it in a meta sense. That means management is cheap too. They don't want to pay employees one cent more than they can get away with. Why pay someone in USA minimum wage when you can pay Vietnamese sweatshop labor for a dollar a day? With all the money you save, you can afford to pay lobbyists to change the laws to get you additional tax breaks and save even MORE money!
 
Honestly the last few games I bought day 1 or pre-ordered turned out to be a mistake. They either ended up not being as popular as I thought they would be (limiting the online matchmaking) or they were buggy etc. I used to get excited about new game releases and read news on new and upcoming games etc. I'm just not that person anymore.

Most games I buy I'll play for 0-4 hours, in total. I'm curious enough I want to try it out, but ultimately don't find anything new or that it has hooked me enough to want to spend more of my time on it. Sometimes games have some repetitive filler that even if they seem promising I can't be bothered. (Eg ES Oblivion, nearly every IOS game...)

I figure what is an hour or two of mild amusement worth. Probably about $15 (similar to a movie ticket).
 
What's this? Developers / Publishers complaining that people don't want to pay the full price out the gate?

There are so many reasons for this to be the case. Games that don't show great promise or review poorly are going to be bargain-binners. Games that don't interest a large enough audience at the "full" price point will simply be passed by. Some people cannot afford to spend the money on the full price.

This is some serious case of entitlement
 
Never mind the fact that in the digital distribution era, where the cost per unit is close to nil (bandwidth + electricity used by servers) compared to the old days when you had to have a pressed CD (or floppies :eek: ) and a box, manuals, artwork, etc. etc.

These days, Less is More.

In other words, the lower you price your game, the more money you make. Since each incremental unit has negligible costs associated with it, you almost always make up the revenue lost by lowering unit price, in increased volume.

Don't believe me? Ask a certain Gabe Newell of a little software company named Valve.
 
disemboweler said:
You honestly think the reason for the ever increasing wealth gap is that PEOPLE ARE CHEAP? LOL!
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He has it backwards.
It's because of the wealth gap that more people can't afford to buy a bunch of new games for $60 each.

That's one of the reasons I picked up an Xbox 360 last year. There are tons of old games on the Xbox, and many of them are available used or as free/inexpensive downloads with an Xbox Gold account.
And unlike the Wii, there are still new titles being released on the Xbox 360. Besides, the kids had pretty much outgrown the Wii.
 
I can see their point if we're talking about smaller studios. Studios that make good, modern games without the big budget for marketing. I'm not talking about side scrollers or phone to PC games. Given the option between buying a newer game from a relatively unknown studio with a new IP VS last years game from a big name brand at $10, most will choose the big name brand. As every industry shows us, brand recognition goes a long way.

Even if you were to bring the price down to $50, with large sales so frequent, you'll have a hard time selling up front when you can readily get AAA games for cheap. Just something to think about.
 
I am only going to pay full price for a preorder for a major AAA release (that I am already familiar with) and I expect some digital goodies to entice me ... and I rarely order even then (the only two preorders I have right now are for Might and Magic Heroes VII and Fallout IV both of which have extras and I have played every other version ... the last preorders I did before that were for D3 and Reaper and FarCry 3) ...

I do support the occasional Kickstarter but similar rules apply ... I almost always support a known developer or an experienced team that has previous games I played ... I am also picky about the tiers I buy into and view the digital extras very carefully ... the more experience I have with your team or the more I like your previous products, the more I willing to give (Pillars of Eternity got a very big pledge from me ... Grim Dawn somewhat less ... both of those were the highest pledges I made ... most others were in the $50 or less range)

Ultimately game sales still come down to good marketing (you are market your way into early sales or you have such a good game that word of mouth marketing gets you more sales) ... in the digital age with so many choices you have to justify why I should buy your product at full price or even at discount ... I now have so many titles on steam (approaching 400) and with another 100 or so on GOG that if you don't have high reviews (>85% or so) I will wait until your price drops below $10 ... if you reviews are bad (<50%) I will often wait until the price is under $5
 
Like with music, and movies, they have flooded the market with this art. Excessive numbers of different titles, an unlimited supply and near unlimited availability even years later due to digital distribution, buggy at release, countless pay DLCs often available in one package if you wait, are a few reasons that have led to there being very little reason to hurry out and buy the game. So, the market finds the art to be worth less now than b4.

Spend less making the art, spend less marketing the art, self publish, make a product so compelling we want to buy day one, find different ways to generate revenue off of the art, are some ways to go about fixing the issues game makers are facing..
 
My 2 cents (long story short): To all Publishers: Release a small demo of an early level of your developer's game six months before expected release. Then fix all the bugs you found as a result of this massive beta test. One month before final game release, whet our appetites with a polished small demo. Any bugs can be noted and will help speed the release of your first patch after the games rollout.
Hopefully you've now got us eager to buy your polished, relatively bug free, game. We have some idea going in of what we are buying into. We are less hesitant to pay full price. We all win.
 
I'll pay full price for games I'm interested in. Paid full price for Witcher 3 and DA:I and have 0 regrets.I'll pay full price for Fallout 4 and the new Mass Effect too.
 
Flogger23m said:
I can see their point if we're talking about smaller studios. Studios that make good, modern games without the big budget for marketing. I'm not talking about side scrollers or phone to PC games. Given the option between buying a newer game from a relatively unknown studio with a new IP VS last years game from a big name brand at $10, most will choose the big name brand. As every industry shows us, brand recognition goes a long way.

Even if you were to bring the price down to $50, with large sales so frequent, you'll have a hard time selling up front when you can readily get AAA games for cheap. Just something to think about.
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I don't understand this argument at all. I mostly see the smaller players being the ones who are willing to make bargains, include in bundles, etc.... The big AAA studios are happy to stick with a price lock. This actually makes a niche or void the smaller studios can fill they can deliver good games for cheaper prices out the gate and make sales with people who are looking for better value for their money.
 
I have no sympathy for the gaming industry. They brought it on themselves. Software companies have been getting away with stuff that would have people in other industries heavily fined and behind bars.
 
disemboweler said:
You honestly think the reason for the ever increasing wealth gap is that PEOPLE ARE CHEAP? LOL!
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At the very least its the loss of the ability to make a living wage, it is ECON 101. It also happens to be the least understood subject.

People just like to blame big corporations for it because its easy, takes away any responsibility or accountability, and shifts it to other people, which is our favorite past time.

Corporations are cheap, but they are also completely predictable.

People are stupid, Apple has proved this.

You shop at Big Grocery Store A, because BGSA is cheaper than the local whole foods. This store pays its staff the minimum, while the Local Foods pays an extra 4$ an hour (where I live), the local food store also buys more producer sensitive products, meaning they cost more because they too pay more in costs. BGSA buys everything bulk from the cheapest provider, who pay less in costs.

This model can be transported to every industry, and it generally holds true except for the marginal exceptions.

Insurance, Geico direct, buy here and save money, click online to quote. Less staff, less overhead, more profit than your local broker, also less ethical purchasing on the consumers part (at least if you care that people are employed).

Why are you so uneducated?
 
Aireoth said:
At the very least its the loss of the ability to make a living wage, it is ECON 101. It also happens to be the least understood subject.

People just like to blame big corporations for it because its easy, takes away any responsibility or accountability, and shifts it to other people, which is our favorite past time.

Corporations are cheap, but they are also completely predictable.

People are stupid, Apple has proved this.

You shop at Big Grocery Store A, because BGSA is cheaper than the local whole foods. This store pays its staff the minimum, while the Local Foods pays an extra 4$ an hour (where I live), the local food store also buys more producer sensitive products, meaning they cost more because they too pay more in costs. BGSA buys everything bulk from the cheapest provider, who pay less in costs.

This model can be transported to every industry, and it generally holds true except for the marginal exceptions.

Insurance, Geico direct, buy here and save money, click online to quote. Less staff, less overhead, more profit than your local broker, also less ethical purchasing on the consumers part (at least if you care that people are employed).

Why are you so uneducated?
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TLDR, yes its because people are cheap, its because the consumer drives the market, and because of poor decisions the consumer has also driven themselves out of a decent wage. As long as there is demand, attacking supply will change nothing.
 
There are more games than I can reasonably play. I buy games on sale just because I like the concept. Over 2/3 of my stream library has never been installed...
 
Tell that to us Canadians who have seen games go from $59.99, to $69.99 and most recently I'm seeing non-special edition games for $79.99.

Fuck paying full price if I don't have to. If you can't provide reasonable pricing, I guess I have to wait. There are very few games that are worth $79.99 ($90.39 after taxes) to me.
 
Gamers wait 3-4 months because most of the launch bugs are worked out by then, not only because there's a sale.
 
Games increase in quality over time, which is a peculiar thing for a product to do. The bugs get fixed, and hardware increases its ability to run it faster. Wine is famous for getting better and more expensive as it ages, but it has a downward supply curve that does not exist for software.

Perhaps game-makers have been going about it all backwards this whole time. Should they be making the games cheaper at the beginning, and allow the ones that turn out to be more popular and have more staying power get more expensive over time? This would give incentive for gamers to buy into games earlier rather than later, allowing the producers capital to make the game better. I think I might be sounding like what Steam Early Access is meant to be.
 
My rules:

Never pre-order. NEVER

If it looks interesting to me and gets good reviews and is multiplayer maybe buy at full price. You don't want to be playing a game on empty servers if you wait 6 months.

If it's single player wait for a sale, I've got a huge backlog of games already.
 
This is a matter of the customer dictating the market. Many games will go unsold at some random $40-60 price point just because that's "what games should cost", they simply will not buy them, then the games go on sale for $20 and all of a sudden people do buy them. See in the world of economics that's still called profit, it doesn't cost you $20 to allow that person to download the game, and if it wasn't $20 then you would have gotten $0 from that person, and would have a loss.

Now the argument goes that people will wait for sales as the next step, well again that's the customer telling game developers "I don't give a shit how much you spent making that game, I am unwilling to pay the price you are initially putting out on it".

Seriously, it costs lots to make games, sure whatever, it all depends how you go about making the game too. One man operation? small group of programmers? Huge company? You can't tell me that someone who makes a game by themselves is spending huge amounts of money making that game.
 
DocSavage said:
Please feel free to leave games costing the same in perpetuity and enjoy having ten percent of the sales you would've had.
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This is what I thought reading just the headline alone. No sale? No buy, especially if there's a sizeable amount of DLC I'm getting nickel and dimed for to get the whole story left on the table. Even if it's a game I'm really interested in, it's no longer safe to buy at release with all the bugs that sneak past QA these days, whether by publisher's Executive Meddling or rushing, or just bad development.

And honestly, some games aren't worth $60 plus $50 on top for DLC. Fcuk that.
 
There's also the matter of the insanely over-saturated market. How often did we get a game release when it was basically just Nintendo, Sega, and PC? I could play my Steam library games every waking hour for a month and not come close to finishing half the games I have on my backlog.

Also, fuck DLC. I can't even keep up with that shit. I'll pay $60 for a full, complete game. Not one that has 5 $10 DLC releasing shortly after.
 
I think someone's upset that the poorer discounts on the steam sale lead to fewer sales.
 
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