IGN noted that Silksong’s surprisingly low price thrilled players, but some indie devs fear it could set unrealistic expectations for other games. What do you think?
Leaving any money on the table is viewed as an ethical problem. At least to those in systems made to extract wealth.
$20 is a great price point. Good for them, I hope they sell 10 million copies
It's also a price point where people will buy it on an impulse, play for a few hours and think they got their money's worth. Leave good reviews and tell their friends about it.
I hope they sell 10 million copies as well, and quite frankly wish they had some sort of tip jar where people could donate $5 or $10 more to support the devs if they think it's worth it.
Buy the OST and/or a copy to your friends and family. The possibilities are endless.
Buy it on more than one platform
Didn't the game releasing basically crash steam servers? That's not easy to do these days. I don't know if it was "just" the store page or the cdn (where games are downloaded from), but the latter would just be mind blowing given the games size.
My point? Pretty sure they sold stupid numbers of copies. Dropping the price by 1/3 probably multiplied their sales and actually translated very well.
I was unable to buy an unrelated game on Steam during the Silksong release chaos.
I got my copy of Silksong on GoG, but not after some instability there too.
Team Cherry are just out there doing the damn thing. Didn't read the comments. Didn't cultivate or feel pressured by the hype machine. Didn't pay for a $500,000 exclusive trailer from Geoff Keighley. Just a team of three doing their own thing. Amazing that it's even possible in this day and age.
Yeah, but damn it, they could have announced the release date a bit earlier.
I wanted to take vacation for it!
Great game with pro-consumer pricing.
Sounds like some sort of scheme to cultivate a loyal fan base that wants to happily support and buy your stuff.
Every other developer, independent or not, should pay close attention to this strategy.
But what about the next quarterly results for our greedy megacorporation? Bet you didn't think about those, huh?
Most games aren’t just overpriced, they are grotesquely overpriced. $20 feels good for a game like this. I didn’t have to think about it or budget anything, I just bought it.
Terraria costs half the price, Stardew Valley costs a third less, Hollow Knight costs a quarter less, Celeste costs the same, Minecraft used to cost the same
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I havent played silksong yet, but there are so many examples of good indie games that cost the same or less
Due to Romania not having localized pricing, games cost so much more than for people living in other countries. Hollow Knight: Silksong costs 59 loaves of bread
Terraria is 14 years old, Stardew valley is 9 years old Celeste is 7 years old, Minecraft is 16 years old.
And at least 3/4 of them still get updates
Nah. Team Cherry’s situation is totally unique.
They said the same thing about Hollow Knight being so cheap. I remember when Nine Sols dropped for $40, people were saying it’s so much more expensive but it was a huge success nonetheless
I think the $20 price tag makes complete sense if you're the most wishlisted game on steam. They knew it would sell a jillion copies.
They could have sold it for $30 maybe even $40 with a negligible drop in sales
$30 is what I expected. Anything more and I would have bought it, but I'd have been a little disappointed.
i think, if they want me to play them, they need to be priced appropriately. unless I’m going to find a year of joy and replayability, I’m not sinking 60+ into a game. I have a limited budget, don’t pirate games, and want to know I support devs when I can.
25 is the perfect “i got paid today lemme try this” price for me.
15 is the perfect “I’ll get this, and maybe it’ll stay in my lib, but it supports a new fellow dev. cool.”
Honestly, if indie developers ask reasonable prices I am willing to pay that, even a little more. Because I know the struggle, knowing that many solo devs basically exploit themselves for their big dream game. AAA on the other hand can straight go fuck themselves.
I think people making decisions without giving half a fuck about "the market" is awesome.
I've never understood why there are standard price points for computer games. There is a wide spectrum of effort that goes into them, so it seems strange that all should be priced the same.
Yeah, I'm not paying more than $20 for an indie game. If your indie game "needs" to cost more than that (it doesn't), I will just wait for a sale.
Edit: LOL @ the downvotes 😂 so entitled "b-b-but you HAVE to buy my hobby project at full overpriced price that is a carbon copy of literally hundreds of identical games' premise, art style, and mechanics, don't you want to SUPPORT me???"
I fail to see why one would not pay more just because it's indie I mean I have heard arguments about them being buggy and not complete sometimes, but that is equally true for many AAA games nowadays, but those people pay $80 without as much as a blink
I mean, if the production costs are so huge that you need $35+, you are just a company. $30 is the limit
I would have paid $60 for silksong because of its incredible quality. For me it has nothing to do with whether it is indie or not. I won't pay anything for triple A games most of the time, they seem very mid (quality wise but also isn't interesting to me).
I dont think anyone sees a $20 dollar game, and goes this should now be the price of games. Its weird that they even think that and kind of selfish to try and make it appear as a bad thing.
Yeah, look at this versus the price increases in Nintendo games that nobody seemed to think presented some kind of weird moral quandary.
Never pay more than twenty bucks for a computer game.
I don't understand the concept of "not being able to afford selling at that low a price" for something that's purely digital. Like I get if you're selling a chair and the wood and tools you used to make the chair cost you $100, you need to sell that chair for more than $100 to not lose money on the whole transaction. But for a video game, the costs have basically all been realized by the time the game gets released, right, assuming you don't have to worry about producing physical copies or pay for servers every month? So if that's your situation, your main concern is to find the sweet point for the price at which the most people will buy your game, yes? If you can sell ten times as many copies by cutting the price in half, you would be losing money if you didn't go with the lower price.
But for a video game, the costs have basically all been realized by the time the game gets released,
Yeah, but now you need to make that money back. If you bought assets, or you spent time you could have been working a job, then you need to sell enough to recuperate what you put in plus more or this whole thing won't be sustainable enough for your second game.
If you can sell ten times as many copies by cutting the price in half, you would be losing money if you didn't go with the lower price.
Um, sure. This has limits, though.
Yes, they should be afraid. Seeing just how well things work, when you are honest scares the dishonest and manipulative. Also it comes from IGN, so yea.
I have a huge backlog of games and I'm not spending more than $20 on anything until I've cleaned it out.
I think nothing about it, I pirated it
Charge what you think your game is worth. Consumers will pay what they think it is worth.
I don’t think guilting other developers into charging more just so you don’t look bad is going to work the way you hope it is.
Also it's a game. It's kind of a unique thing. This isn't like Walmart coming in and driving all the mom and pop stores out of business before jacking up the prices. It's not really able to greatly affect other developers. Especially since they aren't putting out other titles super frequently or anything.
This answer makes the most sense to me. I still haven’t bought BG3 although I’m very excited to try it. The reason, I’ll pay $35/$40 for so I wait for the sale to buy it for the price I think is appropriate for me.
I agree that the developers, especially the indie ones, need to make money so they should price it to what they think is fair for them. I have no control over the rest of the masses so hopefully things work out and the good developers get recognition and compensation.
It’s on sale for $44 USD until sept 8th