Steam prices! Grey key sites! and the I love/hate developers thread - Enter if you dare!

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Richdog said:
I read this thread and couldn't stop laughing. Once more FoxEye is on a mission to convince us that HIS OPINION MATTERS RARRGGHHH.

It is becoming a consistent spiel that he will launch a one man crusade on a thread and then post in it ad nauseum at all hours of the day or night until either he gets bored, or more likely everyone else does.

FoxEye, a tip that will serve you as well in real life as it will on the forum; learn when to shut up when an expired horse has been flogged down to it's atom components. Sometimes people just do not agree with your point of view even after all has been said, and an argument then becomes an exercise in tail-chasing futility.
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If anything this thread has taught me that I ought to do what everyone else does.

I ought to use grey market sellers.

There is no point for one person to pay more, when the vast majority are happy to use grey market sellers.

Therefore if the system doesn't work for the devs, they will need to change it.

So today I am going to go and get an XCom2 key for £10 or so.

And therefore my crusade is over :p
 
Is this the new strategy by the entertainment industry? Disseminated here by paid industry plants? :)

First it was guilt tripping pirates (potentially with good reason - but thats a, seperate, complex argument). Now it's guilt tripping paying customers that they're not paying *enough* for the goods they're legally buying?

baffling.
 
FoxEye said:
If anything this thread has taught me that I ought to do what everyone else does.

I ought to use grey market sellers.

There is no point for one person to pay more, when the vast majority are happy to use grey market sellers.

Therefore if the system doesn't work for the devs, they will need to change it.

So today I am going to go and get an XCom2 key for £10 or so.

And therefore my crusade is over :p
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Where is XCom2 for £10 or so?, link please.
 
The only real surprise I see is why Steam havn't cracked down on these keys yet. I can only guess its a small part of total sales. If it becomes more widespread who knows we could yet see a crackdown.
 
Blackjack Davy said:
The only real surprise I see is why Steam havn't cracked down on these keys yet. I can only guess its a small part of total sales. If it becomes more widespread who knows we could yet see a crackdown.
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Steams probably selling the keys in the first place. 70% of profits rather than 20% :D.
 
Blackjack Davy said:
The only real surprise I see is why Steam havn't cracked down on these keys yet. I can only guess its a small part of total sales. If it becomes more widespread who knows we could yet see a crackdown.
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Valve don't care, at the volumes they shift any sale is money in the bank. They are too dominant for any publishers to argue.

Although I do expect something to happen at some point if the rise in key sellers continues.
 
All I mix and match between key sites and steam itself.

In all honesty, when I use key sites to try to save money its because I am being selfish (which isn't all the time!). I think people should admit to that. Don't try and justify it by saying that the developers/publishers are doing you wrong by charging so much, and this is the true 'fair price'.

I think developers get more money from steam sales, so in my mind I try to do my best to buy from there so that I can support the developers. Its stupid to hinder the profits of the people that produce things you enjoy.

I think as you get older/make more money, you realize that piracy and getting 'cheap keys' isn't the way forward. The difference between £15 on a key site versus £35 on steam... £20 different is no big deal and you help support the developers.
 
chef-borjan said:
I think as you get older/make more money, you realize that piracy and getting 'cheap keys' isn't the way forward. The difference between £15 on a key site versus £35 on steam... £20 different is no big deal and you help support the developers.
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That is £20 i could spend on more games and thus support a larger amount of developers....
 
FoxEye said:
If anything this thread has taught me that I ought to do what everyone else does.

I ought to use grey market sellers.

There is no point for one person to pay more, when the vast majority are happy to use grey market sellers.

Therefore if the system doesn't work for the devs, they will need to change it.

So today I am going to go and get an XCom2 key for £10 or so.

And therefore my crusade is over :p
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Good.

I think myself and others just couldnt work out why you thought buying an nvidia game code from ebay was any better than buying a grey market/different region key.

By buying an Nvidia game code, you circumvented buying the game at the full uk retail price. Nvidia most certainly will not have paid the game creator the full uk price for those codes. They most probably bought a job lot for very little per code to bundle with the cards.

Also, technically selling them is against the EULA, just like buying a game with a vpn often is, so in both cases the rules have been circumvented somewhat.

In both instances though, as you say, they have got a sale. How much they made, who knows and we can only speculate, but as it is just a set of digits they will most certainly have made something, which is better than nothing.
 
chef-borjan said:
I think as you get older/make more money, you realize that piracy and getting 'cheap keys' isn't the way forward. The difference between £15 on a key site versus £35 on steam... £20 different is no big deal and you help support the developers.
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I think you also start to develop an understanding of (and to an extent an empathy towards) the time, effort and money which goes into creating things.

I work as a software developer, and basically if people pirated all of my company's software (or bought it for a pittance), I wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't consider pirating software, music or films/series any more.

I wonder how the opinions towards key sites differs depending on whether people's jobs consist of "creating" something?
 
Haggisman said:
I think you also start to develop an understanding of (and to an extent an empathy towards) the time, effort and money which goes into creating things.

I work as a software developer, and basically if people pirated all of my company's software (or bought it for a pittance), I wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't consider pirating software, music or films/series any more.

I wonder how the opinions towards key sites differs depending on whether people's jobs consist of "creating" something?
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If businesses can't sell at a price that people are willing to pay then they need to fix their business model. Digital goods mean you can't rely on scarcity. You have to make it compelling enough for people to be willing to pay for it. Steam has been a huge step forward in that regard, and to be honest the more amazing thing in many ways is that people are prepared to pay a fiver for a grey market key rather than simply pirating games.
 
Haggisman said:
I work as a software developer, and basically if people pirated all of my company's software (or bought it for a pittance), I wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't consider pirating software, music or films/series any more.
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You're not allowed to earn a living. Shoo! Shoo! ;)
 
Vonhelmet said:
to be honest the more amazing thing in many ways is that people are prepared to pay a fiver for a grey market key rather than simply pirating games.
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This is a very valid point. If you asked devs would they prefer 100,000 £5 - £10 sales from grey sites, or the 100,000 sales lost to piracy, I think I know what they'd take.

*Note I've just made up numbers as a generalized point
 
Vonhelmet said:
If businesses can't sell at a price that people are willing to pay then they need to fix their business model.
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People have been willing to pay those prices for the last decade at least.

In fact, PC games prices (and games prices in general) haven't really increased in line with inflation, so a £30-35 game today is actually cheaper than a £30-35 game 10 years ago (despite costing more to develop, due to the increasing complexity and time to create them, the increase in overheads such as office space, electricity etc. and the increase in staff wages).

The only difference now, is that by trying to break into a new market (by selling their games at an affordable price in those territories), those games are available to the existing market at a fraction of the previous prices.
 
FoxEye said:
If anything this thread has taught me that I ought to do what everyone else does.

I ought to use grey market sellers.

There is no point for one person to pay more, when the vast majority are happy to use grey market sellers.

Therefore if the system doesn't work for the devs, they will need to change it.

So today I am going to go and get an XCom2 key for £10 or so.

And therefore my crusade is over :p
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So after your high and mighty attitude / moral high ground you end up joining the dark grey side and buy a cheap game key. This is just hilarious, there is a developer somewhere who has one less potato on his plate of food, I hope you can sleep at night. :mad:

However atleast you have saved yourself £20 :D

Also mid_gen If regional restrictions were in place I wouldn't buy an expensive game, I'd rather wait or not buy at all. Games lately especially from the company you work for are more of a gamble than guaranteed entertainment, so loses half it's value based on overall ****** development history.
 
Twirlywoos said:
Also mid_gen If regional restrictions were in place I wouldn't buy an expensive game, I'd rather wait or not buy at all. Games lately especially from the company you work for are more of a gamble than guaranteed entertainment, so loses half it's value based on overall ****** development history.
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Take a look at The Division thread, or the X-Com one, or any new release for that matter.

Don't try and pretend that all those people poking around looking for the cheapest grey market key are people that wouldn't otherwise buy the game. "If the games were good we would pay full price!". ********.

Developers are losing out.
 
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