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General discussionHeads Up: Grab Shovel Knight 33% off - price change incoming(144 posts)(144 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted March 02, 2017
A platformer that you'll surely dig.


<span class="bold">Shovel Knight</span>, the award-winning platformer that devout lovers of the genre are constantly raving about, is 33% off for a few more hours. Grab it while it's hot!

Starting tomorrow, March 3rd, the game will be getting a permanent price increase. This will better reflect the free content that the game has received since its release, as well as the upcoming free update that will be added to it later this spring.

Existing owners of the game will not be affected by the price change.

To better understand the reasons behind it, make sure to read <span class="bold">this comprehensive Q&amp;A</span> by developers Yacht Club.

The 33% discount will last until March 2nd, 11PM UTC. That's tonight, so act fast!
Posted March 06, 2017
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Starmaker: But AAA games also sell way, way more. For the end user, this shouldn't matter: you're still getting the game you're buying and the fun you can find in it for the money you pay. There's no such thing as determining the fair price of a game vs. other games in the marketplace by their cost of production (rather, there is, but it's a commie concept; under capitalism, if you made a wildly successful game and reaped disproportionately yuge profits, congrats). The price is good if the fun per dollar ratio, for you personally, is good. Shovel Knight is intended to be a highly replayable "modern classic", and the market seems to agree -- therefore pricing it for that segment appears to maximize the profit. If impersonal-you aren't in this segment (e.g. one-time players, Steam card collectors), you might consider the price on the high side, and that's fine.
You might be missing what my response was to. I wasn't making the argument about development costs, or even pricing, the other user was. I was simply highlighting a piece of information that I think he missed in his argument.
Posted March 07, 2017
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wingboner: That's an interesting way of combating "devaluation" then - by bloating up the price in order to still be able to call the future updates free.

Still it's their right to change price as they see fit. Personally, I dewishlisted it - the previous price was already too high for my tastes and budget so I'm definitely not interested now.
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paladin181: As I've said before, people who haven't bought it yet at the already very reasonable price never were anyway. If $10US is too much for a good game then your value doesn't meet the value of the seller, and you weren't going to buy. Most of the people complaining here were never actually going to buy the game. I don't understand the hatred for good content for free (for existing owners), but that obviously took time and effort to create, and therefore has increased value.
A bit late for a reply but I was rather busy today. Let's see...

You're correct in saying that I wasn't going to buy it at the previous price. I also wasn't going to buy it at the discounted price because it's too much for me at the moment and would cut into my remaining food budget. It might be pocket change for you, it isn't for me. We live in different places, with different prices of goods, cost of living is different, yadda yadda. And that's fine! All it means (and all I wrote in the second part of my comment) is that I "upgraded" from a potential customer to a very unlikely one - I played a bit of the game a few months on a dorm friend's laptop (Steam version, brr) and I consider the new price to be too high for a (competent) Ducktales clone. If you disagree with my choices, good for you - no offence to you but I don't exactly care. On another note, neither do I see what you mean by "hatred" - could you please enlighten me where I said anything remotely hateful, perhaps I put something in an unintentionally abrasive way earlier? I'd be grateful.

Now for the second part. The content that was already released can't be called free since it isn't free anymore - the developer is now charging new customers for it. I understand both what you wrote and what was communicated by the devs - that they decided to re-evaluate the game's current worth and upgrade the price accordingly - that's not exactly fine but was clearly communicated. Still, the previously free content remains free for previous customers but not for new ones - ergo it's now paid content.

What isn't fine is the claim that Yacht Club made, that the price hike is there to enable them to continue providing free upgrades. Given what happened, the future upgrade is added to the price now - new customer is buying the package of:
- a rebranded game in the current form that's no different from before price hike
- the promise of getting a new expansion in the future

In terms of the industry in its current, pitiful, state, I believe it could be said that the developer has pulled the original version of the game from the shelves entirely and is now selling it only as a combination of what used to be sold and an addition of a season pass that will eventually morph into a final(?) game of the year version.

It's baffling - the potential new consumer is herded into paying for content and a promise of content that is simply not there (which is, again, misleadingly called "free" when it's free only for previous customers and is now part of the price paid by people targeted by the game's current marketing - you, being already an owner, don't care much about the game's current sales pitch right now, correct?) and it's all done on a relatively short notice.

What I think (and hope) happened is that the studio misjudged the costs of its initial promise made to previous customers and is now attempting damage control to recover its losses. The way they opted to do it, if I'm correct about the situation, is distasteful though - a more fair solution would be to splice the yet-to-be-released content into a DLC and charge for that separately (while giving you, previous customers, free access - I assume it was promised to you free in the past). It would circumvent the problem of forcing a much higher price for what is the same product as of now and the studio wouldn't have to claim things that are not true anymore in their new sales pitch. Of course, they touch upon that in their FAQ with an entirely unconvincing answer of "we want the game to be one whole with free updates" - I sincerely hope it's a sign of bad judgement only.
Posted March 07, 2017
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wingboner: A bit late for a reply but I was rather busy today. Let's see...

You're correct in saying that I wasn't going to buy it at the previous price. I also wasn't going to buy it at the discounted price because it's too much for me at the moment and would cut into my remaining food budget. It might be pocket change for you, it isn't for me. We live in different places, with different prices of goods, cost of living is different, yadda yadda. And that's fine! All it means (and all I wrote in the second part of my comment) is that I "upgraded" from a potential customer to a very unlikely one - I played a bit of the game a few months on a dorm friend's laptop (Steam version, brr) and I consider the new price to be too high for a (competent) Ducktales clone. If you disagree with my choices, good for you - no offence to you but I don't exactly care. On another note, neither do I see what you mean by "hatred" - could you please enlighten me where I said anything remotely hateful, perhaps I put something in an unintentionally abrasive way earlier? I'd be grateful.

Now for the second part. The content that was already released can't be called free since it isn't free anymore - the developer is now charging new customers for it. I understand both what you wrote and what was communicated by the devs - that they decided to re-evaluate the game's current worth and upgrade the price accordingly - that's not exactly fine but was clearly communicated. Still, the previously free content remains free for previous customers but not for new ones - ergo it's now paid content.

What isn't fine is the claim that Yacht Club made, that the price hike is there to enable them to continue providing free upgrades. Given what happened, the future upgrade is added to the price now - new customer is buying the package of:
- a rebranded game in the current form that's no different from before price hike
- the promise of getting a new expansion in the future

In terms of the industry in its current, pitiful, state, I believe it could be said that the developer has pulled the original version of the game from the shelves entirely and is now selling it only as a combination of what used to be sold and an addition of a season pass that will eventually morph into a final(?) game of the year version.

It's baffling - the potential new consumer is herded into paying for content and a promise of content that is simply not there (which is, again, misleadingly called "free" when it's free only for previous customers and is now part of the price paid by people targeted by the game's current marketing - you, being already an owner, don't care much about the game's current sales pitch right now, correct?) and it's all done on a relatively short notice.

What I think (and hope) happened is that the studio misjudged the costs of its initial promise made to previous customers and is now attempting damage control to recover its losses. The way they opted to do it, if I'm correct about the situation, is distasteful though - a more fair solution would be to splice the yet-to-be-released content into a DLC and charge for that separately (while giving you, previous customers, free access - I assume it was promised to you free in the past). It would circumvent the problem of forcing a much higher price for what is the same product as of now and the studio wouldn't have to claim things that are not true anymore in their new sales pitch. Of course, they touch upon that in their FAQ with an entirely unconvincing answer of "we want the game to be one whole with free updates" - I sincerely hope it's a sign of bad judgement only.
It wasn't just you. Like I said, not worth arguing over. I'm happy, others are too. Some others aren't. That's fine.I'm not criticizing you because you can't afford a game at that price, because we all have different circumstances. My point wasn't that the game is super cheap, but rather that it was reasonably priced, and if people were waiting for a deeper discount, it wasn't coming anyhow.

As to why they did it? I don't know. I don't think it's a good thing necessarily, but neither do I believe it's bad. The game will also be sold in chunks if someone doesn't want the whole thing. All three campaigns are supposed to be sold separately so you can enjoy the game however you like. The base game will be available as the Shovel of Hope, and will cost less than the new $25US price point I'm sure. I'd imagine all three campaigns separately will be $10US apiece, but don't quote me on that.
Posted March 13, 2017
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UhuruNUru: Why Not?
Really, you answered that yourself, by "I don't care for it.", and also shows why thet didn't charge you.
They get no backlash from owners, that way.

Why not?
If you don'y already own it, you either were waiting for the price to drop, or don'y care.
Providing so called free content, linked to a price rise, isn't going to attract any new customers.
If existing owners get that content free, new customers should as well.

They would be justified in not dropping the price, for their old game, by adding new "free" content, but by raising the price, it's not free, and claiming that is a lie.
Free must apply to everybody, not a restricted subset.

Old games should become cheaper, over time, not more expensive.
Adding extra content for free, justifies slowing down the drop in price, not increasing it.

As this thread shows, it's putting off new customers, not attracting them.
That's why not, it bad for consumers, and a bad decision for the devs, as well.
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paladin181: Not sure you read my post. >.> If you don't own it already, why not? I don't like that there's a price increase, but most people who actually wanted this title should already have it. a $10US price point (on sale) should not be prohibitive. If it is, then you probably have the wrong hobby. The game wasn't $60US or even $40US, It wasn't even $20US. I'm not sure I see the reason to have not bought the game. Sure NOW you have a reason, but before they announced a price increase (the base game is still the same cost, btw, it will just be a different name) there was no reason not to get it other than being cheap. Devs gotta eat, too.
I feel I should add something to this. What's $10 for someone else is actually $20 for me, that would make the game $50 for me right now. That is prohibitively expensive when the Witcher 3 sells for that and would be a much better game for me. If people think this is a game that can sell for more than $50 they are dreaming.

I don't know why so many people here assume that we don't want to buy the game by making comments like "if you wanted to buy it you would have." No we do want to buy the game but we attach a different value to it. I will rather wait for it to reach 80%+ discount and this will eventually happen in the next few years and not 10 years.

And let's face it, this is for only 6 hours of content if you only end up playing the base game. You can't add a different game mode and then call it an additional 6 hours of content because you haven't created 6 more hours of content. At the same time the hardest part is really to develop the game engine and not additional levels. Paid for DLC is a new thing, originally lots of games would come with later levels added for free so they aren't actually doing anything new here. Personally I feel developers are holding out on original content so they can keep people interested for longer and make more from content and I feel SK is one of these titles seeing how short it is.

I do feel for the people who feel they usually lose out by being the first to buy, but that is life. It's nice for developers to reward early adopters with free content but at some point those late to the party will get everything for even less. And it's not like they always get the worst end of the stick. If you want to always have the latest and greatest you are going to pay for it and have the problems that go with it. That's how it works with everything from technology to software unfortunately. Those of us that are willing to wait for our price points to be met will eventually get a better product for less.

What put me off here was the developers stating they don't want to "devalue" their game. Ehhhh, a game only has the value consumers decide it has. The developers may think their 1 million sales would justify the increase but there's no data on that yet. I think Steam has created this culture of hoarding. These developers may not like it but at the end of the day it shouldn't matter as a developer. You can either have 10 people buy 10 different games at $10 and you get $10 of that or 10 people buy a bundle of 10 games at $1 each and you still get $10. This comment of theirs sounds a lot like an overblown ego to me.
Post edited March 13, 2017 by PromZA
Posted March 14, 2017
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PromZA: I feel I should add something to this. What's $10 for someone else is actually $20 for me, that would make the game $50 for me right now. That is prohibitively expensive when the Witcher 3 sells for that and would be a much better game for me. If people think this is a game that can sell for more than $50 they are dreaming.

I don't know why so many people here assume that we don't want to buy the game by making comments like "if you wanted to buy it you would have." No we do want to buy the game but we attach a different value to it. I will rather wait for it to reach 80%+ discount and this will eventually happen in the next few years and not 10 years.

And let's face it, this is for only 6 hours of content if you only end up playing the base game. You can't add a different game mode and then call it an additional 6 hours of content because you haven't created 6 more hours of content. At the same time the hardest part is really to develop the game engine and not additional levels. Paid for DLC is a new thing, originally lots of games would come with later levels added for free so they aren't actually doing anything new here. Personally I feel developers are holding out on original content so they can keep people interested for longer and make more from content and I feel SK is one of these titles seeing how short it is.

I do feel for the people who feel they usually lose out by being the first to buy, but that is life. It's nice for developers to reward early adopters with free content but at some point those late to the party will get everything for even less. And it's not like they always get the worst end of the stick. If you want to always have the latest and greatest you are going to pay for it and have the problems that go with it. That's how it works with everything from technology to software unfortunately. Those of us that are willing to wait for our price points to be met will eventually get a better product for less.

What put me off here was the developers stating they don't want to "devalue" their game. Ehhhh, a game only has the value consumers decide it has. The developers may think their 1 million sales would justify the increase but there's no data on that yet. I think Steam has created this culture of hoarding. These developers may not like it but at the end of the day it shouldn't matter as a developer. You can either have 10 people buy 10 different games at $10 and you get $10 of that or 10 people buy a bundle of 10 games at $1 each and you still get $10. This comment of theirs sounds a lot like an overblown ego to me.
The devs have already stated there would never be a 80% off sale. The point is that they set the value and are trying to combat the "I'll pick it up for pennies" mentality by not selling it for pennies. They feel their game is worth at least $10US, and weren't going to drop the price. So my point stands, you were not going to buy it at the devs' valuation of their product, your value and theirs didn't meet. It's not a bad thing, it just means that it wasn't worth the cost to you. Perfectly fair. There are plenty of games I'd like to play where I say "Nah. Not for $XX." Lots of them. If they stop being sold or get a price increase before I buy them, sure there's some regret, but not like I REALLY wanted it anyway.
Posted March 14, 2017
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PromZA: I feel I should add something to this. What's $10 for someone else is actually $20 for me, that would make the game $50 for me right now. That is prohibitively expensive when the Witcher 3 sells for that and would be a much better game for me. If people think this is a game that can sell for more than $50 they are dreaming.

I don't know why so many people here assume that we don't want to buy the game by making comments like "if you wanted to buy it you would have." No we do want to buy the game but we attach a different value to it. I will rather wait for it to reach 80%+ discount and this will eventually happen in the next few years and not 10 years.

And let's face it, this is for only 6 hours of content if you only end up playing the base game. You can't add a different game mode and then call it an additional 6 hours of content because you haven't created 6 more hours of content. At the same time the hardest part is really to develop the game engine and not additional levels. Paid for DLC is a new thing, originally lots of games would come with later levels added for free so they aren't actually doing anything new here. Personally I feel developers are holding out on original content so they can keep people interested for longer and make more from content and I feel SK is one of these titles seeing how short it is.

I do feel for the people who feel they usually lose out by being the first to buy, but that is life. It's nice for developers to reward early adopters with free content but at some point those late to the party will get everything for even less. And it's not like they always get the worst end of the stick. If you want to always have the latest and greatest you are going to pay for it and have the problems that go with it. That's how it works with everything from technology to software unfortunately. Those of us that are willing to wait for our price points to be met will eventually get a better product for less.

What put me off here was the developers stating they don't want to "devalue" their game. Ehhhh, a game only has the value consumers decide it has. The developers may think their 1 million sales would justify the increase but there's no data on that yet. I think Steam has created this culture of hoarding. These developers may not like it but at the end of the day it shouldn't matter as a developer. You can either have 10 people buy 10 different games at $10 and you get $10 of that or 10 people buy a bundle of 10 games at $1 each and you still get $10. This comment of theirs sounds a lot like an overblown ego to me.
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paladin181: The devs have already stated there would never be a 80% off sale. The point is that they set the value and are trying to combat the "I'll pick it up for pennies" mentality by not selling it for pennies. They feel their game is worth at least $10US, and weren't going to drop the price. So my point stands, you were not going to buy it at the devs' valuation of their product, your value and theirs didn't meet. It's not a bad thing, it just means that it wasn't worth the cost to you. Perfectly fair. There are plenty of games I'd like to play where I say "Nah. Not for $XX." Lots of them. If they stop being sold or get a price increase before I buy them, sure there's some regret, but not like I REALLY wanted it anyway.
They can state whatever they like. At some point it will be a choice between not selling at all or selling it at the consumer price point. Let's wait and see what happens. All game publishers would want to sell their product at the original price forever but that's simply not realistic.

I also have to say that GoG is to blame for royally messing this one up by only giving 8 hours warning. They likely knew for weeks at least that the price was going up so could have communicated this with the start of it going on sale. But it seems GoG isn't very big on communication as with regional titles.
Post edited March 14, 2017 by PromZA
Posted March 14, 2017
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paladin181: The devs have already stated there would never be a 80% off sale. The point is that they set the value and are trying to combat the "I'll pick it up for pennies" mentality by not selling it for pennies. They feel their game is worth at least $10US, and weren't going to drop the price. So my point stands, you were not going to buy it at the devs' valuation of their product, your value and theirs didn't meet. It's not a bad thing, it just means that it wasn't worth the cost to you. Perfectly fair. There are plenty of games I'd like to play where I say "Nah. Not for $XX." Lots of them. If they stop being sold or get a price increase before I buy them, sure there's some regret, but not like I REALLY wanted it anyway.
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PromZA: They can state whatever they like. At some point it will be a choice between not selling at all or selling it at the consumer price point. Let's wait and see what happens. All game publishers would want to sell their product at the original price forever but that's simply not realistic.

I also have to say that GoG is to blame for royally messing this one up by only giving 8 hours warning. They likely knew for weeks at least that the price was going up so could have communicated this with the start of it going on sale. But it seems GoG isn't very big on communication as with regional titles.
Its also entirely possible they weren't allowed to reveal the info any sooner.
Posted March 14, 2017
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paladin181: Its also entirely possible they weren't allowed to reveal the info any sooner.
No. It seems to be GOG's fault. The developers blog (http://yachtclubgames.com/2017/02/specter-of-torment-and-treasure-trove-initial-release-date/) announced a sale from Feb 23rd till March 2nd on GOG while mentioning
If you haven’t yet picked up Shovel Knight on a particular platform, and wanted all the content included within Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, now is the ideal time to do so before the price increases in March! This may be your LAST CHANCE to get it at such a low price!
Posted March 14, 2017
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mk47at: No. It seems to be GOG's fault. The developers blog (http://yachtclubgames.com/2017/02/specter-of-torment-and-treasure-trove-initial-release-date/) announced a sale from Feb 23rd till March 2nd on GOG while mentioning
fair 'nuff. GOG is just generally bad at punctuality.
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Community
General discussionHeads Up: Grab Shovel Knight 33% off - price change incoming(144 posts)(144 posts)
(144 posts)