• smart_boy@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    I really wish more indies could take on the no-sales policy. It’d give me tons more peace of mind to buy a game when I actually want to play it, rather than always waiting and doing weird backlog hoarding when Valve decide it’s wallet-opening-time.

    But as the video shows, the policy was a risk for Wube even back in the day – it’s an even bigger risk now that everyone and their dog expects to wait for the sale, and especially if you happen to have a game that’s not quite as incredibly popular as Factorio.

    • Renegade@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      Factorio is in the minority IMO. My experience has been that indie games will often, say that they probablely wont do sales as a way to engourage purchases during beta and then a bit after release when there are potential financial benefits on the line they do sales anyway. I am totally not speaking from first hand experience /s.

      • smart_boy@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Unless they’ve got an instant breakaway hit (which not even Factorio was), they’ll see a ho-hum launch week in terms of purchases and an almost complete flat-line beyond that. Consumers are trained to wait for the sale. And so if they want to eat and have a roof over their head, there’s only one option left. It’s a vicious cycle, and very few are in a position to try to break it.

      • smart_boy@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        It’s not exactly the same thing, but itch.io allow developers to have a “reverse sale”, where the price goes up for a given period. It was mostly a joke feature, perhaps intended to provoke a little thought about sales culture.

        • EpeeGnome@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Not a computer game, but Cards Against Humanity did a Black Friday reverse sale and upped the price a good bit for a few days. They had to end it early when they sold out of their entire stock in about a day.