This is just this scene from The Jerk in written form.
So their greedy assholes that admit to price manipulation…
Were… were you under the impression that companies who sell products of any kind have some kind of deep formula for making sure their pricing is only the razor-edge of what they need to price it at to keep a business running?
Are you insane? Have you ever sold anything? Have you ever run a business?
Also $8 is “greedy assholes” to you? Are you a bot or a tankie or something?
Bruh, 8 euro for a full game is greedy??? People out here regularly spending 20 for a skin, or a slotmachine dopamine surprise box… Now that’s real greed
Never mind, ignore original comment
$8 is a fair price for peak
I got like 40 hours of playtime from Peak before taking a break. For $8 I’m very satisfied.
A reminder that you don’t need to know advanced maths to be a developer. Just call the necessary functions to do the job
Glances at this guy’s main() function
Instantly dies
I remember when I saw my first main() I just started writing code only inside of it. That seemed to work so I kept going. 20 years later I’ve only ever written code inside that same main(). I’ve changed jobs 4 times. Just… if(job==0)… or if(job==3)… Works like a charm.
I haven’t touched software development in years. Fuck that shit
The best bang for buck Steam purchase I’ve done is Halo MCC for 39,99€. Five great games plus Halo 4.
Unfortunate they want to shut those servers down.
Good thing I didn’t buy this game. Or continue to buy anything from steam. I got lost trying to figure out what this is even talking about, other than money money money.
I have to disagree. This quote would be super shitty talking about microtransactions, but if this is about Peak, I dont believe they have any microtransactions in their game. Its the full price of the game. And honestly, if you have friends to play it with, $8 is a steal. Its nothing ground breaking or like world changing, but it’s a fun time-waster to spend time with people you like and accomplish a goal with decent replayability.
Very replayable, goofy, and fun, worth your time, and very lightweight, though you can increase settings if you have a better rig. 1000% worth your time especially if you have a few friends. If you all turn off your common sense it becomes even better.
What a way to reveal how stupid you are
What, for questioning the mental gymnastics over the number for the price tag? 3 is 5 and 8 is 10 or whatever? Just say your game is worth $8 and leave it at that. All this feels like the rationale used to explain not rounding up the prices of everything, $2.99 instead of $3 - something I’d like to see gone too.
After work do you say to yourself “work work work for money money money”, because those are the vibes you are giving off.
The crafty madmen
For me, it goes:
0 - hell no
1 to 5 - sure why not, that’s about as much as a bottled drink.
6 to 10 - maybe once a month.
11 to 15 - better be a pretty damn good game, or I’m refunding.
16 to 20 - I’m waiting for a discount, not worth it.
21 to 60 - hell no
61+ - I’m blacklisting your company from my recommendations.
I have not spent more than $30 for a video game in over a decade and a half. I have no idea who’s affording all these “AAA” titles that go for $50+, or who’s keeping that market alive.
There are some miserable, well-off parents out there in liberal America who just throw money at their kids and ignore what they do with it I guess.
I get that this is Lemmy and users here are a certain way but calling anything over 16 dollars not worth it is genuinely insane.
I think for a good game, by a good company worth supporting, $30 is very fair and reasonable, especially if you get more than a few hours of play out of it.
We seem to spend $60 on movie tickets and snacks for two and leave the theaters after 90 minutes disappointed and never complain as a society beyond saying the movie sucked, but then going to watch the sequel because everyone else is watching it.
The only reason I wouldn’t personally spend more than $30 or so on a game is because generally everything more expensive is published by a major studio, and thus sucks ASS.
Yeah, I’m with you. There’s tons of games I’ve paid a lot more than $16 for that I would absolutely tell past me to buy again instantly. Most recently Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. $40 with all dlc and I’m over 100 hours in, enjoying every minute. Over 100 hours of entertainment from something that cost me less than an hour of labor, in what world is that not worth it?
Yeah man, every single game I’ve got a ton of hours in or thought was a truly great game has been over $16
You can always do the XKCD trick
But even this seems to have gone stale over time, as retro game prices get sticker (even going up as vintage games come back into fashion).
One thing I don’t see on this list is “piracy”, which is a bit weird if your line is $15. I find a lot of bargain bin games to be as bad or worse than FTP games. $20-30 has historically been my sweet spot
Considering the huge number of games I have that I haven’t tried yet, I don’t think it’s crazy at all to have a high threshold for buying yet another one.
imo over 16 it better have workshop support or an active online playerbase
Saying indies are expensive seems wild, but I kind of get it since the Steam Sales on pre-2015 games go hard. And easy piracy of anything up to PS2.
The biggest challenge I have with pirated games - especially Nintendo games - is the controller.
Yeah, I can get Metroid Prime or Mario 64 or Super Smash easily enough. But I can’t have that classic experience on a PS knock off controller.
It’s not the end of the world, of course. But I feel it.
I found some good stuff in the F2P demo/early access. Especially if you’re just looking for a few hours of fun. Every now and then you can find a release F2P title that’s not monetizing you. But without the marketing budget or polish they don’t take off in popularity.
Some of the best games i’ve ever played are in the 1-10 range. With that in mind, i do brlieve that a 60+ game would at least be über eccellent and have much to do. Which might unironically make such games bloated, if they weren’t costly that is. Just to add to this, terraria is about 10 dollars on steam at most times.
Not only is the game fun, but it can last forever if you want. There are many cases of games where the monetisation model is donation based. I bought an offer for pixel dungeon despite the game being free, mostly because shattered pixel dungeon singlehandendly revived the game.
What do you have against OpenTTD and Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead? \s
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
I spawned as a nun in-game on the rooftop of a cake restaurant. I’ve got nothing but a bible to wreck zombies. And there are so many, there is no tutorial, the controls are tanky, the devs are out of their mind.
0/10
This is a really basic business concept; business 101 stuff. They definitely didn’t make it up, they’re just using it.
It works against the general population, if this particular one doesn’t, don’t get too busy strutting, there is almost certainly something else that does work on you.
Buy shit because you need/want it, not because it’s a deal.
The $8 tier has been around for a decade, for exactly this reason. MMO subscriptions, bargain games, podcasts, delivery fees. People love charging you $8
It works against the general population, if this particular one doesn’t, don’t get too busy strutting, there is almost certainly something else that does work on you.
That is very well put! I feel like I’ve talked to so many people who see one ad that doesn’t land and say, “ads don’t work on me.”
Same reason that shit on TV is five easy payments of 29.95.
I’m willing g to spend $29. I’ll even spend $29 five times. But not $150.
I had my sewer line backing up into my basement a couple of months ago. My regular plumber was busy so I had to call in a company that I knew was an overpriced scam (“Dream Team” lol) but I had no choice since I had guests in the house for my father’s funeral. They came and of course they couldn’t clear the line and said they had to dig up and replace the whole thing. The guy had a special tablet that he showed me the three options and the prices on and it initially showed them all in dollars per month with “zero-interest financing”. I was like dude just show me the total cost. The three options were $17K, $22K and $36K total but the monthly payments actually decreased with increasing total price (naturally the payment option didn’t show how many total payments you would have to make).
Fortunately I called my regular plumber and he was so outraged at these motherfuckers that he came out that afternoon and cleared my line for me. Total cost $850.
Holy shit. Hold on to that plumber, lol.
He does like to launch into racist rants, but sometimes you just gotta hold your nose and swallow.
Ah that sucks but hey at least he’s not scamming you
The only time this breaks down for me though is that I still struggle to pay $0.99 for a mobile app I use often sometimes. Really not sure what it is.
It’s wild, I released a shareware music creation app for Windows back in 2000 and it was easy to get people to pay $29.95 for it. I now have a vastly superior iOS version and nobody’s willing to pay a dollar for it. It’s a very depressing situation for an independent developer.
It’s cuz people expect free or close to free mobile apps to be scummy and have a bajillion paywalls and need a monthly subscription and steal all your data so on and so forth
When there’s truly good apps, it sucks
Yeah. I used to have a $20 shareware product back when kagi was a payment processor. Apple introduced $1 pricing as a dick waving contest and fucked the entire indy developer community.
I originally sold my app on Beyond.com (which was originally software.net). They took 10% which didn’t seem too bad. One day they contacted me about giving my app a “freebate” – basically the app was still $29.95 but buyers could fill out a form and send it in and eventually (like months later) get their $29.95 back. Per their data only about half of buyers ever bothered to do this so it was effectively a 50% off deal. Beyond.com was supposed to give me about $10 per copy sold instead of the normal $27 to cover the freebate and they would make $5 per copy instead of their normal $3.
I said OK and they featured my app on their front page and sales went up like 100X and I was of course pretty happy. The funny part was that their accounting system was all fucked up and I kept getting $27 per copy sold even though the freebate was still in place. I actually tried contacting them multiple times about this to get the situation corrected and I could never get through to anybody who had any clue about what was going on. Eventually they went bankrupt and shut down and years later I got one of those class-action settlement checks in the mail without any explanation of what it was for. Maybe sales of my app were even better than they were telling me, I dunno. I’ve never once met a person in the real world who has ever even heard of the app so that doesn’t seem very likely.
Meanwhile factorio devs being chads and going with a round number for pricing.
Well it’s different when you’re selling drugs
Little different for me:
$1 - 5 = $5
$6 - 12 = $10
$13 - 20 = $20
$21 - 50 = $50
$51 - 70 = $100
>$70 = $1000
That’s basically right.
$70?
I could buy a car for that kinda money.
You just reminded me of a time when $70 felt like nearly unlimited opportunities. Now, $70 means that I might get to buy groceries AND restock on spices.
I keep being both entertained and baffled for the past three years or so by USians on Reddit complaining about games costing 60 bucks and simultaneously complaining about food delivery that they order every day. Not buying pizza for a couple days? Unimaginable.
Bruh a single bag of groceries is like 110 rn
God, I wish I could get groceries for 70…
Sorry, I meant an extra $70. I was irresponsibly drowsy-posting.
I found a pizza place near me that still has like 2010 prices. It’s like a large pie with 5 toppings for $20. Most places are more like $30 now, here (NYC)
No way $6 is $10 to you and not $5 this is how I know you’re lying.
I’m not saying it’s rational, it just feels like more money.
Been quite a long time since I spent over £35 in a game
Guybrush has it right.
Same, quite a bit of difference to me.
$1 - 7 = how many of these are they going to charge? 100+ dollars
$8 - 60 = round to nearest $5
$61+ = irrelevant collector’s edition
60+: Haha, I can’t imagine it’s worth it.
20-59: Buy if it comes strongly recommended.
10-19: Impulse buy if the description and screenshots look cool.
1-9: Buy if I like the store thumbnail.
0: Hahaha FUCK no this will hold the game flow hostage every few hours to get me to pay infinite money.
EDIT: YES I know proper - often Open Source - free games exist. :) OpenTTD and good ol’ Nethack are my faves
Don’t let me tempt you with !freegames@feddit.uk!
0: Hahaha FUCK no this will hold the game flow hostage every few hours to get me to pay infinite money.
https://supertuxkart.net/
https://www.wesnoth.org/
https://xonotic.org/
https://freeciv.org/I wish Armagetronad wasn’t so forgotten and had more people in the servers :(
Super Tux Kart is very underrated, super fun game actually
These seemed like recommendations for free games that both are quality and aren’t money grubbing.
Does my game’s thumbnail please you, m’lord?
Main previews won’t load for me right now I’m using mobile tho but yeah the banner looks great
That’s really fun, reminiscent of old-school platforming, absolutely worth the $2 and it runs great on the Steam Deck! Good job!
Thanks!
I’ll probably never play it, but the game looks cool and I can appreciate someone else’s hard work, so Imma buy it.
Good speed on your journey!
Thanks, the support is appreciated!
Not necessarily my cup of tea, but at two bucks it’s basically free, so…
Not the one you asked, but I do like the art. Though I’m not a fan of beat em ups.
Thanks! My partner worked hard on all the art.
Quick question for a game dev:
How does getting steam deck verified work? Like do you reach out? Or do they just check whenever they get to it?
Cool looking game! If I wasn’t deeply unemployed right now I would buy! Hopefully soon
It’s an optional part of getting your game on the steam marketplace, but I’ve had a friend try on steamdeck without messing with it and had no issues. Ymmv, I’m one example and this is my first project.
Mine is more:
$0.00: Is it FOSS, or is it on GOG? Is it DRM-free? Cool. (see: Luanti/MineTest, OpenTTD, Battle for Wesnoth, Beyond All Reason, FreeCiv, FreeOrion, Remnants of the Precursors, Endless Sky, The Ur-Quan Masters, Mindustry, Jill of the Jungle Trilogy, etc)
$0.01+ - $4.99: Is it in eXo? I’ll get it that way.
$5+: I can’t imagine buying it if there’s anything either in the FOSS category or in eXo that does the same thing.
And 99% of the time, if there isn’t, straight to torrents.
For me it’s
1-4 might buy and never play it
4-12 eh if it’s got good reviews and it’s my genre it’s a potential impulse buy
12-25 it’s got to be very acclaimed and I have to desire it strongly
25-35 if it’s like the sequel of a game I loved A LOT, and has good reviews, and it gets me on a good day
35+ no way, I’ll wait for a discountAs someone who came to PC gaming from decades as a console gamer it blows my mind how cheap PC gaming is once you get over the initial cost of the PC.
And the Steam discount golden age ended years ago, nowadays it’s much more expensive. Not to mention the bundles of the time.
BloodborneNightmare Kart costs 0Oh, this is fun, lemme do mine:
1-5: It’s most likely worth the money because I’ll likely beat it and have fun even though it won’t land in my all-time favorites.
5-10: I’m hesitant, but it’s probably worth the risk or it’s niche and I need to support the developer.
10-15: I either know for sure I’ll have a lot of fun with it or I’m desperate to play anything new because my library feels a little stale RN.
15-20: It better be fantastic and end up an all-time favorite because why would I pay this much for a video game.
20-60: I’m good. I can wait.
I thought this was age instead of price until I got to 0.
Unless it’s free because it’s open source!
Netscapes?
Clippy! What’s up man! It’s been forever! It’s me, Netscape Navigator! Remember me?
Yes, I remember you! How are you doing, Netscape Navigator?
0: this will stay in my backlog forever
Am I weird for rounding 8 to 10??
As a Canadian, $8 is $10, $5 is $8
Yeah uhh that’s pretty normal. Megabonk: $22.99 which is really $27
No. 8 is closer to 10 then it is to 5
I’m Canadian, so I instinctively just round 5 bucks up to 8 bucks instead (adding exchange and tax)
It’s so odd hearing how North America doesn’t have total purchase price on the item.
Yeah, but what about $7.99?
Closer to 800
As a Canadian, that’s 10 bucks cause of tax
That’s 8, so also 10
8 is definitely 10. 10 starts at 7.30~7.40 for me. Anything above 7.50 is 10.
no, completely valid, but pricing is a psychological question rather than a math question for some.
reason for example products are priced with X.99
some people se it as cost X amount, others (like youself) see it as X+1 amount. the 0.99 is the extreme end of the psychology and choosing 8 in the case of peak increases number of people who dont see it at the higher price
Nah. But I think the difference in this specific case is that if you’re already kinda wanting to buy something and it’s 8 dollars, you might convince yourself that it’s basically just 5 dollars to justify the purchase.
First, these jabronies need adderall.
Second, I need adderall.
I think we’re the same sort of jabroni.
You should go to the doctor and get a blood test. And while you’re there, try to get me some adderall.
Oh, me too! Uhh throw in some vyvanse while you both are there!
That trick with the $ x.99 all over again.
Ugh, sometimes we’ll be in the grocery store, and my wife will look at something that clearly says $7.99 and she’ll say “oh it’s only seven dollars”. Every time. I can’t believe how well that works on her. If I didn’t like her so much, I don’t know if I could handle it…
For me, the price listed is the price listed. If it’s $5, it’s $5. $8 is $8, etc.
This kind of ratio would just confuse me otherwise.
Basically everyone thinks that, and yet the data shows that basically everyone falls for it anyway. No matter how aware of it you are, you are not immune to manipulation
Vibe pricing.
