Rampant Sales Are Bad For Players

"Sales screw your fans"

Super interesting article about how sales like Steam's can be bad for players and developers alike. The alternative pricing model like Minecraft sounds reasonable, as pre-order sales have shown over the years.

It's by Jason Rohrer.

I've certainly met some of them: people who have a backlog of 50 unplayed games in their Steam library. Maybe they'll never play them. But even if there are enough people doing this, it's not a good thing. It's just people being tricked into wasting money on stuff they don't want or need. Better that they spent that money on one full-price game that they really want rather than four 75%-off impulse buys to add to their backlog.

Yup, I'm of this mindset too. I don't buy many games in the Steam sales, I bought 2 games during the last winter sale. It's not a matter of already owning the games in those sales, but what I'll want to actually play than leave it to rust in my steam library.

@assinass: Between humble bundles and sales on 3rd party sites like green man gaming I' say I have something in the region of 40 - 100 unplayed games that I will never touch. I was considering recently how that stacks up to when I was a kid and could only afford one game a week from the discount section. Even if it were a poor game, I was stuck with it and to that end I'd learn it and finish it nine times out of ten. It's strange to say but the amount of choice and variety has overwhelmed me at this point and I haven't played anything for more than an hour since October. Sometimes restrictions can be a great way to make us focus and sales have removed that.

I bought a bunch of games in the steam sale, 10 - 15 at a guess and i've played at least 3 of them to completion and 10 hours or so of 5 more,truth is i wouldn't have played or even considered these titles if they weren't on sale. With consoles i'm able to pick up any old rubbish i want a few months after release for pittance in a retail store because they want rid of them and i find a few hidden gems that way, the way i see it the steam sale is the bargain bucket in a market where that sales model doesn't exist, a way to even the balance of an all digital future.

The alternative is the much maligned price model used by microsoft last gen, $60 for 4 year old games, even PC games are cheaper in retail most times you can find them than they are on steam a month or so after release.

STEAM IS THE GREATEST INVENTION EVER CONCEIVED BY MAN YOU JUST DON'T LIKE CHEAP GAMES FUCK YOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Anyway. I agree with Rohrer. and I guess @assinass by extension. When people tell me that they have an insane backlog I usually think it's like, two or three games they forgot to play. Nope. Some people have an entire shelf (physical or otherwise) full of video games they haven't played but bought because... why? It doesn't make sense to me. Why buy something you have no intention of ever playing?

Yeah, just confusing behaviour all around.

yo you're talking like you lived this struggle but this was the dream

All that article confirmed for me is that it's clear that many $60 games are overpriced. And that while the inevitability of a Steam sale must cause many to wait, they'll end up buying the game at a discount instead of just never buying the game at all. Also, The Castle Doctrine seems cool and I hope it's a success, but I'm sure a lot of folks won't be willing to shell out $16 bucks for it.

@oldirtybearon: Personally it's a case of having more money than I need and just buying shit for the sake of it. It's part of a really ugly consumer mentality that's triggered by stuff like steam sales, almost like some bizarre meta game targeted at young adults with a normal cash flow but now major responsibilities.

This dude doesn't really back up most of his points very well, and when he does his arguments are thin at best.

"When we're talking about digital games, the potential full-price lifetime is pretty much eternal. There is no shelf space. Even the long tail isn't a hard-and-fast rule anymore. As the game's audience grows, revenue can actually climb over time..."

Does he have any evidence whatsoever to support this besides Garry's Mod, which is a game that has been constantly evolving since it was initially released?

Yeah, one game a week? I got 2 games A YEAR and never more. Anyways I love steam sales. Its pretty easy, just buy what you want to play. I don't feel bad for people with big backlogs. Better than 2 games a year (at 120 dollars). It's better to have a huge backlog that doesn't even cost half that much.

He makes an excellent argument but I wouldn't say that it is sales that are bad for players and developers; it's excessively frequent sales that are bad for players and developers. The graph on Garry's Mod even shows it. You can see six sales spikes in that five year graph. The daily units sold remained steady while not on sale. There is no way consumers were avoiding purchasing it because they were waiting for a sale.

@counterclockwork87: I apologize if that came off as "oh I lived on breadcrumbs pity me" talk. That's what I was able to get by doing the family chores £5 - 10 and a preowned game per week I'd burn through and enjoy so I could do it again next Friday.

@wampa1 said:

You make these steep sales sound almost manipulative; maybe they are. I'm having a hard time reconciling my own mentality with games (play what interests me) with this apparent desire in others to buy anything and everything on the off-chance they might want to play it later. I mean sure, you could get a great game with a high metacritic score for $5 or less during a sale, but really, if you're never going to play it then what's the point?

The more I think about this, the more I think steam sales in particular may be more of a hindrance than a boon. One need only look at how many people on this very forum say "I'll wait for a steam sale" when any new game (no mattered how interested they may be in it) is released.

Absolutely. Just do what Minecraft did!

Seriously. I hadn't heard that Minecraft sold via an "ever rising pricing model", more that it was just in an inexpensive Beta for years, and then just cost more when it was released, which might be kind of the same thing. It seems more like the early access concept that folks willing to play the game and maybe do some bug testing before it's complete should pay less than the retail price. No matter, basing the pricing structure of your incredibly neiche game off of the biggest viral game success ever, might not pan out.

And I'd add that a platform like Steam with it's ever impending sales actually seems perfect for the kind of narrower scope that The Castle Doctrine has. Those sales are the time when tons of people look at the smaller more experimental games that they thought to be "risky" at full price not knowing if they'd actually enjoy it, and are much more willing to just try it out for a discounted price. Again, though, he's the dev and not me, so hopefully he's spot on and the game sells well.

I can't speak for other people, but I don't think folks are waiting for a sale "no mattered how interested they may be in" a game. That attitude means, "This looks interesting, but I'm not totally sold, so I'd rather check it out when the money I'm spending is more easy to justify if I end up not liking the game."

Lots of games sites in the past have graded games on a Buy/Rent/Miss scale, but of course renting a game doesn't really exist anymore. Now, sales fills that niche of the person not sure about the product, who's willing to come in late to give it a try.

@oldirtybearon: Oh , while I do think there is a level of manipulation that's just part of selling a product. I should say that I think that the responsibility totally lies with the consumer to spend his or her money with responsibility. You likely can't understand it because you don't have the issues with hoarding that a lot of people seem to in the age of massive reductions.

To the main point, yeah I think these sales can hurt the way we view games. I can't remember the last game I bought full price as I've been trained to wait a month or so when it's half price along with ten other games that are reduced at the same time.

I disagree.

They want to get your game as soon as it comes out, at full price.

This doesn't always work out because I may have other games I want to play, without being tricked as he puts it, but I may not always have the time to play it as soon as it comes out. There are few games in the year that I actually want to play right away at release, maybe one or two a year. The rest I can wait to play when I have time. So should I buy a game at full price, and by the time I do have time to play it, see that the price has already gone down permanently (not a timed sale)? I'd rather buy the game when it's on sale and save it for when I do have time to play it.

In the end, it comes down to him doing what he thinks is best for himself and his business. As a consumer, I will do what is best for me. He's laid out why he thinks this model he's pursuing is best for him, but I'm not convinced that he's proven why it's best for me as a consumer.

I think it depends on circumstances. If you talk to Gearbox they'd probably say they greatly benefited from steam sales on Borderlands because it increased exposure over time and people got excited for Borderlands 2. There are a lot of cases of games getting renewed interest because of the reduced cost of entry.

Where it seems to get most, "problematic," is when people start buying more games than they have time to play. I know during the last sale I only bought games during it I had some intent on finishing (or in one case, I already bought full price on another platform and wanted in my steam library) but this isn't the case for a lot of people.

But yeah, I think its a more complicated issue than saying, "This is bad," and, "This is good." Or even that its an issue at all.

The only thing that might cause a complete societal collapse are humble bundles. That shit is nefarious.

I never buy anything on a sale that I'm not at least interested in. I definitely like spending less money for games, and maybe I don't finish everything that I buy, but I don't just buy a bunch of random crap because it's on sale. That's silly, and people who do that probably have better things to worry about w/r/t their money than just Steam.

Shit argument

evidence for assertions? Big claims, no evidence.

In the case of physical games its for collection purposes. Christ, I still have a dozen or more games still entirely unopened that I bought simply because I either wanted them for collection purposes or simply wanted to support the game/publisher.

I disagree. The best games always float to the top, no matter how long it takes.

There really is nothing gamers won't complain about.

The only games I have in my Steam library that I truly haven't played are games that came with Humble Bundles. But excuse me for supporting developers. I seem to have forgotten that it isn't simply my business alone whether I play them or not, but everybody's.

That must have been rough. I only got one game a day and I thought I had it bad.

Look, it's my choice how I spend my money, and if Steam is offering a bunch of games that I have only the slightest interest in for almost nothing, then it's my right to buy them. Is it responsible? Not at all. Does it create the "backlog problem"? Well, yeah. Does it create a sense of frustration when I look at my list of games and know that I'll never finish all of them, and probably not even half of them? To an extent, yes, but I've long since gotten used to that.

Having such a huge games collection has made me realize a few things. First, and perhaps most importantly, I don't want to play everything. When I was a kid, I wanted to own and play everything, and the amount of time I had to play wasn't any object. I had all the time in the world, I just needed money! Secondly, it's made me sit back and think about what I value in a game. Length? Nope. QUBE, Portal 1 and 2, and Resistance are all less than ten hours long but I left all of them feeling satisfied. In contrast, The Last of Us - a twelve to fifteen hour game - feels a little too long and I was ready for it to be over by the end. Third, it ensures that I will always have something new to play just waiting for me to fire it up and dive in.

And, finally, I don't see how sales screw the player when it's the responsibility of the person buying them to know what they want and when to stop.

Besides, selling a game for 75% off is hardly screwing the buyer.

@believer258: As I said I apologize, it was insensitive of me and it likely came off as looking for pity when I was really lucky as a kid, I'll refrain from talking anymore in case I embarrass myself or offend others..

I have at least 200 games in my steam library I haven't ever touched and probably never will, is it 'cause I saw they were cheap and thought fuck it? Not really no. A lot of it is from buying charity bundles, which I have bought numerous of because it's for charity who gives a fuck if I actually play them, and admittedly some are games I have had a middling interest in and wanted to check them out but just never got around to it.

If we're talking about actually finishing the rest of the 300 games in my library I have apparently started at least once, it's probably a very small amount of games. They just don't hold my interest like they used to, and I usually get stuck into massive engrossing games instead like Victoria 2 or Dota.

It's also important to note that Rohrer doesn't really work to make a lot of money off his games. This is a quote from a NeoGAF mod that is good to be mindful of when considering Rohrer's position on sales, which can put him on the other side of most developers who have other priorities and life stuff they need money for:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=97233251&postcount=76

It's worth noting that Rohrer lives a very simple low expense life and does not want money, or to make it big. He wants to do quiet, thoughtful stuff that makes the $20k a year or whatever he needs to pay his bills and feed his family. He's written extensively about this all over the internet. Close your eyes and think of what a simple life looks like, and now go simpler, simpler, simpler, simpler. If you're at the point where the parents grow all their own food and don't plug in their refrigerator, you're pretty much there. That's Rohrer.

So if you filter his approach to making games through that lens, through the idea that he doesn't want to compromise his integrity, and he wants a very small, dedicated fanbase who can sustain him and return and be loyal. Whereas the typical developer wants to expand, hire a team, get bigger, invest, maybe get rich, etc. That's not what Rohrer is doing.

This isn't me accusing other developers of being greedy, but rather pointing out that the kind of decisions you need to make when you want to sell 5,000 copies of your game are very different than the kinds of decisions you make when you want to sell 50,000, 250,000, 500,000, 5 million, 10 million, etc.

I think they probably are bad on a net basis for the gaming industry.

Not directly, but by incentivizing a business structure that's going to lead crappy things in games.

There's no supply limitation to act as a floor for low prices unlike physical. Since there is no resell potential if the game stinks, players are less willing to spend as much as they do for physical to offset the bad game risk. Constant Sales devalues the perception of the product and it becomes a race to the bottom as price becomes the only differentiating factor between vendors like Steam/PSN/Origin etc. Which also means Steam can't take its' foot off the gas on sales. And as @grantheaslip points out this rewards games that charge in-game as opposed to upfront, since there is no external market for microtransactions. It also trains consumers to wait for low prices, thus depriving early crucial immmediate revenue needed to keep companies afloat post release.

This puts tremendous downward pricing pressure on games. There's got to be a tipping point where the price gets so low that devs can't recoup their investment no matter how many copies they sell.

Since there also is marginal cost to get listed it also means low quality unfinished product is easier to sell as new for the merchant. They don't have to outlay cash for it and gamers can't get a refund for it. Which leads to gamers getting more alphas and broken pieces of crap.

The way to counter this is probably not one that's going to be a good one for players either, which is price collusion or big Pubs having their own distribution platforms such as Uplay and Origin where they can dictate the pricing.

I'm one of those guys who does have way more games than I'll probably ever play, but my rationale for a lot of them is that I buy them to try them. 2-3 dollars to try a game is whole lot less than I used to pay to rent one. So I'm as guilty as anyone.

There are still going to be good games in the future but more of them are probably going to be in the mold of Rogue Legacy (low production values) and DOTA 2 (f2p, microtransactions) than something like Skyrim (single player, massive world and production values, pay upfront once).

Long story short= rampant sales equal a future of a lot more games with low production values, glitch ridden experiences and microtransactions.

There are games that I've purchased that I've never played. Lots of them. Thing is, as an adult, I'm in the fortunate place where I live the way I want to while having disposable income. I tip well enough where places I frequent often have staff who race to tend to me.

I buy games I don't intend on playing as a sort of tip to developers who stray from the main path. Perhaps they're making games in genres I used to enjoy. Perhaps I watched a playthrough of a game whose gameplay would not have interested me, but the story did. Buying a game I am not going to play is my way of tipping a developer for producing something I enjoyed in some capacity.

The number of full priced games I purchase has not changed. I still only buy a handful of games at full price because I -really- want to play them at launch. I want to be part of that zeitgeist. I will use vacation days to play the game at launch. I buy into kickstarter, early access, beta games because I enjoy the premise of a future product. I want to be part of something as it's being created.

If publishers and developers want gamers to buy games at launch, offer a product that is desirable at launch. If you toss out a product like Sim City or Battlefield 4 to retail, you're telling your customers that they are buying a complete and functional product. When your product is flat out broken on launch, is broken for months, and has no recourse for the customer to get -all- their money back, why should gamers jump on that $60 day one price point? Three months later, they will get a better product and if the price is reduced or if there's a used copy available, why shouldn't the customer come out ahead?

In the case of his game it is also what's best for the consumer. His game is an MMO. If people don't buy it right away because they expect a sale then it could result in not having a player base, which would kill any future purchases due to the fact that it is a dead MMO. If everybody buys in at the discounts now then there will be a base of players and people will have lots of players to play with.

I don't even agree with that assertion about typical developers. I'd say they're looking to make enough money to live off of and be able to make their next game. That may require getting a bigger team or investing in their development process. I'm pretty sure those developers want a dedicated fanbase as well. Rohrer isn't special in this case.

@mb said:

I think his assertion that older digital games should eternally be whatever their full price was is totally bonkers. Nothing works that way. Old products, everything from appliances to physical/digital media, decline in perceived value, unless their numbers become so low they are rare and valued by collectors.

Like, he has it backwards. Retail games don't have to lower their price magically because of shelf space. They have to lower their price because demand (for the full price retail product) has become almost nil, so if they ever want to free up that shelf space, they have to find a way to increase demand in that game. Even without a physical shelf, if a particular digital game has just completely stopped selling, you should probably lower the price.

I find I'm quite happy with buying games during sales.

Actually, no. The initial low price is good for the consumers of his game, as that will hopefully entice people to buy in early so that there are people playing his MMO for others to play with. Increasing the price and maintaining that price without ever going on sale isn't necessarily best for the consumer. That benefits him. One could make the argument that going on sale later will drive more people to pick up the game, giving consumers more people to play with.

Let people spend their money how they wish. There's no trickery going on with sales. People are smart enough to make their own decisions.

I own over 300 Steam games and don't feel tricked in the slightest.

My account is worth about £3500. I totally feel cheated that i've paid about £1500 for them.

I spend my money where I like. I mean, I bought PQ for like, £0.60 today.

I am such a sucker and am ripped off all over the place, totes magotes.

Just like that guy, I do my job and eat my food and pay my bills. Then I finance things that make me happy. Why is this a problem?

Games, when they come out are overpriced as fuck. As evidence by a sale 6 months later making it over 50% off. Even if they're not on sale they generally drop by a third in 6 months.

That being said, I buy games I want on day 1, because I want it. Games that I am mildly interested in I will wait for the inevitable price drop. Everything drops in price, and goes on sale, not just games.

Rather buy on a sale than pirate it, but if they have issue with me paying them, I could totally not.

I buy way more games than i finish, but I usually give them atleast a 10-30min first try. I'm definetly guilty of buying games, fully aware i'll probably won't be finishing them either.

Part of why I buy those games is b/c of me wanting to upport the dev. Even if it's a tiny sum on a sale, it's more than 0. Or it could be me just wanting to try new stuff out, just to atleast have tried it.

@sergio: His data shows that in the past his daily revenue dropped to pretty much $0 while not on sale. Traditionally a drop in units sold is a more gradual decline. I also get a sense from his writing that people definitely let him know that they were upset when they bought his stuff and it immediately went on sale. This way he doesn't upset those people and when people discover it exists they won't have a reason to wait. That's his theory anyway. Maybe this still won't stop unit sales from dropping to 0. We'll see how well his sales figures are, how long the tail is and how active the player base is soon enough.

It's a good thing for players. Games are cheaper. People just need self control when it comes to these sales. I had none of it for a long time and I suffered. I've become much better at forcing myself not to buy things just because it's cheap, but I still do it.

People need to stop blaming everything for the problems that they have. The sales are there for people who want them. You don't have to buy anything from them.

I dont understand people who do that. I look at all the humble bundles and frequently go "I am interested in none of them" however there is one that comes alonge that has one in it and I buy it for that one game and get 6 or so with it. I have the entire Ironclad game series in my steam from a bundle, thats 8 different games I will not play, because I wanted Luscious( terrible game) , Back to the future and Cargo commander (i played alot of and always wanted it). Steam sales I look and go "do I want that game? and at that price?" the ratio needs to be higher on one to negate the other. Not "is it cheap? I will buy it then."

I used to do the same, my dad would turn up with all sorts of Master system games in 92 secondhand. I had 30 Master system games and 40 Megadrive/Genesis games from the same trade in cart, with 25 Snes game. My friends always ask on Tuesday "What game did your dad get?" since he went into town on mondays and got a new game.

Followed by the PSone and having 40 odd games. Ps2 80 odd. 20 Xbox original and 60 360, 10 ps3. and 0-9128209840283-34098-23490823098-230985 PC games.

I am from a poor house and yet we made it work by finding the deals, trade ins and secondhand. It was only 360 I ended up buy mostly on day one....after a month or two waiting for a game to come out.

So it sounds insane being stuck with 2 or so games a year to me.

Maybe I'm optimistic, but I think I will one day get to every game in my 300+ collection. It's not like I hate the games I've bought; it's just some games are easier than others. Sometimes I don't want to invest 2 hours into learning new mechanics and immersing myself.

I assumed this would be about prices and the 'value' of games, which is something I would agree with: rampant sales are bad for the value of games. The thread on how prohibitively expensive Nidhogg is is infuriating.

@assinass: most of the times I feel the games being heavely discounted are games that didn't sell well or are just a bit old, and at this point why not just do what you can to get these games to the gamers.

Personally $60 seems to expensive for allot of games and I think the modern day game pricing scheme is broken, and I think its really what's bad for games. Why is everything $60 on day one? Who decides that? Sure the new COD will sell but what about Ninja Gaiden 3? The $60 price tag just killed Ninja Garden 3 IMO.

The fact is the pricing system is broken and its refreshing to see Steam try to get lite selling games or old games in gamers collections.

And for me I think the Humble Bundle had been more responsible for the size of my steam collection these days and no my steam collection isn't near 200 games.

For the same price I rather have 10 games bought on sale that I may potentially play than one I have to play. Sorry but its no longer the dark age where I had to play every game I had because there was no other way and I was playing through crap titles to completion hoping that the next purchase will be a better title.

If developer doesn't like sales just don't participate in them. If your product is that good people will buy it. Just check Call of Duty Titles they ale always on low discount and older ones are at pretty high price compared to other games from the same year but people somehow still buy them.

Something about this is wrong.

Just look at everyone's comments.

Some money is better than no money.

Yeah, and my farts are dicks.

Kind of getting the impression that video game backlogs are going to be the end of us all.

@alwaysbebombing: That shouldn't exactly come as a surprise.

Nope.

I have 500+ games on Steam and of those there are a ton that I know I will never play. A lot of the games were sub $5 sales that I said to myself I may play this game and rather have it then not. My problem with these sales I noticed the big time during the last set of sales was the Wolf Among Us being on sale. That was a giant fuck you by Telltale. I will never by a Telltale game at full price again.