Steam autumn sale is a go!

[zarx]

green_sky said:

zarx said:

PullusPardus said:

Andrespetmonkey said:
How the fuck do they make money from selling Limbo for £1.74?

if you bought Limbo for $10 plus then i feel bad for you for getting scammed, not that the game is bad, but its an Indie game, it will make money through downloads even if it was $0.99 , heck look at angry birds and cut the rope, the guys are swimming in millions that even the big companies are biting their nails in jealousy of them.

bottomline a game shouldn't cost more than it's worth, sure you can say the retail ones go for the disk , shipping, manufacturing, publishing... ect , but downloadables don't need any of those costs, so it's price is fair enough i say

You may find this interesting  http://www.dinofarmgames.com/?p=561, I don't really 100% agree but it is interesting.

Yea that is interesting article and makes some good points but there is not much of a solution to this. Also market is really saturated as everyone has big backlogs (mostly everyone). I have close to 50 games on steam and it made no logical sense for me to buy 4-5 more games during this sale. The lower price of the products made me buy them outright. If they were $10-15 (not the most expensive thing in the world) it would be hard to justify me buying them as i already have a backlog and have to budget my money. There is always going to be few in entertainment business who come on top and rake in millions. Life is interesting. The more you have, the more it wants to give to you. :)

I agree more with Robert Boyd's comment than the article TBH but yea I have brought a lot of game in steam sales that I haven't even bothered to download yet, it's one of the reasons I haven't gotten a current gen console yet I have more good games on PC than i have time to play them, first world problems lol.

Robert Boyd's comment, if you haven't read it

 

Hi, this is Robert Boyd from Zeboyd Games here (Cthulhu Saves the World). Our games have been successful (100k+ on Steam at $3 in about 4 months) but we’re not rich or anything like that. A few comments.

I think people are looking at the past with rose tinted glasses. Sure, all the indies sold their games for $10-20 back in the day, but how many of them were actually successful at those prices? I daresay the percentage wasn’t any better back then than it is now. If anything, I imagine it was probably much worse. You never heard about indie developers making millions 10 years ago but that’s not unheard of these days.

There are what, hundreds of new indie games coming out EVERY single day when you count the PC, smartphones, and consoles. There’s no way that anyone can keep up with that kind of volume, so of necessity, some games are going to get a lot more attention than others. It’s disappointing when a good indie game gets overlooked, but that’s just the nature of the business (and it happens for many good retail games as well).

One of the great advantages to Steam is that there is a gatekeeper. When you have 3-6 new indie games coming out every week, they can afford to give good publicity to each one. If they had 300-700 new indie games coming out every week, they couldn’t and individual sales would suffer.

You can still sell your games for $10-$20 and be successful, assuming you have a high quality game, good publicity, and get on a major distribution service. Some recent examples of huge hits include Orcs Must Die ($15), Dungeon Defenders ($15), and Terraria ($10). These all sold six digit figures at a relatively high price tag over a very short period of time. And of course, there’s always Minecraft.

The fact of the matter is that these days, the indie game field is drastically more competitive than it was 10 years ago. The tools are better (and often free), the marketplaces are better (Steam, XBLA, the App Store, etc.), and customers are used to the idea of buying indie games online now. The downside is that with the increased competition, you need to do more to be successful. You need to make a high quality game that stands out from the crowd, but just as importantly, you need to promote it effectively. I think promotion is one area that most indie developers fail at. They make a good game and think that’s enough. It really isn’t with so many games out there.

Oh and Indie Royale got like a hundred submission in the first week. If they say, “Interesting game, we might get back to you next year.” they’re not just giving you a polite rejection email – they’re swamped and they’re trying to work their way through all of the good games that have already been submitted.

Oh and I just started Bastion it's pretty damn good so far, really like it. I don't think I will be buying anything else there are a couple things that tempt me but they will probably be cheaper or in bundles in the xmas sale. Speaking of which is there going to be a VGChartz Steam secret Santa this year? I can't remember who organised it last year.