Steam prices! Grey key sites! and the I love/hate developers thread - Enter if you dare!
- Thread starter Musty Pie
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I do
I was in Game yesterday looking for a charger for my Sons PS Vita (and was mildly surprised they had one available to buy) but noticed the new Lego Avengers game for PS4 and XBone. £49.99. If PC game prices ever reach this level and there's no real alternative such as key sites etc I honestly think I would either stop playing or buy a lot less games. I know a lot of Console sales are funded by other games being used in part exchange but on PC you can't do that.
I also remember a time when the publishers were pushing hard for digital distribution telling us it would mean cheaper games as there are no shipping, distribution or printing costs meaning we will save money. So no real surprise to hear it was all bull and driven by greed. And no surprise either to see physical copies can still be had for cheaper than official digital establishments. Until digital costs are more in line with what I would expect to pay I will continue to use Key Sites. In some situations I'd be more likely to pirate a game than pay £50 if that were my only choice. And I haven't pirated a game in years.
I also remember a time when the publishers were pushing hard for digital distribution telling us it would mean cheaper games as there are no shipping, distribution or printing costs meaning we will save money. So no real surprise to hear it was all bull and driven by greed. And no surprise either to see physical copies can still be had for cheaper than official digital establishments. Until digital costs are more in line with what I would expect to pay I will continue to use Key Sites. In some situations I'd be more likely to pirate a game than pay £50 if that were my only choice. And I haven't pirated a game in years.
£31 on Amazon. You can usually get new releases or pre-orders for less than £40, there's never any need to pay more than that.
But are they sales that would never have happened at all, or sales that would've happened eventually when the price naturally dropped to a price they were happy to pay? The former is less likely than the latter, therefore all the grey market is doing is enticing those people to buy sooner rather than later.
There will be a lot of revenue lost on the basis that the CD key sites are selling a game for 1/4 or 1/5 of the 'home' market price. For every person who would've paid full price but instead buys a CD key, they'd have to sell 4 or 5 more units at that lower price just to maintain the same balance, let alone make any extra revenue as you're seemingly convinced they do. And again, that links back around to my point above that the people happy to only pay £7 for a game would've done so eventually anyway when the price drops or a promotion occurs. They haven't gained a sale there.
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£12?!?!? Jesus christ almighty.
Because publishers can set their own pricing and there are still thousands of people, if not millions for AAA titles that will still buy direct from Origin/Steam/UPlay.
The first link is £7 for a multi region steam key.
Christ, round and round we go.
This is sort of my point. It is all conjecture by us. What i am saying is, is that there is a very good argument that grey key sites could be increasing revenue and sales, or at least not harming then. You say it has lost them money - i say if anything it might have made them money they wouldnt have had otherwise.
Also, if there was no way the buyer was going to buy it at the rrp/release price and was going to wait till it hit a certain amount, surely getting that money straight away through a legal sale is better than getting it a year down the road for the developer...?
The fact that there hasnt been a crack down by game makers on this sort of thing for years and years is quite telling in my opinion...
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Retailers strike deals with publishers/suppliers for physical stock based on sales, on-site/in-store promotion etc. Said stock has a value by default; it costs money to produce, ship and loses value the longer it's sat in a warehouse or stockroom and becomes a liability. It's therefore in everyone's interests that it sells. It's the same for DVD/BD, console games and CDs.
A digital version on the other hand has no real intrinsic value because it's just a licence attached to an account on a server. They can charge what they like because even if it sells poorly (compared to the disc version) it hasn't cost them anything to produce.
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I do use the wish list quit abit but with the last couple of months there's been so many must buys, but in my case its been a dumb move as most of the new games ive bought ive not even played yet like RB6 Siege,Mad max,Tomb raider,MGS pain,star wars then there's Ps4 games.
Gaming never ends but the library keeps growing
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Makes sence for the physical product not the digital, people explaining it away by saying they can set their own price and people will pay it makes it about as moral / right as people buying grey market keys.
Indeed, so standard protocol is to price it silly high for a bit so all the numpty's buy a new game at £49.99 (ie new games on origin) and then in a few months slash the price by half or more because realistically thet price is stupid.
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There would have been, if not for piracy. Atm, they know they can't launch an all-out war on the grey market because at the end of the day, people can just switch to torrents.
If this Denuvo thing works out (apparently it's already making games a lot harder to crack), and cracking games ceases to be worth the effort, then I think a lot of things will change fairly rapidly.
You say they don't tackle the grey market because they don't really care about it - I think they don't tackle it because pushing people to piracy is worse for them.
But the fact remains that whilst some people would stop paying altogether, the people who really wanted the game on day 1 would pay more. We know this because historically people had no problem paying £30 on release.
Is that a fact?
Also, as you say some will stop paying altogether for day one releases so they may end up losing revenue. The truth is none of us (including the developers probably!) know whether they would make more or less money at this stage if they killed the grey market and region locked everything.Denuvo will eventually be beaten just like all the things before it.
I still am confident they don't tackle the grey market key sellers because at the end of the day, it is still money in their pocket and lots of sales.
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some software houses and publishers locate to country's where they get the best tax breaks, grants for employing people ect. so whats wrong with the consumer doing the same ?
Nothing.
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