next »

[Blodyavenger]

In the near future, I'll hopefuly have my first commercial game out and I have few questions about the game pricings on the personal website and portals.

In case you sell your game both on your website and on the portals, how should the price vary?

I've seen that some games are more expensive on the websites and cheaper on the portals. In other cases, price is about the same in both places or even lower on the website.

What are you thoughts? Do you have any practical suggestions on this area?

[Atnas]

I'd suggest offering a lower price on your website. The customer is going to look at their options, and is going to choose the lower price, if they don't value the portal integration. You need to make it enough of a discount where you'll be making more than the post-portal-cut, but low enough to entice buyers. That means if the portal takes 30%, you can make it a 25% discount and be making more money.

[Christian Knudsen]

Don't forget that the payment processor you use on your own site will also take a percentage...

[Oddball]

And remember that your time is valuable too. When selling from your own website you need to set aside time for support and problem resolution. When you wake up to a couple of support emails you can loose half the morning just dealing with them.

Also a game on your own site isn't competing against other games. If a customer makes it to your site then their only options are your games, if they are browsing a portal then your game is competing against other peoples games. Personally I'd make the portal version as low a price as I could and hope the sheer volume of sales makes up for it.

[Blodyavenger]

Lowering price on the own website means that some people will rather buy it from the website which means more visitors.

Lower price on the website is the best option to go with in all the ways of course it could be a problem on the portals side as you said Oddball - competition. Most of the games already have low price which means I should place even lower price on the website.

Then again it would be nothing wrong to ignore prices of the other games at the portals right? I mean, if the game is unique it doesn't matter if you put it on for 10$ instead of the avarage price (like 5$) for the game on the portals,

[Vino]

I think most of the more prominent indie game developers (Cliff Harris, Jeff Vogel) will tell you that your game needs to be well priced and priced higher on your own website than on portals. If people go to your website to purchase that means that they support you and know who you are. If they're browsing a portal then they have no clue who you are. As also mentioned, on portals you're competing with other games.

Side note: If you ask the people at Valve they will tell you to lower your price for Steam and they're smart people so you should listen them. But that doesn't apply to your website.

[Oddball]

Lowering price on the own website means that some people will rather buy it from the website which means more visitors.

But will anybody be comparing the two prices? People who find your game on a portal aren't likely to then seek out your personal website just to compare the prices.

[Blodyavenger]

That's all true, but in the same time wouldn't someone say that you deceive customer by selling your game for much more than somewhere else and not telling them?

Is it good to give a link to the portals as well from your website?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

this question is moot because you're making a few fundamentally incorrect assumptions

1. you're assuming that the developer chooses the price on a portal. this is incorrect. the portal chooses the price, they have full control over it. sometimes they ask you what the price should be, but they are the one that make the decision, they can set it at any price (even 0.00$) if they so choose, without asking you

2. you're assuming that customers know what the price of games is everywhere; most customers don't go around searching for the best price on something, they just buy the game the first place they see it, so having a lower price on your site than on a portal won't necessarily help you

3. some portals have a policy that you cannot undercut them (that you cannot sell the game at a lower price than they are selling it at), although i've never seen this enforced

also the idea that it's deceptive to have something priced differently in different places makes no sense. is it deceptive of a ramen company that in local stores it's 16 cents for a package of ramen, in a supermarket it's 14 cents, and on amazon.com it's 12 cents? that makes no sense, things are different prices in different places, they can not and probably should not be the same price everywhere

[Vino]

1. you're assuming that the developer chooses the price on a portal. this is incorrect. the portal chooses the price, they have full control over it. sometimes they ask you what the price should be, but they are the one that make the decision, they can set it at any price (even 0.00$) if they so choose, without asking you

Wrong. The developer chooses whether or not to distribute on the portal. The developer also chooses to sign a contract which says whether or not the portal can lower the price at their own discretion. As a developer, handing over pricing control to a third party is a huge mistake. Digitanks is on two portals and neither one of them has pricing control. Steam doesn't require pricing control either.

"But Vino" you say "my game will only sell on BFG where they treat developers like crap!"

"Then why" I reply "did you make a game that only sells on BFG?"

also the idea that it's deceptive to have something priced differently in different places makes no sense. is it deceptive of a ramen company that in local stores it's 16 cents for a package of ramen, in a supermarket it's 14 cents, and on amazon.com it's 12 cents? that makes no sense, things are different prices in different places, they can not and probably should not be the same price everywhere

I find I must also disagree with this. It's not a matter of what's "deceptive" and what's "fair" because your customers don't care about the common business practices of amazon or supermarkets. They care about whether or not they feel deceived, and largely completely unrelated to whether or not you tried to be deceptive.

For example, when I ran the "5 for 5" socks bundle, a lot of people complained that 5 dollars and 5 euros are not the same thing, and they were right. Many companies treat those two currency amounts as the same for the purposes of pricing when the price level is low enough. A product will be 2 dollars in America and 2 pounds in GB and 2 euro in Europe, it's common practice, so I really didn't think about it. And really the difference isn't all that great in many cases, depending on how each currency is trading at on that particular day. But my customers felt like they were being ripped off and so I changed it. As soon as I did, all of those people who complained bought it. I even offered a partial refund, which people didn't take because they just wanted to know that I was being honest.

When you're doing different pricing for each marketplace you need to ask yourself how your audience will feel about it. Your reputation is really, really important as a game developer. These days players don't usually take issue with prices being lower on Steam or iPad, and if you want to help with that then you can always offer bonuses for purchasing through the website. For example, the game purchased through the website comes with modding support, an editor and the soundtrack bundled in.

@Blodyavenger If someone lands on your website and thinks "Oh this game is cool, I want to buy it. But I want to buy it on Steam!" then saying on the website that your game is on Steam is a good way to make sure that person doesn't change your mind. I think that's going to be a lot more common than the inverse, that being "Oh I want to buy this game. Hey look it's cheaper on Steam!"

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i don't disagree with what you said, it's curious that you phrased it as a disagreement though, when what you did just added information rather than contradicted what i wrote

i agree that you can control the price in the sense of whether a game is on a portal or not, what i meant was that once a game is on the portal you can't control the price, and the thread's question is whether it's a good idea to "price" the game the same on portals as on your site, when you usually don't have control over that. so the only way to be sure that the game is the same price everywhere is to sell it only in one place

i also agree that some customers will feel deceived if they see a game for 50$ on steam and 45$ on sale on amazon, and 35$ used on ebay, and 25$ on sale on steam for xmas; i just don't think most customers would feel deceived by that, even though some would (probably a minority)

[Vino]

I may have misread your post and if so I apologize. But I think I understood correctly that you were asserting that portals such as Steam, GamersGate, Direct2Drive, Impulse and Desura have control over the pricing. I don't think that's the case for any of these portals. I haven't worked with all of those portals but of the ones I have, you tell them what price you want the game to be and sometimes that's part of the contract. They can't lower the price later at their discretion. If any of those portals wanted to do a sale they would have to get your permission first. The portals I've worked with have done so. Steam is the most notable and while I haven't worked with them I've never heard of any information that leads me to believe that what I've just said isn't the case. So the portal has zero control over the price of the game, unless you're talking about BFG or some of the other casual portals. If that's the case then God help you.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

you don't remember when steam sold super meat boy at a very low price shortly after it came out against the wishes of team meat? that was a bit controversy, so i assume steam works the same way as the other portals do

i've had a game on reflexive, d2d, gamersgate, and impulse, and all of the contracts stipulated that they have control of the price; you can recommend a price to them, but the final decision is theirs. maybe they gave you a different contract than they gave me though? but i've never heard of a contract that says that the developer chooses the price of their game before, yours would be the first i've heard of

[mikejkelley]

I've read elsewhere that MS now sets the XBLIA price, taking into "consideration" the developer's wishes.

From what I've seen portals typically take a 30% cut. On your own site you can whittle the payment processing down to 9%.

I would suggest you want to do whatever it takes to get the customer to buy from you directly, especially if you are hosting multiple games. Not just for the percentages difference but to encourage repeat business.

[Vino]

I remember some Super Meat Boy pricing troubles but I remembered it stemming from the XBox version being cheaper than the PC version and thus gamers getting upset. My memory's pretty bad though, perhaps I remember wrong. I haven't had a game on Steam but I've had a lot of conversations with the guys at Steam and every impression that they've given me was that they wouldn't control pricing.

[Blodyavenger]

So basicly, in all ways it's better to make price on your website higher than on portals and you simply add link to the game on the portal as well.

That way you offer players to pick what they want:
- they can give you ultimate support and buy game from your website
- they can buy a game for lower price at the portals

No deceiving, and giving them an option to get it for lower at the portals.

[mikejkelley]

So basicly, in all ways it's better to make price on your website higher than on portals and you simply add link to the game on the portal as well.

Huh? No. Geez, don't know why I should be giving you this advice, but unless contractually obligated, you should price the game on your own website lower. The reasons should be obvious/have been aforementioned.

[Bishop]

The main argument against seems to be to give fans an opportunity to pay extra to help support you. I think this idea makes sense, as people who know of your own website over portals, are likely to be fans ok with forking over the extra.

[mikejkelley]

I think the premise is flawed.

If I have a car and my friend wants to buy it, I wouldn't say to him/her, "tell you what, since you're my friend I'm going to charge you a higher price. You're my friend, right? So you should be OK w/ paying me more."

If I were the buyer, I'd go to the dealership where there are thousands of cars to choose from. Especially if they're cheaper. Might get a different car altogether.

Also, I'd terminate the friendship with the greedy bastard.   

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

just make it pay what you want on your site; problem solved

my game for instance is a set value on different portals, but pay what you want on my site