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What's the logic behind games being 80% off on Steam?

roshan

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,426
So I noticed that on my Steam wishlist, Avadon: The Black Fortress, is selling at 80% off. So the USD price is 10 dollars, but here in thirdworldia this is less, 319.95 pesos. This is actually a 30% discount on the USD rate, which is weird because most games sell here at about 45% off on USD rates. But now with 80% off promotion, the price comes to 64 pesos, or 1.38 USD. If Steam takes 30%, and 30% of the rest goes to taxes, Vogel is basically left with 67 cents.

What's the logic or purpose behind selling a game at that price?
 

roshan

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,426
Steady cash flow for Gaben devs be damned, or do you really think that such discounts are devs' choice?

I know an indie dev's life must be really hard, but I still cannot understand how this is in any way good business.

1. It will probably piss off and alienate many that paid full price making them hesitant to do so in the future.
2. It tells people that the Vogel games they like can eventually be purchased at almost free of cost, so will discourage them from paying full price, or close to full price. Prospective buyers will just wait till the game they want goes on sale.
3. Those that want to buy another Vogel game or even their first Vogel game will just buy whatever is on 80% off. Why buy Avernum Crystal Souls when you can buy Avadon Black Fortress on 80% off and they even look exactly the same.
4. Once you have already bought a game on 80% off, you will probably never ever pay full price for it ever again. For an extremely niche product, that could just destroy your potential income from that product.
5. Vogel nets almost nothing from it anyway, I mean, what the hell is 70 cents US? It's an almost meaningless amount.

I can understand discounts ranging from 15% to 40%, to get more sales, but 80%? That has to absolutely kill business, particularly in the case of Vogelware, because the games are so similar to one another.
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
It's simple. Steam is the most successful walled garden today (even more than the consoles that practically invented it). The main psychological characteristic of walled gardens, and why the gatekeepers like them, is that the 'flowers' (you) are reluctant to leave it.

For Vogel it's steam or get out. Most everyone that would buy a low graphixxx Vogel game would also bitch 'why isn't it on steam waaaaa' if it wasn't (or just ignore it).
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
Prices / discounts are set by the dev, not Steam, though there are means for them to incentivize discounts (being selected for front page presentation if the deal's right).

Those super low prices are aimed at impulse buyers who would never consider buying a Vogel game otherwise. A couple of years ago, this was good money if you made it to the front page, but now it's a lot less. A $1 game could move 100k copies during a single day on a 85% discount during a steam sale - that's a third to half of JF's yearly revenue.

JV relies on buyers who are willing to pay full price for his titles because they want to keep him in business. That's why he raised the price for Avadon 2 from $9.99 (Avadon 1) to $19.99 on release. Likewise before Steam became that big, he sold his games for $30 on his own store, even if you could get them for less at other outlets.

I think the strategy and the reliance on a core audience of his loyal fans works for him, because paying for games on the internet is "optional" anyway. If you don't want to pay, you don't have to (technically, not legally, of course).

But you are right about frequent sales (and low prices in general) devaluing your games, just look at the app stores. That's why Larian is very reluctant to discount D:OS, its maximum discount was 40% so far, and it's over a year old now. (For comparison, SquareEnix PC titles generally go on sale at 75% within their first year.)
 
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pippin

Guest
Western Squeenix games receive that kind of discount - FF games rarely reach 50%.
When it comes to Vogel, I think he wants to keep his games competitive, especially when there's legions of RPGMaker stuff going on and Steam reviewers are babbies who would accept everything they receive. It's weird because he would not bring Nethergate to GOG or apply the same discounts with the same frequency there... I guess GOG people are more willing to buy Spiderweb games at full price.
 

Telengard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 27, 2011
Messages
1,621
Location
The end of every place
For the value for Steam, SCO is quite correct, the walled garden it is. What's more, if you ever look at the big box store ads during special sales, you'll find very similar style discounts - including doorbusters - under the exact same sales philosophy.

For the dev, the issue is much more complex. If you never haunted the discount bin at your local games shop, or went to a dollar sale at a big box store back in the day, you might think Steam a strange and unique place. But it's not. The idea behind an item like a game is to gather as much profit as possible. However, that does not mean sticking the price up at maximum forever. While that might seem best on face value, the number of people willing to pay top dollar is always low for common entertainment, and thus your number of sales will remain pitiful. You still want those top dollar sales, yes, but you can't leave the price up there forever. So, you leave it up there until you have exhausted all potential top dollar sales, and then ratchet down a monetary notch during a sale to gather a little more interest. Then go back up. Because not only does word of mouth often carry a few more item sales after a sale, the sale got people thinking about a game again. Back when the game was first released, they may have thought, hey that looks kind of interesting, maybe I'll get in on sale. But then they forgot about it. The sale got it back in their minds again, and though they didn't buy it during the sale, it's there now, which is a nagging possibility for a full price sale.

And then later, after you've exhausted all of the common sale notches, that's when you let your stuff go for bottom dollar, briefly. That kind of sale is the fastest way to get mass sales from people who will drop a couple bucks just to experiment. And maybe some of those will like your game, and so become converts, and be ready and waiting to buy your next release at full price. Plus those converts may even spread the word on places like the Codex, and so garner you a few more full price sales after the sale by word of mouth. Which is why, sales of a product usually increase both during a deep discount and for a while after it's over.

Trouble for a lot of indies is, though, they're so desperate for funds that they drop to deep discount soon after release, skipping the ratchet sales, because they're so desperate for funds and notice that they can't wait and try to build an audience the normal way. Vogel doesn't have that issue, though. He already has an audience.
 

animlboogy

Learned
Joined
Jun 27, 2015
Messages
122
Deep discounts can often serve as advertising you get paid for, if handled right. Avadon's pretty old, so if Vogel casts his net wide selling it for pennies, he'll probably still make more than if it was selling 10 copies a month at $10 or whatever. And he'll hopefully net a few people who actually want his newer games later on, so he can sell a $20 game that won't see discounts that deep anytime soon to a smaller but lucrative audience.
 

gaussgunner

Arcane
Joined
Jul 22, 2015
Messages
6,151
Location
ХУДШИЕ США
Avadon is Vogel's loss leader. Always 80% off. He has nothing to lose by selling it cheap because he tried to make a game with more structure and people didn't like it. People who won't pay $10 for Avernum or Geneforge at first might buy Avadon for $2 and like it enough to buy the $10 games. Free advertising.
 
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Unwanted

a Goat

Unwanted
Dumbfuck Edgy Vatnik
Joined
Jun 15, 2014
Messages
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Albania
I think Vogel is rich enough to not care. Once the steam and indies on steam got big, there was no other decent RPG indie dev so he earned quite much. Even then, he was one of the first to monetise on sales/bundle boom so again he probably earned few millions and he's making games just to sustain his lifestyle at this point.
 
Unwanted

a Goat

Unwanted
Dumbfuck Edgy Vatnik
Joined
Jun 15, 2014
Messages
6,941
Location
Albania
He bought a house, paid for his kid's college from that money etc.

Now he's just paying the bills, no need nor will to expand from him.
 

Beastro

Arcane
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
7,938
1. It will probably piss off and alienate many that paid full price making them hesitant to do so in the future.

GOTY editions started the ball rolling.

I now wait a good year or more before buying games I'm interested.

It's not just games either, I know a lot who avoid watching new series and investing until they see what survives to see a second season. Both are behaviours with terrible long term repercussions for the their mediums until they stopped being encouraged.
 

animlboogy

Learned
Joined
Jun 27, 2015
Messages
122
GOTY editions started the ball rolling.

I now wait a good year or more before buying games I'm interested.

It's not just games either, I know a lot who avoid watching new series and investing until they see what survives to see a second season. Both are behaviours with terrible long term repercussions for the their mediums until they stopped being encouraged.

The Netflix model encourages them to give multiple seasons and proper endings to anything they produce regardless of the initial success... not sure exactly what games could do differently to hold up a better end of the bargain for people to buy early.
 

Leitz

Learned
Joined
Apr 13, 2015
Messages
350
This thread is old I know: I just want to add that I thank Steam for their low price bundles. I bought the Genefore series for around 5 bucks and I feel a little bit guilty about it, because I love these games. But truth is, I'd never bought them otherwise, because I didn't care enough. In the future though I will probably buy a lot more of his games. Seems fine for me.

Also: I don't see any donation button on his homepage, so whatever.
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2010
Messages
3,524
It would be less shameful (and more effective) to release your game for free or release a pirate port secretly than reduce its price to pennies
 
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Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,287
It would be less shameful (and more effective) to release your game for free or release a pirate port secretly than reduce it's price to pennies
It is actually not that.

You've already made the game. There is no more work to be done on it. Basically, you are sitting back and watching the money come in.

Thing is, after the initial rush, the sales will taper off dramatically. That is because those people who wanted to buy it already has bought it. You are now waiting for those who are bored or curious to buy, and the sales of those is pretty low. Since you should have already made your money from the initial rush, anything coming in is bonus. Therefore, you put it on sale and hope that more people will be interested simply because it is cheap.

For something that basically doesn't cost you anything any more, selling it for $1 is better than not selling it at all ($0).
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2010
Messages
3,524
It would be less shameful (and more effective) to release your game for free or release a pirate port secretly than reduce it's price to pennies
It is actually not that.

You've already made the game. There is no more work to be done on it. Basically, you are sitting back and watching the money come in.

Thing is, after the initial rush, the sales will taper off dramatically. That is because those people who wanted to buy it already has bought it. You are now waiting for those who are bored or curious to buy, and the sales of those is pretty low. Since you should have already made your money from the initial rush, anything coming in is bonus. Therefore, you put it on sale and hope that more people will be interested simply because it is cheap.

For something that basically doesn't cost you anything any more, selling it for $1 is better than not selling it at all ($0).

You've just explained why there's no good reason to sell it for $1. Especially when everyone else is doing the same. You sell it at that price when you know that's the demand. So give it away for free and stop penny pinching or gatekeeping it on a DRM platform.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
What's the logic or purpose behind selling a game at that price?
Steady cash flow for Gaben devs be damned, or do you really think that such discounts are devs' choice?
Steam doesn't force anyone to discount games, so yes, such discounts are developers' choice.
 

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