I really wish more indies could take on the no-sales policy. It’d give me tons more peace of mind to buy a game when I actually want to play it, rather than always waiting and doing weird backlog hoarding when Valve decide it’s wallet-opening-time.
But as the video shows, the policy was a risk for Wube even back in the day – it’s an even bigger risk now that everyone and their dog expects to wait for the sale, and especially if you happen to have a game that’s not quite as incredibly popular as Factorio.
How is this an unlisted video with some 250 views that seems like a high quality production on a channel with 1.2 million subscribers?
Maybe a leaked YouTube link from their Patreon?
I did not think that through.
Oh well, exclusive Lemmy access promo I guess. I’ll throw the Escapist an extra $10 on their next donation-enabled stream as an apology.
This game gets universal praise and I’d love to play it but as a PC gamer I refuse to as I wouldn’t want to support a dev who not only never does sales but raises the price because of “inflation”
I don’t really understand your take. They sold the game cheap after 7 years of development and it’s still a really good value after the increases in price. I couldn’t praise the developers and how they run this game / business enough.
Factorio returns an ever increasing value for the money due to the continuous effort the developers have put in especially on modding, and on the ever expanding quality and amount of mods that gives you a whole new game many times over.
I cannot think of a game that has better value for money than Factorio.
The only downside is that you will spend an indeterminate amount of time playing the game and when you think your finally done, there is another game changing mod that will give you another full and even longer gameplay, for free.
There’sa free demo you can download to try it out and see if it’s something you’d value.
I cannot think of a game that has better value for money than Factorio.
Rimworld. It’s the only other one I can think of that people play for insane hours, it’s still my most played game and I’ve barely touched it in a long while, I think I have 1400ish, my boyfriend has over 3.5k hours
I agree big time. Rimworld is so replayable and totally worth the price of admission. Strangely enough, it’s another indie game that never goes on any significant discount.
My take is less about the game itself, and the idea of games increasing its price at all. I’ve tried the demo and its a game right up my alley plus I enjoy games like it such as satisfactory. It just doesn’t stomach well to me of a digital game going up in price.
I have seen multiple people mention mods at this point and I don’t really count modding as part of the value of a game since modders aren’t getting paid when I buy the game. Plus really any game can be infinite if you enjoy it enough and mods exist for it.
Fair enough, we’ll just disagree then. I personally have no problem with this game increasing in price since I think it’s also increasingly giving value. I believe the studio runs an honest business and have honest expenses, and if this is what they need then I much prefer this over random sales, constant DLCs if you want to continue to get value, in game marketing and micro transactions etc.
Would your opinion be any different if they priced it at its current price 7 years ago and stuck to it?
Me, I wish more games respected my time like that, instead of costing 40$ and going on 20% sale every few weeks, leaving me to hunt bargain bins to be able to get it at its “efficient” price.
For me the major red flag is the price going up for inflation. The game went up in price when it left Early Access already and that was 3 years ago. But now the game is being sold as a full game sure it might get updates but one can expect a finished product to at least stay the same price, not go up.
As for sales, at least on PC games are pretty much always on sale either through steam directly or from sites like humble or greenmangaming. You can pretty much pickup any not recent game for 20% off at anytime if you search gg.deals or a similar service.
Well, inflation is real. And they are using sales income to fund current development. That’s as fair as it gets.
Would you be happy if they released it at 60$ and had periodic 60% sales?
Well yes, if you do the math it would be cheaper then the $30 price point it’s been for years. Actually it adds up to the same as a 20% sale of the $30 price.
I get the point you make. I can accept a game that never goes on sale. The main problem I have is it increasing price after 3 years out of early access.
While we disagree severely, I am grateful to hear the “other side” in a civil discussion. I suspect the no-downvote policy of Beehaw enables this discussion and hope to find more of it.
