Skip to main content

Are low prices hurting independent games developers?

Company

At this moment, many gamers around the world are caught up in the pre-Christmas game sales frenzy happening in the DLC space. There are some enormous savings to be had in the Appstore and Steam marketplace with publishers dropping prices on a whole range of their games and independent games developers collaborating on game bundles for incredibly affordable prices. While the sales drops are a drastic cut for games developers, the initial results can extremely rewarding and a successful way of promotion.

Arstechnica has an article on whether these sales and low prices are doing more harm than good for independent games developers, with opinions from various notable indie developers including Andrew Goulding from Brawsome!. Andrew describes the success he's had with his point and click adventure game, Jolly Rover, when it went on sale on Steam. From Arstechnica...

(Andrew Goulding) Sales were going slow... Steam suggested right away that the price was wrong for this type of game at $19.99, but I wanted to see how it would go. I think they were right. This lead first to a sale to drop to $9.99 with okay results, then lead to a permanent drop to this price with an additional sale about three to four months after release. At $9.99 I make about the same revenue on average, but sell more copies, which is the way I would prefer it, as the game gets out to more people...

This solidified my opinion that Steam know their audience, and they know what they're doing when it comes to pricing games.

Jolly Rover was also included in a one day Steam holiday bundle which included Gish, Puzzle Agent, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, and And Yet it Moves, all for a measly sum of $5. The bundle secured 47,000 sales, the success of which is expressed by Andrew who remarks that he's had more revenue from that particular sale than the entire amount of sales of Jolly Rover up to that point on Steam, despite the big price drop.

Arstechnica doesn't put the blame on independent games developers for going this route when many simply do not have the marketing muscle to promote their games, but it does beg the question, are these sales and this continued push of driving game prices lower and lower causing unrealistic and unsustainable consumer expectations and demands as a result?

For the article, head on over to Arstechnica...