Well there's one key difference with Steam sales and that the manufacturing costs are zero, the distribution costs are low, and the sunk costs don't exist.ĭistributing a game on Steam isn't free. Bravo to the developers, this is a big kick in the face to publishers and their money-hungry ways, but there needs to be a preemptive strike against editorialists who will hail this as The Future of Game Publishing Very few titles not positioned in this way would be able to pull off a sale like this and succeed. I think this experiment worked because World of Goo is a title with large media expose and multiple-platform success, and success breeds success. That works one time for one band once - and you are not Radiohead." Don't be misled by Radiohead's In Rainbows stunt.
If the FEE you are charging is zero, you are not empowering the fan to say this is only worth an insultingly low monetary value. This is your art! This is your life! It has a value and you the artist are not putting that power in the hands of the audience - doing so creates a dangerous perception issue. Trust me on this one - you will be disappointed, disheartened and find yourself resenting a faction of your audience. Read a BB entry from a "fan" rationalizing why your whole album is worth 50 cents because he only likes 5 songs on it. Don't believe me? Write and record something you really believe is great and release it to the public as a "pay-what-you-think-it's-worth" model and then let's talk. Asking people what they think music is worth devalues music. Some have argued that giving music away free devalues music. This is where you offer tracks or albums for a user-determined price. When Radiohead did a similar "pay what you feel like" sale with In Rainbows a few years ago, Trent Reznor had this to say: It runs a risk of devaluing the work of developers, the same way that the 99-cent song (as created by iTunes) has starkly undercut the value of an actual album. I think this was a tremendous success, but it is a model of sales with some very serious qualifications and limitations. "How much the person feels they can afford seems to play a much larger role in the decision than how much the game is worth." "One thing that the survey data might suggests is that despite there being a lot discussion around what games are worth and the dollar value of an hour of play, few people chose their price based on the perceived value of the game," wrote 2D Boy's Ron Carmel on the company's blog. The sale resulted in pushing some 57,000 copies of the year-old game, generating over $114,000 as determined by the average price.ĢD Boy also ran a short survey, asking users how much they paid, their reasoning, and what they think the game should be worth normally. While a large number of people paid under $2, the average price factored out to $2.03, with a few generous souls giving as much as $50. Taking a page from Radiohead, World of Goo developer 2D Boy used the game's one-year anniversary to run a sale that allowed customers to name the price of the game before buying-right down zero dollars.
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