Or even $7.99, that or $8.99 is sort of a nice line between signaling "very cheap game" and "potentially short but enjoyable experience for the evening worth the gamble to find out if so".

I can't speak to it in general, that's just my 2c on the matter/issue without really knowing too terribly much about the game (or game development in generally, really, I'm just a consumer here! XD). <3 :'))))

Disagree. If you agree, buy it and leave a review.

You just made our day, we were laughing do hard. :D

Wasn't Vampire Survivors originally 2.99? I just checked, it's 4.99 now but I think it was cheaper in the beginnings.

The point is, 2.99 is a "no think" price tag, while 9.99 is a "wishlist and consider when discounted" price tag.

Bu that's only my tl;dr of this blog post: https://howtomarketagame.com/2022/01/31/vampire-survivors-su...

Pricing is a funny thing. You'd think lower prices would lead to more demand.

It is strange. Games have well defined pricing tiers that players and developers have worked out over time. $3 is generally considered somewhere between "trash you buy as a joke" and "a very short game without much in it". Does anyone know if there's any other markets that work like this? I can't think of any.

Games going on sale at launch also makes me assume its just because no one is buying it, but apparently more people buy games at launch if it says they're on sale. I don't get it.

Err... most things. Furniture for example.

When I was looking for a mattress recently, I wanted something affordable, but I shied away from really cheap options, because I was afraid they'd be very low quality. Similar reasoning could apply to many things.

Launch sales seem to be pretty standard on Steam, you can only set it up before the release and you can't change it afterwards AFAIK.

It is indeed. It turns out that the classical ‘supply and demand’ relationship only makes sense in fairly restricted settings. When it comes to consumer products like entertainment, it’s far more about psychology than rational value estimation and calculation.

If your product isn’t selling, (paradoxical though it may sound) raising the price can be a much better idea than lowering it and potentially both tarnishing your brand and making less profit at the same time.

And this is without even considering the notion of Veblen goods, which is an even more extreme example.

A lot of people who have never sold a digital product say stuff like this, but there's definitely a very obvious and gigantic market for low prices.

As somebody who has released several games and apps where some did well and others were crickets it seems like a combination of randomness/timing, visibility (related to the previous), and simply - is it good or not? If your game is amazing people will jump through hoops to try to play it. You can sell a great game for $40 or $60, and a very great game for $60 then $15/month to keep playing.

But you can't raise the price on a low-quality product and expect a great sales response. A lot of investor types say this out of hopes, or because they want that racehorse to run faster, but IME it's: Is it good? Charge market. Otherwise, free or freemium, you might even have to give away the code to get developer interest to help.

> But you can't raise the price on a low-quality product and expect a great sales response.

Well… obviously.

My point wasn’t that raising the price is always a good idea; it was that it sometimes is. It’s worth mentioning because even the idea that it’s sometimes sensible is surprising to many.

Of course there are good reasons to raise prices, but low or no sales is not one of them.

Well, you’re wrong. It’s been done before. It’s unconventional and perhaps rare, but it has been observed to work sometimes.

But I’m talking about products you’d buy regularly rather than one-time purchases like games or music.

I think if raising the price of your game increases demand, that’s a textbook Veblen good.

I’m not sure there is a formal definition, but it seems that Veblen came up with the idea because he was thinking about conspicuous consumption, which is slightly more specific.

It’s not that the high(er) price itself makes the product desirable — it just happens to help tell the right story about the product.

I don't know... at $10, I almost certainly would have just passed. At $3 I decided to buy it, and then when I saw the source for a couple of bucks more I bought that too.

That's why you price it at $7 and down to $3 during sale

Do commenters like this ever stop to consider people who cannot afford to pay higher prices, before encouraging creators to arbitrarily raise prices higher than the creators have already calculated? Do these commenters ever stop to analyze their world view that leads them to believe the litmus test for quality products is whether the product is priced like an Apple product?

I’m all for looking out for the less fortunate, but people running businesses are people too with spouses, children, mortgages, etc. they need to live a sustainable life too. Pricing something to market value is not necessarily a bad thing.

Strongly disagree. A price of $9.99 may seem “quality “ to you, but may be out of reach for many people (including, but not limited to, those who are not in developed countries). I’d rather have a lower priced item that allows people to pay a lot more at the time of purchase or perhaps a reminder (not annoying, and only once) to donate/pay more on reaching a certain level.

A price of $3 may be an impulse buy for some people, while a price of $9.99 may be a pause to evaluate that against other purchases.

Customers with higher disposable incomes can be targeted with additional content (DLC) or digital merchandise.

Steam allows for adjusted pricing based on country. It is common for games to cost more in US/EU versus other regions.

Additionally, and perhaps perversely, much of a games sale volume tends to be generated during seasonal promotions (Steam Summer/Winter Sale, etc).

Pricing a game at $3 doesn't give you anywhere to go in terms of a discount.

>I’d rather have a lower priced item

That’s what every customer wants. But game companies that sell at $3.99 don’t tend to release many high-quality sequels.

We were debating this exact thing back and forth and decided for the current price based on expected playtime. By now, I have 10+ hours in the game, but you can beat the game to level 80 in roughly 4 hours, which equates to 1$/hour or the regional equivalent in price. We made the style and source code DLCs for people who were willing to pay more or support us, but wanted kids with low allowances to be able to buy the game as well.

Thank you for the explanation, that makes sense. I will be buying your game and most likely the DLC too! Congrats the on the launch and good luck with your future projects :)

Games under $5 are easy impulse buys and never regretted or refunded unless they don't actually run on my system. $10 would make me question "do I really want to buy this game?", which more often than not is a "no" or "not now", and so it just becomes another slot on the wishlist to be scrolled past and added when it's on sale.

At the same time 2.5 times less buyer is the revenues

At the same time if you want to validate a new idea, you want to know how many people say yes to “do i really want it” and not how many people impulse buy.