Personally, I don't mind at all. For one I bought it at $30, but also I have 2,000 hours logged. Per hour that's a cost of $0.02 per hour (at the new price) if I had bought it at $40. I'm all for calling out studios like ubisoft for being greedy, but coffee stain has done a very fair job with Satisfactory IMO, and they very well deserve $10 more for the game.
I mean, would you argue that the game isn't worth the price increase? I've always felt that this game with what they gave you for content is well worth a $50 price point, honestly tentatively say maybe even a $60 price point, I mean I do agree you that it's weird that they're choosing to raise the price now, considering that they honestly should have raised the price point of the game easily one or two years ago, but I definitely wouldn't go to say that the game isn't worth the price that they're asking for, I still personally believe they are under selling their game.
Honestly, they could increase the game after the sale, launch the 1.0 release and raise the price again saying that okay now it's no longer Early Access and I think that would be 100% Fair, I've gotten exponentially more hours out of this game than I have out of games that I've paid $70 for
Tbh I feel it’s totally worth the price, and if they said that they increased the price due to the added value since releasing into ea I’d be totally fine with it. But using inflation as a cover, like the Factorio devs before them, is gross and deceptive. Hell, I’d rather them just say “we want more money”. At least that’s honest.
Like I said, it’s fine if they want to increase the price due to an official release, or simply because they feel there has been significant value added since launching into early access. Lots of devs do that, it’s not a big deal. But none of them lie about inflation somehow affecting an existing digital good in any meaningful way. Well again, except Factorio lol. But that guy also excused statutory rape so…
Yeah I do agree, it seems real sleazy blowing it under the guise of inflation, that being said it is understandable because inflation is infected quite hard with those projects, whether it's hosting costs or salary well it may not be as much as physical products I can see where they may want to raise it but in this case I do agree I think they definitely had reason to just say "yo our game is good and we know it so we're upping the price" okay maybe not exactly like that but you get the point
Trying to make money from games with long term support is a tricky thing that companies keep trying to do - it can lead to season passes, microtransactions, deluxe/supporter editions, buyable maps and expansions - or stuff like this.
Companies try to get money to support game, more news at eleven...
I wrote is elsewhere but I’ll write it again here:
Inflation affects physical goods because you need to make the product from the ground up every single time. Those materials cost money, and rise with inflation, so making the product from scratch each time gradually costs more as time goes on. Hence why they need to raise the price of the finished product - otherwise they'd literally lose money on each sale.
Digital goods don’t work this way, once the product has been made it can freely be distributed without having to be remade again and again.
Yes, it costs money to patch and update. But that’s not comparable to rebuilding the product from the ground up like with physical goods.
Hence why you release a new product. You can’t indefinitely make income from one thing until the end of time.
You can charge more for a new product, as you can actually scale for inflation when you have to make it from the ground up. After all, the tools and manpower it required cost more now. So you can charge more.
But asking for more money for a product that was made half a decade prior, that didn’t cost what it costs now since inflation wasn’t where it is now, isn’t the answer.
Listen, as a general rule of thumb, if even EA and Activision won’t go there, maybe you shouldn’t either.
So they should just stop development on a game that's still considered early access and leave it in an unfinished state and start working on something else that they can charge more for and just stop working on it once inflation catches up no matter the state it's in? That's what you're saying devs should do?
EA, Activision, Ubisoft don't do it this way, instead they charge you for all extra content separately.
Maybe that's what the Satisfactory team should do, release the game as is as being complete, not change the price and then release paid DLC that would otherwise have been updates so in the end people need to pay more to get the full game... Damn, we're back to square one but now people who already paid for the game also need to pay for updates...
Nope, they decided to accept purchases for a game that isn’t finished, and in doing so promised that one day it would be. If they stop now they’ll just be scammers.
They should do what Larian did. Release the game in EA, develop the game with those new purchases helping to keep things going, then release it when it’s complete. No artificially changing the price, no bs.
And in what world has what we’ve gotten from free Satisfactory updates constituted would-be paid dlc? Or are you just using hypotheticals that aren’t relevant?