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

[Haggisman]

You are aware that those who sell the games are on a sale or return? once they are gone they are gone. If the dev want 10k of cheap sales, they will release 10k of cheap keys. If they want to sell 10k at full price they will sell 10k at full price.

Which means that the 8k of the cheap keys get snapped up by UK buyers, with the result that there are 8k gamers in the poor country who can't buy a key, and 8k full priced keys that are unsold.

For your first game you have to borrow money/ get investors.

The profit from your first pays wages for the next project, and possibly also interest on your loan, investors, etc.

Fail to make enough profit and you either need more investment/ loans or you go bankrupt. Profit is not always greed. You need to make back your costs and you need to make enough to reinvest into your business.

People seem to fail to grasp the concept that games are made by businesses which exist to make money.

Everyone in that company has bills, rent/mortgage to pay, food to buy etc.

Innovating in a new IP is a risk (hell, every single release has an element of risk).

That "evil" profit which these "greedy" corporations are generating goes towards those innovations, those new releases, the bonus schemes and salaries which attract decent developers.

If they fail to make money by going down a certain route, they'll simply look elsewhere, and while it's great to say "EA are evil", "Ubisoft are lying ****", would it be better if those companies didn't exist at all, and we were all stuck playing Candy King Saga on our £1,500 PCs?

 

[Matson]

A good topic. I have a ps4 xbox one and PC that I buy games for. PS4 and Xbox I try to get as cheap as I can but its usually a boxed version that's still 30+ and when it comes to new games closer to £40.
When it comes to pc games I will get it as cheap as I possibly can find it and usually that's from CD Key sites. Some of these CD sites even have a wholesale section where you can buy in bulk and sell them yourself but that doesn't always work out at a profit when you include the fees selling on sites like ebay.

Companies charge stupid prices for a lot of games. Digital games on the xbox and playstation store charging over £50 is absurd and if they want to charge prices like that I have no problems spending as little on cdkeys as I can because at the end of the day its my own money and I will save it where I can. Business's want to make as much money out of us as they can. There not in it to make friends, there in it to make money and if they can get away with charging silly amounts they will. I'm not going to help them achieve that and instead I'm going to look after my own money and spend less for the same product.

 

[Rezident]

It's common sense to shop around and buy at the best prices. Why is there a difference between shopping around locally and buying in Tesco because it’s cheaper than the other shop and buying in a different country because it’s cheaper than here? Globalisation is not new and it’s only going to increase.

I do like Steam but since they charge €50 - €60 a game I obviously don’t buy from them (apart from Steam Sales which used to be very good). I suppose it’s like anything, the system won’t work if everyone does it, but there will always be people who pay full whack and choose to buy in retail shops so the rest of us can take advantage of global price differences. Reminds me of credit card interest, I use my card all the time but have never paid interest as I pay off the full amount each month, giving me up to 60 days free credit. The system would not work if everyone did this but there will always be plenty of people who take the hit and pay exorbitant interest charges. You just don’t have to be one of them.

 

[ZombieFan]

For your first game you have to borrow money/ get investors.

The profit from your first pays wages for the next project, and possibly also interest on your loan, investors, etc.

Fail to make enough profit and you either need more investment/ loans or you go bankrupt. Profit is not always greed. You need to make back your costs and you need to make enough to reinvest into your business.

After you've got a reasonable amount of sales for your first game you can see the split of sales between regions.

If you see that Indian keys are selling in larger quantities than you expected (due to the grey market) then you balance your prices in relation to this (increase Indian key prices, lower prices for less-popular regions) order to hit your sales target for your next game.

Developer's shouldn't be trying to fight the market. They should realign themselves for how the market is at that point in time.

 

[StrongSad]

If I bought the graphics card myself, did I deny the publisher a potential sale?

No, because nVidia paid for the right to bundle the code...

You are clutching at few straws there. Nvidia bundled the game at very little cost to them. Don't kid yourself that the devs made anything on that key. You did however buy a key that was not meant for you and enriched the person who sold it to you at the expense of the developer. Exactly the same as a key site.... Keys sites don't sell keys that are free... money at some point has been passed to the dev..... just like your ebay purchase....

 

[mid_gen]

profit is profit not running costs and i'm not arguing that company's should not make a profit, a fair price would be nice for a full game.

I admit its a complex issue.

You could argue that the only 'fair' price is the one that maximises revenue for the developer. Any price that fails to do that is less money in the industry to make more games.

 

[mid_gen]

If you see that Indian keys are selling in larger quantities than you expected (due to the grey market) then you balance your prices in relation to this (increase Indian key prices, lower prices for less-popular regions) order to hit your sales target for your next game.

You're getting into some seriously complicated models here. The Indian market will not stand price increases the same way the UK or US market would.

You can dress it up however you like, and I'm not making any ethical or moral judgements about people's decisions here, but people buying games at reduced prices through grey market sites *will* result in less revenue for developers.

 

[Haggisman]

You could argue that the only 'fair' price is the one that maximises revenue for the developer. Any price that fails to do that is less money in the industry to make more games.

Or conversely some people seem to think that game development should be run as a non-profit enterprise, and a "fair" price would be about 10p for the bandwidth to upload it

 

[FoxEye]

You are clutching at few straws there. Nvidia bundled the game at very little cost to them. Don't kid yourself that the devs made anything on that key. You did however buy a key that was not meant for you and enriched the person who sold it to you at the expense of the developer. Exactly the same as a key site.... Keys sites don't sell keys that are free... money at some point has been passed to the dev..... just like your ebay purchase....

So you know how much nVidia paid Konami to bundle that code with their graphics card?

OK, how much was it?

 

[StrongSad]

Which means that the 8k of the cheap keys get snapped up by UK buyers, with the result that there are 8k gamers in the poor country who can't buy a key, and 8k full priced keys that are unsold.

No, 8k is a massive over estimate, my bad.... those in the know and shop around, use VPN and all the other hoops to get keys from sites that sell them are relatively few.

I know about all this yet I don't do it. If for one second it was hurting the business they would stop it. It continues because it is allowed to continue. Business for business sake.

We on this forum are quite a unique bunch. We are PC enthusiasts, we have spec's in our sigs and understand how to get around region locks etc... We are not the majority in any way. we are the minority...

As soon as our creative purchasing abilities become an issue to the bottom line of a business, then it will be stopped. end of.

 

[Armadillo]

I buy wherever is cheaper. I'm out for the best deal for me. It's not down to me to prop up the games industry.

Besides that, the various companies do it. Outsourcing support/cs and similar to places where it's cheaper. Good enough for them, good enough for me. Don't complain to me that I'm taking advantage of the global market for the best price, when you are doing the same thing.

 

[StrongSad]

So you know how much nVidia paid Konami to bundle that code with their graphics card?

OK, how much was it?

You and I will never know. That info will only be know by the two companies...

 

[Haggisman]

I buy wherever is cheaper. I'm out for the best deal for me. It's not down to me to prop up the games industry.

Besides that, the various companies do it. Outsourcing support/cs and similar to places where it's cheaper. Good enough for them, good enough for me. Don't complain to me that I'm taking advantage of the global market for the best price, when you are doing the same thing.

And IMO with that sort of attitude you pretty much forfeit any right to complain when games are console focused/poor "ports" etc.

To counter your analogy of outsourcing CS etc. as consumers, we can choose to use a company which has e.g. a UK based customer support team rather than one in India, and many people do.

Don't be surprised if games companies do the same and choose to focus on a market (consoles) which will give them sales at UK prices rather than sales at Indian/Ukrainian/etc. prices

Where's the financial sense in trying to cater for a market which takes a disproportional amount of effort for the level of return?

 

[drs101]

You could argue that the only 'fair' price is the one that maximises revenue for the developer. Any price that fails to do that is less money in the industry to make more games.

corporations don't care about a fair price, they want to maximize profit, does Ubisoft have shareholders? if so then doesn't some of the profit go to them and not making games?

 

[Haggisman]

corporations don't care about a fair price, they want to maximize profit, does Ubisoft have shareholders? if so then doesn't some of the profit go to them and not making games?

Those shareholders are the people who have invested in the company, allowing the company (and by extension the games they make) to exist.

Would you invest in something with little chance of return?

No profit = no investment.
No investment = no new games.

 

[Jacksonn]

I go where is cheapest, I don't have loyalties.

 

[Vonhelmet]

Those shareholders are the people who have invested in the company, allowing the company (and by extension the games they make) to exist.

Would you invest in something with little chance of return?

No profit = no investment.
No investment = no new games.

It's not my problem if they don't feel they're getting enough profit from their investment. There's plenty of games developers out there who will charge more reasonable prices.

 

[Black Dog]

Don't forget that these days when you buy a game you don't get the full package. With season passes and DLC the developers get their profits eventually.

I don't mind spending money on games but they seem to be much higher on Steam. I try to look for bargains just like for anything else.

 

[drs101]

Those shareholders are the people who have invested in the company, allowing the company (and by extension the games they make) to exist.

Would you invest in something with little chance of return?

No profit = no investment.
No investment = no new games.

yes sure but when this happens it is just about profit hence the situation we are now in with many AAA games, broken ports with dlc that is frankly a rip off.

 

[Haggisman]

It's not my problem if they don't feel they're getting enough profit from their investment. There's plenty of games developers out there who will charge more reasonable prices.

It becomes your problem if no one wants to invest in making games because it becomes an unprofitable industry

yes sure but when this happens it is just about profit hence the situation we are now in with many AAA games, broken ports with dlc that is frankly a rip off.

So don't buy them at all?