Steam Deals and Digital Sales

I remember paying $90 for Minecraft alpha access. Best $90 I ever spent.

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Caliane_sl said:

Crowdfunding on steam is fine. There are plenty of examples of it having gone right on and off Steam. DayZ however, was clearly a mistake. Partially, as it was put up before the "EARLY ACCESS" tag was in full effect.

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Do you mean WarZ?

One thing I have read, which I will add here, in Uber's defense, is that they've said on Reddit I believe that basically, Steam wouldn't allow them to set up tiered pricing schemes for early access, and they wouldn't let them release an unfinished game outside of Early access, which would have allowed them to set up price tiers.

So at least some of this is due to the schizophrenic nature of Valve as a company. They take initiatives like early access and put them out there, but don't try to think through all the possible outcomes, they deal with them as they arise, organically. That can lead to disjointed policies like not allowing their crowd sourcing section (early access) of the storefront to do variable pricing structures based on the degree you desire to assist in funding the development of a title, which would put it more in line with what Kickstarter does, and probably would have also helped to mitigate some of the PR nightmare that has exploded since yesterday afternoon over this.

I was dead set ready to buy PA as soon as it came out on Early Access, I've purchased almost every Early Access title simply as a way to support the small developers, even games that in retrospect, might be scams, such as Starforge's Alpha (which has yet to be significantly updated in several months) but that 90 dollar price tag immediately gave me that visceral "WTF is this shit" reaction others have had. I went and read what was up, and while I find their position somewhat reasonable and understandable, from a neutral point of view, I just don't see how this can have a positive outcome for them.

They're literally calling the Steam user base "noise" and effectively saying things like "we don't want scrubs playing our alpha anyway!" on the Steam forums, like right out in the open they've said on Reddit "We think the PR will be good to get our name out there" and stuff. Literally the Developers themselves are saying this.

That kind of tone deafness is Microsoft telling us to just buy a 360 if we don't have reliable internet levels of stupid, in my opinion.

I'm not sure how many core demographic gamers today even remember TA. What was that, 97? Maybe they do. I dunno.

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I personally think it was a mistake to put it up on Steam at this point at that price.

If they'd just kept to their website and community and word of mouthing it at that kickstarter price through their own avenues to the die hard fans of the previous title, and then introduced it on Steam at a lower price later, I think it would probably do better. Might be wrong, its just my gut reaction.

The game looks good, but that video on Steam isn't actual gameplay. If they make the game look like that and play like that video, it does have nice appeal to the eye, makes you want to buy it. I won't argue that point.

My personal subjective opinion is that no alpha is worth 50 dollars, which is more than the game is projected to cost on release by at least 10 dollars going by the new (and inconsistent) "kickstarter" pricing schedule, and possibly 30 more dollars if you go by the original 20 dollar cost for the final product as promised through kickstarter.

I guess its just that I figure you're doing the company a favor by buying into an unfinished product early and offering your assistance in debugging it. Charging more for that seems to be trying to monetize a part of the industry that shouldn't be.

Yes, yes I know, demand will drive monetization of this area regardless. Maybe so.

Still, it grinds my gears.

Onoes_sl said:

The way I understood it, pricing on the Kickstarter for Alpha Access was $90. If they now sell alpha access for LESS than that, after the Kickstarter already funded, they are basically spitting in the faces of all the people who paid $90 already for the privilege.

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I don't buy this argument, because Kickstarter is a charity. The people donating to it weren't buying in for early access, they were donating because they believed in the project.

If I donate 500 dollars to a charitable cause, it doesn't devalue my donation if they later sell the same t shirt that I received asa bonus for my donation to others for less than the 500 dollars I donated to the charity as a way to raise more funds for their project. The alpha access is the T shirt, the 90 dollars is the donation here.

If people are using kickstarter to preorder games then kickstarter is being abused. The perks are just incentives, not some sort of product given for a market value exchange.

This is why Kickstarter projects need to stay off Steam until they are complete, full version, retail games. Anything else just creates confusion.

Not to mention, I've already shown that they're completely full of shit on the Kickstarter pricing model, because the base game on kickstarter, the so called preorder that all the fanboys are telling people to buy for 40 dollars when the game releases, was 20 dollars on kickstarter, and the beta access that they're going to charge 60 for on Steam was 40 on Kickstarter.

Basically, if their excuse that this price was determined by kickstarter was remotely true, they wouldn't be this inconsistent in the pricing for the other levels, all of which are now MORE EXPENSIVE on Steam (and their website) than they were through kickstarter.

And its an awful precedent for setting prices on alpha and beta access on Steam. There's no reason from here on out for a small indie studio to charge LESS than their final product for alpha access. We now get to pay to debug the industries' games for them. Real step forward for the industry (not at all actually). Just wait till EA and Activision figure out they can charge 30 dollars more for alpha and beta access to their multiplayer games than they charge for the full triple A title on release day. That's going to be a real fun time to be a gamer (again, not at all actually).