As I said, I don't care what you do and why you do it. Just don't try and convince yourself that you're doing the developer a favour by buying grey market.
Steam prices! Grey key sites! and the I love/hate developers thread - Enter if you dare!
- Thread starter Musty Pie
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As I said, I don't care what you do and why you do it. Just don't try and convince yourself that you're doing the developer a favour by buying grey market.
As many have said, we either get a cheaper key from a grey key site or other region, or just wait. Otherwise no sale is made.
This is certainly what happens in my case. As I have said before if, PC games could only be had for £30+ new and stayed that price for years I simply wouldn't play games anymore : /
You don't speak for the entire PC gaming market though. It is *undoubtedly* the case that people that would otherwise pay full price for a game at launch, are paying heavily discounted rates through grey market resellers. That is money that isn't going into developer's bank accounts, no matter how you spin it!
But you are forgetting a key point in this and a massive advantage. How many people bought it for £6.70 who were never intending to buy it in the first place? HUGE amounts. Just look at how hot the deal went on hotukdeals. Thousands of people would have bought the game for that amount who would not have bought it otherwise, or at the very least would have waited till it was in the steam sales for £3 or £4.
I had no intention of buying the game but saw it on hotukdeals and thought why not. I might have forgotten about the game in the future and never bought it otherwise.
As it is just a cd key, the publisher/developer has probably made more money than they would have otherwise!
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Man of Honour
I'm already convinced so no convincing is necessary.
Let's add in your third option to the mix (and of course I'll add in my option of purchasing the key from "the grey market").
1) Don't purchase the game.
2) Pirate the game.
3) Purchase a "grey key".
4) Purchase the game at full price.
It's pretty clear to anyone with half a brain that the first two options don't provide any income to the publisher/dev and that the second two do. It's also blindingly obvious that the fourth option provides them with more money - I would hope nobody would argue against that either.
There is absolutely no reason that a consumer should pay anything but the lowest price available when purchasing a product. They are still purchasing the product and some of the money they pay still goes to the company where the product originated from.
Aside from money, the second two options both provide the same "fringe" benefits (sales figures, active players, etc) to the publisher/dev. This is hard to quantify, unlike money, but it is a benefit nonetheless.
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Well there is always the argument that if you price something nice and cheap you will sell so much extra that you will make more money overall. But they don't just pluck figures out of the air, a lot of research goes into what price to set for maximum revenue, and I don't think that price is £6.70.
Lol are you drunk? How is money not going into the developer's bank accounts? You're talking like all grey keys are stolen. They aren't. The developer would have received their money for the product somewhere down the line, if that key then gets taken to Kinguin by JoeBloggs the keyseller and purchased for a little more than what was given to the developer so that Joe can make a profit, then the developer has made money.
Utterly ridiculous that you would even try and make out that grey sites somehow completely remove the developer from the equation lmfao. Why not go look at how much Valve take from sales directly through Steam, they are robbing the developers too! Oh noes!
The discount is money not going to the developers.
Man of Honour
No it isn't.
A Customer that is going to buy a game at launch that buys from a grey market seller instead of the local price is löst revenue, no matter how you spin it.
If you think that isn't happening, just take a look at any thread for a popular upcoming game.
If you think that isn't happening, just take a look at any thread for a popular upcoming game.
Man of Honour
Nobody is saying that. What you're clearly not understanding and constantly conflating with other issues is that the vast majority of the money doesn't go to the developers.
And what evidence or experience leads you to make such bold claims? Particularly in this era of digital distribution where the big players self publish, and the indies....er....self publish.
Man of Honour
It's all conjecture - provide evidence to the contrary or we'll just have to agree to disagree. If so, it'd be great if both of us didn't state assumptions as facts.
Okay, I'm gonna admit I don't know how it works. But presumably the publisher pays the developer an agreed price (though I figured they might have a deal where they get a cut of sales, but ignore that).
So the developer is fine, its just the publisher that makes less money. The developer then comes to the publisher to thrash out their deal for the next game, does the publisher agree a lower price based on sales from the previous game?
Like he said, if they self-publish, where else could the money be going to?
Steam take 30%. So surely 70% goes to the dev/publisher. You're saying it doesn't... so where does it go?
It's not conjecture when you are asserting as fact that the money does not go to the dev.
Publishers are becoming less and less relevant with digital distribution...that model doesn't apply any more in a lot of cases.
The vast majority of Indies will self publish (unless you count Valve). Big players like Ubisoft are developer and publisher so a sale lost to a key reseller very much directly affects the developer.
The vast majority of Indies will self publish (unless you count Valve). Big players like Ubisoft are developer and publisher so a sale lost to a key reseller very much directly affects the developer.
Not necessarily, could easily turn around and say that x amount of people would never buy at full price, meaning it's sales gained through the grey market that they wouldn't of had otherwise.
How is it a sale lost though? The reseller would have bought it from somewhere originally which would go straight in the developers bank. Come on now.
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Sorry if already mentioned but I'm pretty sure you don't end up paying VAT and import charges when buying from another country via VPN (as it isn't aware you're in the UK of course), so whether Valve care or not isn't the main issue.
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