Mmm strangely I want free copy of Trine cause Trine 2 came out :) People do stunts like that to bring attention... if they have enough attention on the product they are selling they will not do this for sure :)
[No sarcasm]

I assume you're still talking about that 'they wouldn't do this if the game was selling well' thing you mentioned before.

A sale is just a sale you know. The stats and comments in the articles clearly have shown that deep sales can *multiply* sales by a factor so high that it's still beneficial to do so.

That doesn't mean it's some magic trick. If no-one wants the game, and the game doesn't sell well even without a sale, a sale on that isn't going to magically make people want the game. It's still limited by the demand for the game itself.

That's not the sales fault however and you can't say a sale is bad for them since even without the sale the game was probably doing badly already.

(I'm not saying Faery solitaire here, I honestly have no clue how that was selling, however you do have to take into account that this is obviously directly related to their pre-order for Faery Solitaire 2 coming up)

Offcourse they will make profit cause the game is f.....g steam redeamable... Steam is to big of shark in digital distribution... And most of the devs goes there...cause they want to be noticed.
That how the market goes... but this don't mean that this is good for the market...

One thing is strange to me:
Tropico 4: Modern Times - 14,99€ at Steam
Tropico 4 Modern Times Expansion Pack - €19.95 at GamersGate (With CD key only)

Rayman 3 - $5.99 at GOG (DRM-Free)
Rayman 3 - €9.95 at GamersGate( with Tages)

Assassin’s Creed® Revelations - Gold Edition - 59.99€ at Ubi Store
Assassin’s Creed® Revelations - Gold Edition - 49,99€ at Steam/GamersGate

Same product...different pricing... I guess Publishers are screwing with us :)

I guess an example is New Vegas, forced DRM though steam i never bought it... i never even read reviews... finally it came out as "ultimate edition" and i just picked it up on my PS3, played it for a week or so, have had lots of fun... but waiting a year all im noticing are constant crashes, litterally 100's of bugs and many show stoppers... had 1 corrupted save file and so many quests are incomplete its not fun...

I thought that waiting for the big collection with years to patch it would be enough... i come to find out that they just slapped the DLC together change the name and let it fly... the PC version is nearly required to be modded for bug and quest fixes alone which the devs have long hung there hats on...

this proves to me not only are games crap now, that devs just dont care about there products... Ive long ago refused to buy anything new.. Gothic 3 is a prime example.. it took nearly 3 years for it to find a playable state though community patches... same holds true for Vampire: Bloodlines...

But, on the side note i picked up Borderlands and all the DLC for $10 on Steam... it was $10 i dont feel compelled to even finish it, hell $10 is a meal at a fast food place and literally a drop in the bucket.. and all the bugs are squashed no show stoppers and a far far supperior game to New Vegas

in the end:
New Vegas: $40 -- played the hell out of and put up with more bugs then most people would...
Borderlands: $10 -- never played more then a day or so. had BL for about year, no bugs and a superior experience all around...

If you mean that Steam becoming a monopoly would be a bad thing I would agree with you, but I don't believe we're there just yet. They've got a massively strong position, of course, they practically pioneered digital retailing.

Steamworks, that's the main thing that's sort of monopolish right now, not because it links *their* games to them (like many developers do, Blizzard, EA, Stardock at one point), but because it's also drawing in Third party games and linking them to Steam.

However, that's as Brad Wardell puts it, because there's no good alternative out there to Steamworks. Steamworks allows him (CEO of Stardock Entertainment) to do things with the new Sins of a Solar Empire game he hasn't managed to do that well in the last 3 games. Steamworks as a framework to use for designing your game for multiplayer, for porting them over to MAC, for achievements etc bla bla is having a lot of success right now, and *that* is something that needs to get some competition right now.

In the meantime, Steam is using it to enhance their own success, which you can't really blame them for. It's a retailer after all, growth and profit is in their own best interest, so why wouldn't they use the platform they designed themselves to enhance that.

If you think I'm all for monopoly then you're wrong. I don't agree with that and I don't really want to see that happening. However, the competition needs to step up their game and offer good alternatives, not just whine and cry that they can't compete, when in some cases, they don't really seem to be trying. (Let's face it... Origin as a client is decent to some extent, but it's only a few years younger than Steam (EADM) and they really did not put much effort into it *at all* until recently)

I'm sorry to tell you that Pheace but you are arguing with a wall of ignorance.

Spinefarmer has proven his inability to respond to actual arguments, his inability to understand that most people don't need a high price tag in order to really like a game and he really does not understand that sales benefit the developer even though all these things have been repeatedly stated in this thread and opposed to his half assed "hurr durr evil corporate pigs" and "You eat shit when you buy cheaper groceries"-arguments we delivered citations and didn't pull this shit out of our asses.


I give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is trolling because you simply can't be so delusioned and full of yourself.


10/10 would rage again

Honestly? There's no game I'd avoid at all costs. I'd even consider buying Stalin vs Martians if it was still available. I'm too interested in game design and game history (so I'm not a regular person either), so I consider knowing as many games as possible quite valuable. I even consider terrible examples quite valuable - bad games often tell you more about what makes a game good than any highly succesfull blockbuster. But obviously I still prefer buying games that I expect to entertain me. ;)

You haven't watched any TV for a few years now, have you?

I remeber that GOG made some time ago promos based on the "the more you buy, the bigger discount you get" idea.

Seems like ages ago. This year so far hasn't had any notable offer topping the Christmas 50% off everything except Gothic 1 (which never goes on sale of any DD store I'm watching).

No I actually haven't

Even though they've said "progressing discounts are our new discount policy" few times.

But maybe it didn't work, and flat discounts seem to be better?

As I said before if Steam impose this kind of discounts it would be inmoral... Selling a game for 1 buck or so it´s like gifting it, and it really hurts the sales. Anyway I´m not totally sure about this, for example I´ve never seen Dawn of War 2 series with this kind of huge discounts.

"We all know gamers who spend more every month on games than they want to, just because there were too many games that were discounted too deeply."

Absolutely ridiculous. I've liked GOG for the most part, but I can't purchase anymore games from someone that thinks I'm so stupid that I can be trained to buy games I don't even want when I can't even afford them.

This guy has shown a complete lack of understanding of basic economics, human behavior, and his customers.

This must be the weirdest reason I've heard to stay away from a service yet.