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[Vino]

That analogy fails because fans and friends aren't the same thing. Completely different relationship. You don't hang out at the bar with them. You don't invite them over weekends to play soul caliber. You don't sell your car to them either.

Your fans are people who enjoy what you make so much that they're willing to part with their money for it. Your fans are people who go to your website. People on Steam and Impulse are not your fans, they're Valve's/Gamestop's fans. Your fans love you and want to support you. They value your game higher and they already know they can get the game for a lower price on Steam. Valve's fans don't know you, don't care so much, and don't value your game very highly.

[mikejkelley]

The analogy is perfectly valid.

Your fans love you and want to support you.

Your friends don't? Mine do.

If you really define your fans as people you can exploit for a few bucks more above and beyond your already 21% higher-than-portal margins, you're going to find you have less and less fans.

But it intrigues me as a business model... for my competition that is. :snidely whiplash emoticon:

I've changed my mind. Your fans are cash cows that should be milked for all they're worth.

[Vino]

Who said anything about exploit? If your fans know about the price difference then it's hardly exploiting. If someone is willing to pay the listed price then I would hardly label them as having been exploited as they voluntarily input their own credit card information. When you buy jeans from the Gap instead of Wal-mart, is the Gap exploiting you? Of course not.

Avadon is $10 on Steam and $20 on Spiderweb's site. Revenge of the Titans is $30 on Puppy Games' site and $15 on Steam. Gemini Rue is $10 on Steam and $15 at Wadget Eye Games. That's three successful well loved indie developers selling for less on Steam, don't act like it's evil. "Your competition" (indie developers aren't competitors) is doing pretty well, probably because they spent more time making a fun and interesting game than worrying about pricing.

[Oddball]

@mikejkelley: I don't really follow your logic. Having sold games online since 2001 for prices ranging from $5-$30 what you are saying doesn't really mesh with my experience. Have your experiences of online distribution been different? Have you found that your fans desert you for charging more on your site? I'd be interested to hear where you are getting that stand point from as you seem to be quite passionate about it. Thank you.

[sharbelfs]

I don't have a lot of experience with this, but one good alternative, could be
Sell for a lower price on portals, like steam, and in your website you can put a higher price, and like everybody said, the fans will buy from the site, you can give some extra, like a soundtrack or something else. I just don't know if steam allow this, but anyway I think its a valid alternative

[Zaphos]

relevant quote from spiderweb software jeff vogel's blog:

Bonus Point: Why Is Our Game Twice the Price On Our Site Than On Steam

I get asked this a lot, and it's a fair question. The answer:

In any place where your game is sold, pick the price that will maximize the profits. This ideal price changes depending on the nature of the place where it is being sold.

Steam is a big, sprawling gaming bazaar where practically all of the games are cheap. People see a game, spend a moderate amount of money on it, and try it out. People experiment there, and you need to charge a price that encourages customers to pick you as their experiment. Also, if you charge $20 for your game there, it will be on a list with ten good games at half the price, so you will get murdered.

Spiderweb Software's web site, on the other hand, only lists our games. It is generally only visited by fans of role-playing games. People on our site are generally really interested in the specific sorts of games we sell, and so the higher price doesn't scare them off.

This sort of logic isn't my weird invention. It's basic business. World of Goo is $20 on the company site, $10 on Steam, and $5 on iTunes. Each marketplace has its own norms, and you price your game to maximize your earnings there.

And that is why games are now at most $20 on our site. Because of the current standards of the game industry as a whole, I think that will most likely increase our earnings overall. It might not always have been that way, but I feel it is now.

(And, yes. I set game prices to maximize my earnings. Of course I do. Astonishingly, some people seem to take offense at this. I don't care. I'm not going to neglect to send my kids to college just so I can satisfy someone's arbitrary standards of Indie cred. I'm too old for that, and children persist in their irritating need to eat food.)

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-all-our-games-are-now-cheaper.html

[Bishop]

Do you really see us as competition? I dislike my neighbors, but if there was a war we'd be together in arms. Us indies are fighting against the world, the triple A's, mortgages and rent. That's why we share feedback, sales statistics and advice. We're brothers in arms.

[Christian Knudsen]

I'm not fighting against anyone. I just want to make games.