World of Goo Creators Try Pick-Your-Price Experiment

2D Boy, the independent game studio behind World of Goo, recently celebrated the game's one-year anniversary by offering it at whatever price buyers cared to pay. They've now released some sales statistics about how people responded to the opportunity. The average price during the sale was $2.03; the game normally retails for $20. According to a survey of why people paid what they did, 22.4% said it was all they could afford at the time, and 12.4% said they already owned World of Goo and were buying it for a different platform. (Yes, there is a Linux version.) Over 57,000 people took advantage of the offer, which was enough for 2D Boy to term it "a huge success." Interestingly, they also saw a significant increase in sales through Steam, and a smaller increase through Wiiware. They've decided to extend the experiment until October 25th.

Comments

That's very nice, but

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a pretty cool experiment. But...

Why would I have to purchase the game multiple times to be able to play it on different platforms in the first place?

Also, I spoke with one of the World of Goo developers a few months back and he said they were working on a new game (not a sequel). Due to disappointing sales of World of Goo, it was pretty much certain this new game would get some form of DRM. He didn't know what kind of DRM but he wasn't happy about it. I hope this "huge success" means the DRM is off the table now, but for now, it means I won't be buying the new game.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Shikaku]

You can pay $0.01. There's no minimum.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Phs2501]

This is a pretty cool experiment. But...

Why would I have to purchase the game multiple times to be able to play it on different platforms in the first place?

Well, if you buy from them directly, you get all of the PC/Mac/Linux versions at once for $20 (before this experiment), which is quite reasonable. However, the WiiWare/Xbox Arcade versions are obviously separate; there's no way the console manufacturers are going to allow cross-platform buys, and the only recourse developers like 2D Boy have against this is to not put it on consoles, which would be pretty stupid for the developer.

Re:That's very nice, but

[IBBoard]

Either I'm reading things wrong or people are doing it because they feel they should support the developer. Their World of Goo page says:

This will get you the Windows and Mac and Linux versions downloadable right away

In a way it is good and bad that you get it for all platforms. I want it for Linux, so it'd have been nice to specifically say "look, I'm supporting your port to Linux", but at the same time it is good to get it on whatever platforms you want without having to pay multiple times.

Now, I had this on my Christmas list. Do I tell my family so that they can get it cheap and do the developers out of some money when a lack of DRM and an innovative game should be welcomed, or do I just let the "pay what you want" period go by and give them the money they deserve?

Re:That's very nice, but

[Phs2501]

However, the WiiWare/Xbox Arcade versions...

Except of course it is not available for that platform! Fact-checking for the win...

Re:That's very nice, but

[saaaammmmm]

There is no making you happy. You aren't happy with naming your own price on WoG, you complain about crappy sales on WoG leading to DRM in a future game and then you threaten to not buy the game. You are truly an enigma.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Nailor]

Rock Paper Shotgun provides a good analysis on the name your price -sale: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/20/world-of-goo-sale-provides-fascinating-results/

Even though people mostly paid the $0.01, they still made a nice amount of money with a year old game

Re:That's very nice, but

[shentino]

Why wait?

You can still pay them full price during the trial period.

In fact, I think that choosing to pay full price when you could choose not to makes a stronger statement.

Re:That's very nice, but

[nmg196]

> Why would I have to purchase the game multiple times to be able to play it on different platforms in the first place?

For all the obvious reasons... Why would Nintendo sell you the Xbox version? Why (and how!) would the Apple App Store send you the PC version? How would Steam send you the iPhone version? It's pretty obvious really and i'm not sure quite why you asked...

Re:That's very nice, but

[Shrike82]

You can pay $0.01. There's no minimum.

So the minimum is 1 cent? No minimum would imply I can offer them zero cents, which though making me a cheapskate, lowlife, unnappreciative scumbag, would make a difference to my finances. If 1000 publishers let me save 1 cent I'd soon have enought to buy a bag of cheetos, some kool-aid and more blinds to block the sunlight coming through my parent's basement window...

Re:That's very nice, but

[amRadioHed]

There's no minimum price to buy the game for. If you get it for free then you're not exactly buying it, are you?

Re:That's very nice, but

[Alioth]

How do they know disappointing sales were caused by piracy? Perhaps disappointing sales were caused because, well, not every game is going to be a massive blockbuster.

Also wasting money on DRM isn't going to stop the game from being pirated, it'll be cracked within days (possibly hours). DRM has been a failure since the days of the ZX Spectrum. You'd have thought developers would have learned it's a waste of time by now.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Shrike82]

Well yes, that's technically true. However you might have noticed I was going for a joke towards the end so you can forgive me a slight linguistic innacuracy? No?

Re:That's very nice, but

[genner]

You can pay $0.01. There's no minimum.

Yes there is I tired using negative numbers and it wouldn't work.
I want them to pay me to buy it.

Re:That's very nice, but

[kramerd]

Actually, if you were able to offer zero cents, then buying the game would make no difference to your finances.

If you saved 1 cent from 1000 publishers (assuming you are just buying world of goo), you would have spent 19990 instead of 20000, but you still would have 20 grand lying around, and probably wouldn't bother arguing the difference between a zero cent and a one cent game.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Narishma]

He probably meant Steam. If you bought it on Steam there's no way to get the Mac or Linux versions. You have to buy it directly from 2DBoys if you want that.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Robmonster]

If you do buy it direct from 2D Boy you can register your copy within Steam with the CD-Key and then get all the benefits of having the Steam version.

Rob

Re:That's very nice, but

[Nailor]

And the actually working link

Re:That's very nice, but

[BikeHelmet]

I paid $2 so I could get it outside of steam.

But I'm not sure their survey percentages are accurate. I never got a link in the email, and never got to vote. I heard about the sale quite late, so I suspect there's several days of buyers that haven't been included.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you can't.

Re:That's very nice, but

[IBBoard]

Good point - its only fair to say "I like your game and I think it is worth the money you're charging for it" :)

Re:That's very nice, but

[amRadioHed]

Oh right. If I can't be bothered to read the articles, which are the only reason to come to this bloody site, I'm sure as hell not going to fully read the comments I reply to :)

Re:That's very nice, but

[houghi]

Can you pay 0? Or even negative numbers?

Re:That's very nice, but

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Perhaps disappointing sales were caused because, well, not every game is going to be a massive blockbuster.

After the devs allowed free online play with their game, they found that approx. 10% of the users online could have possible purchased the game, because there were WAY more people playing than copies sold.

So, if that indicates a problem with piracy, *AND* they're unhappy with the sales, then normally I'd say the game was garbage. But ... it got amazing reviews and it's really quite a bit of fun. Make of that what you will, but my baseless opinion seems to have slightly more base than yours.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Shrike82]

Sorry, I'm not going to read what you wrote in your reply. I'll assume it was something pro-Microsoft, so I'll simply call you an MS fanboi and put some exclamation marks aftewards!!!

Long-live /.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Anonymous Coward]

...or do I just let the "pay what you want" period go by and give them the money they deserve?

It sounds like you're ENTIRELY missing the point of "pay what you want". "Pay what you want" is EXACTLY the same as giving them "the money they deserve". You DECIDE how much that actually is. But since it seems like you are incapable of even figuring that out, you'll probably wait until the promotion is over and give them the amount they were originally asking for (well, your parents will buy it for you), which isn't necessary "what they deserve". (Their asking price is less than what they deserve, IMHO.)

Re:That's very nice, but

[Svartalf]

Every developer out there seems to think DRM will "get them more sales" at least at some point in time. Some then realize this fact: The people pirating aren't "lost sales"- they're people who either can't/won't buy your product for varying reasons.

You want to win the "can't" crowd back if possible- you're never going to convince the "won't" crowd ever. The former is a possible customer, the latter is not and will not be.

DRM might slow the infringers down (it's been proven that pretty much every DRM solution to date has been circumvented within weeks of the release of the title...and that initial crush in the case of many titles won't be where you make your money if you're download only/mostly...) but it will pretty much never stop them. Ask Microsoft how nifty their DRM has been on the 360. DRM won't turn the "can't" crowd to be your customer- it won't put money in their pockets to buy. DRM won't turn the "won't" crowd into your customers- if they want your game badly enough, they will take it whether you have DRM on the title or not. If it's such that they won't bother, you've failed at making a fun game.

DRM is a folly wherever it gets used. It's use is based off of a flawed premise out of the gate.

Re:That's very nice, but

[IBBoard]

Parents or brother, probably, as they're the most technical one who might manage buying a game online. That's in a "25 year old planning Christmas presents rather than spending the mortgage/bills/looking-after-his-son money" way rather than the "some dumb teen living at home and getting stuff paid for him" way that your tone implied.

As for "pay what you want", your point falls down if I'm getting someone else to buy it for me. Some people have apparently paid $50 for it, according to their stats, but if I ask someone to get it for me as a present during their "pay what you want" period then I can't know how much the developers actually got for it. I can suggest to the family member that I think it is still worth the $20 and that it would encourage the Indie developer and lack of DRM, but it's still only a suggestion.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Svartalf]

They're basing it off of the online play results indicating at least 10% of the people might have been using an infringed copy. The reality is- you're going to find people committing "piracy" on a given title.

However, the leap they make that the infringements were costing them sales is tenuous at best. And the further leap that DRM will somehow make the sales better is even more so.

In any group of infringers there will be a mix of population of people that can't afford the game and those that will never buy period (I called them "won't"s in an earlier post...)

The "can't' crowd is a prospective customer- they would buy if they had the ability to do so, because of lack of credit card in the case of online sales, or due to things like pure lack of funds. You may or may not get into a position to have them be their customer. 2DBoy did that with me and I paid them what I thought was a fair price and what I had to spare ($15...as much to reward them as to buy the game. They didn't have to do this or make the Linux version after all.). Had they lowered the price to $10 or even $5, the result would have been the same. I was a "can't" because of budget concerns- there's other reasons and they're all over the place on the spectrum of things. You want to try to convert those to sales if possible.

The "won't" crowd is not, nor will they ever be your customer. The people that paid one cent are really, if they're honest with themselves", part of the "won't" crowd. They didn't pay even remotely a fair price for the game. The "won't" crowd will almost always pirate the game, either because they don't believe in paying for any of it, don't believe your game is worth any real money (but yet they made an illegal copy thereof and are playing it...go figure...), or similar. No amount of DRM will preclude them taking what they feel they're due from you if they want the title bad enough. If it is barring them, there's a very, very good chance that your game is not fun enough to rate cracking it. If it's not that much fun, you might want to re-think your thinking on why it's not selling better as it's not infringements that are your problem.

Re:That's very nice, but

[VGPowerlord]

I skimmed your post and saw "pro-Microsoft," so I'm going to assume you're a (Apple... no wait, this is games) Sony fanboi and diss the PS3!

Re:That's very nice, but

[iamhassi]

"it was pretty much certain this new game would get some form of DRM."

Doesn't matter, people will find a way around it, but I'm glad they're offering a way to pay for it because I, like many others, found other means of obtaining the game. Many times I've downloaded something and though "hey, this is pretty nice, but not worth the $$$$ they're charging but I wish I could give them something to show my appreciation." So I just donated, not $20 but not $2 either, can't believe most people think they only got $2 worth of enjoyment out of it.

I think all companies should do this with all forms of media like movies, tv shows, music, and software. Just a "hey if you like our software please leave a tip" kind of thing. Even if you think your DRM is fool-proof and no one could possibly ever steal it.... put the donation up anyway, and allow them to fill out a survey because that provides valuable feedback.

Re:That's very nice, but

[davester666]

This is an article about games? Sorry, I couldn't be bothered to read the url...

Re:That's very nice, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, looking at the numbers, it showed that 4 people bought it for $50, people were paying more for the product than the asking price!

Re:That's very nice, but

[damien_kane]

They're basing it off of the online play results indicating at least 10% of the people might have been using an infringed copy. The reality is- you're going to find people committing "piracy" on a given title.

It was actually the other way around...
Sales only matched up with 10% of the registered online players.

i.e. 100,000 total units sold, approximately 1 million online (numbers not actual, used for illustrative purposes).

If you factor in that not everyone who bought the game necessarily would be playing online/uploading their stats, and that not everyone who priated the game would play online, then that means even higher incident rate of piracy.

Re:That's very nice, but

[jargon82]

Ok, so we have 2 responses here... one says that 10% of users are pirates. The other says 10% of users aren't pirates.
So I took a moment to look up the information available: http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/
Maybe it's accurate, maybe it's not, but I'd like to know where the "only 10% are pirates" guy got his information from. The game has good reviews, no DRM, and is fairly popular so it seems all the usual arguments for a high rate of piracy are out the window, leaving behind only "we're a bunch of cheapskates." Oh well.

Re:That's very nice, but

[MattGWU]

No, I believe you could give them $0.00 and you'd get the game. Also, once you donated, you could download for whatever platforms you wanted. I gave near asking price and got both Windows and Linux. Would have given more if I thought everybody was going to stiff them. Come on, average price of $2.03?

Re:That's very nice, but

[Anonymous Coward]

The online play indicated 90% of copies were pirated, not 10%; 440,000 sold first week, and 9x that downloaded without paying.

Re:That's very nice, but

[ZerdZerd]

I got this game as a Steam gift on Christmas, but the Steam version doesn't give you access to the Linux version. So I just had to buy it again to support the Linux port, and play the game on Linux!

Re:That's very nice, but

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

How do we know that AC isn't making things up to stir up discussion? ;)

Re:That's very nice, but

[Golddess]

Why would I have to purchase the game multiple times to be able to play it on different platforms in the first place?

Because some people prefer not to pay up to 8 times (PC/Mac/Linux/Wii/PS3/360/DS/PSP) as much for a game that they only want to use on a single platform? I'll grant you that it is unlikely to be quite that high, but that would seem to me to be the upper limit.

It would be nice to be able to buy, say, a core game and then just pay a little more on top of that for every platform you'd like to play it on, but it's ludicrous to claim "I bought the PC version, why can't I get the game on Mac/Linux/Wii/PS3/360/DS/PSP for free?". There are additional costs to release a game on multiple platforms vs a single platform.

Re:That's very nice, but

[The Archon V2.0]

Can you pay 0? Or even negative numbers?

Please, no. You're bringing back nightmares about the negative cheque puzzle in Bureaucracy.

Re:That's very nice, but

[CaseM]

That's nice and all, but the PS3 says hi.

Re:That's very nice, but

[BikeHelmet]

So, if that indicates a problem with piracy, *AND* they're unhappy with the sales, then normally I'd say the game was garbage. But ... it got amazing reviews and it's really quite a bit of fun. Make of that what you will, but my baseless opinion seems to have slightly more base than yours.

Good games get pirated first, bought second.

It's a repeating trend. The most pirated games that are actually good - Demigod/WoG - sell well, and the most pirated games that are bad - Spore - do not sell well.

That's because pirates are vocal evangelists. It costs them nothing to recommend games to friends - and sooner or later, someone is going to feel it's worth buying.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know, that was only for preorders. I bought on release day and received no such CD-Key.

Re:That's very nice, but

[mhajicek]

Perhaps they'll keep track of which version(s) you DL.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Sparr0]

Who said anything about Nintendo, Apple, or Steam? 2DBoy wrote the game once, and compiled it for multiple platforms. 2DBoy has all 7(?) versions. I want to buy them from 2DBoy, not from a half dozen different distributors.

(yes, I know licensing and such are to blame, this is why I don't buy consoles or DRMed software or DRM-enforcing hardware)

Re:That's very nice, but

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. The only sensible solution is to stop making games altogether, since people are just going to pirate your game and not make it worthwhile.

Re:That's very nice, but

[darthvader100]

ANd i read that the average time between a song being posted on iTunes, and it appearing on peer-to-peer is 180 seconds.

That is average, so uncle fib's country hits take 5 minutes, Neyo's latest single takes, what? 5 seconds? 1 minute?

Re:That's very nice, but

[clone53421]

You missed the joke... if he bought 1,000 games for 1 cent each he'd spend $10.00; if he saved a penny he'd be getting them for free and he'd have an extra $10.00 to spend elsewhere.

Re:That's very nice, but

[clone53421]

Makes me wonder... how many of the folks who helped make this experiment a rousing success were former pirates who jumped at the opportunity to go legit and support the makers of a game they enjoyed playing to the tune of a price they thought was reasonable? (as opposed to the full price.) I'd be willing to bet the answer is a lot.

Piracy is, in essence, a way to try before you buy. (A lot of people are stingy and will "try" it forever, but that doesn't change the dynamic. It's an unrestricted trial, and there's some normal distribution of how long people try it – some "try" it forever, others buy it up-front.) You know it cost someone money to produce this, but you don't want to pay what they're offering (either because it's too much, or because you don't know if the product is any good yet). Some people eventually buy it, but only after they think the game was worth the selling price.

So, if you have a lot of people actively playing pirated copies of your game, you can conclude that it's a good game, but you're charging too much for it. A promotion like this could actually be the perfect opportunity to convert the pirates into (credit :) card-carrying customers... they might never buy the game for the price you're asking, but many/most would be willing to chip in some small token amount for a game that's really good. They're only lost sales if you insist on charging full price, and these sales are not really lost: they just never existed at that price. If you have a large pirate userbase, you can't possibly expect to get full price from all of them, but something is better than nothing, and $100 grand is certainly a lot of something!

Seriously: similar tactics would be very interesting to see from the record companies. I don't buy CDs; I just don't – I've bought, I think, 2 music CDs in my entire life and one of them was self-produced by a friend of mine. The record companies aren't getting jack squat from me, and never will. However, if I, and the thousands of people like me, had the opportunity to give some token amount to pay for the enjoyment we've had – say "look through your music collection, find the artists/songs you really like, and donate whatever you think is appropriate for those" – publicize it, hype it up, "you'll finally be legit, and you'll be supporting the artists you think are really talented"; they'd probably make a killing in a very short amount of time! Exactly the way this game's developers did.

Re:That's very nice, but

[Shrike82]

Would have given more if I thought everybody was going to stiff them. Come on, average price of $2.03?

I do take your point, but even though most people are giving very low amounts, I'll bet that it's all extra sales that wouldn't have happened if the price was $20. I'm not ashamed to admit that I donated $5, and some people might think that's cheap (but apparently not as cheap as the average customer) but I would never have paid anything over that amount for World of Goo. So yeah, people are being cheap about it, but it's all extra money in the developers' pockets which probably wouldn't have been there otherwise.

Re:That's very nice, but

[clone53421]

That's how much I spent, too, and it's actually more than I initially figured I'd pay ($1). I'm a firm believer in free stuff, and I'm willing to spend a few extra dollars (occasionally) to show my support for a business model that allows people to get free stuff. Especially after it's proven to be massively successful... I figured I'd spend more than the average, just to emphasize the point.

I would never have bought the game for $20, and probably wouldn't have bought it for $5 or even $1 from a bargain bin. But since they're essentially giving it away to anyone who doesn't want to pay, they got my $5.

I see it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

They gonna rake in huge profits with all these 0.01$ payments.

Re:I see it coming

[Trepidity]

There's plenty of $0.01 payments, yeah, but also a considerable number of higher payments. They say 57,000 total sales at an average of $2.03, minus 13% of the total in PayPal fees, which equals a take of $100,000. They're a two-man company, so that's $50k per person, from a single week of sales. Sounds like a success to me.

Re:I see it coming

[Alwin Henseler]

(..) so that's $50k per person, from a single week (..)

Are they hiring?

Re:I see it coming

[Thanshin]

Not that it matters, but I have a vague memory of WoG already having generated massive amounts of money. Possibly $100k more is just for beers.

Or, more content in their next game.

Yes, I do believe in whan I just said.

Re:I see it coming

[Rockoon]

Yes, WoG is a very big success story, and this was true long before 'name your own price.'

These two guys have made millions on the Wii version alone.

Re:I see it coming

[bjourne]

Um no. It is a miserable failure. After taxes they may be left with 60k tops, then deduct server costs, equipment cost and office rent. What remains is a miserable salary considering how much time they must have spent developing the game.

Re:I see it coming

[Trepidity]

Multiple tens of thousands for one week, i.e. millions of dollars per year, is a "miserable salary"?

They don't have an office or pay rent, fwiw.

Re:I see it coming

[BikeHelmet]

Multiple tens of thousands for one week, i.e. millions of dollars per year, is a "miserable salary"?

Doesn't quite work that way. Normally, I doubt they pull it more than $2k a week - if not less.

They don't have an office or pay rent, fwiw.

Everyone pays rent, or other expenses. But yes, they have no office or office rent.

Re:I see it coming

[clone53421]

Multiple tens of thousands for one week, i.e. millions of dollars per year

And I suppose you calculate retail sales based on the month before Christmas times twelve.

thanks

[bencoder]

Thanks for the slashvertisment :) Didn't know about this. Just grabbed my copy for $5.

Re:thanks

[bencoder]

On that topic, I wonder if the fact that I knew the average was about $2 affected my price point. I didn't want to go below the average, but if the average was $1 I imagine I would have paid less.

I wonder if it would be improved by having an updating average price display showing the current average price, or if it would mean that the average would stay down low because seeing that other people are paying $2 or $1 makes it OK for anyone else to pay that low.

Re:thanks

[Thanshin]

For precisely that reason I think any information about its final resulting benefit should be held "secret" for a while.

On the other hand, the number of sales does seem interesting to publish. But, as soon as anyone sees "52012 sales! And counting!" he'll naturally ask about the average price.

So, I'd recommend not giving any information about the results of this last sale campaign until it's considered finished.

Re:thanks

[symes]

My guess is that you would probably be affected by the range rather than the mean. We know the lower limit is 0.01 and publishing the mean as 2.00 would probably suggest a range that you would want to place yourself in depending on your perceived place in the world. If they'd put, rather than the mean, the most and least people had payed then I'd expect that this would predict your choice more strongly. It would be an interesting experiment to do if there's anyone out there planning on doing something similar...

Re:thanks

[halfhaggis]

An option would be to provide the customer with 3 figures at the pay point: Retail price ($20); Recommended price (say $10); Average price so far ($X).

I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly don't like to be perceived as stingy -- so I wouldn't want to pay below the average if the average is much less than the recommended price. By showing the average the buyer gets the sense of being watched, even though that isn't really the case. Result: the buyer is more inclined to pay above average.

Assuming everyone behaves similarly to me, the average price is slowly pushed up towards the recommended price limit. As it gets closer, buyers will start paying less than the average, and it will reach an equilibrium -- I'm guessing in the range $6-$8.

The key, I think, is to provide a reasonable discounted recommended price so that people are less inclined to think a low average price is "ok".

Re:thanks

[erlando]

Hmm..

Unless my math fails me then the average price would never drop below $10 if you only present the three options $20, $average and $10

Re:thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

he never said these would be the only options you could choose.

Re:thanks

[digitig]

I think the idea was to show the purchaser those price points, not limit the customer to those pay points.

Re:thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're right. In the same vein, if they said it was a huge success and they are going to Vegas for 6 months to live it up that would probably affect what I'd pay, too. ie. what I want to pay is tied to how much the seller needs the money.

Re:thanks

[sponga]

I paid $1 and its a good game, I pirated it earlier and it was just sitting in a folder waiting to be extracted. I don't know why I never unzipped it to install, but as soon as I bought it I got into it. Although got bored after level 3.

You have to pay more than 30cents so that the company gets some of the money rather than Paypal getting it all.

Re:thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

If they were smart they would also include the highest price point. You might create a bit of competition between those with some extra cash in their pocket.

Re:thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bought an engagement ring so I can only afford $1 :[

Re:thanks

[Raptor851]

I'm glad it's extended too, this hit the gentoo forums about a week ago and i forgot about it. $20 to me was asking too much for it, heck, for $20 i can pick up 2-3 playstation store games. $5-$10 is a more acceptable price, and by allowing the price to drop, they just made one more sale they otherwise wouldn't have had.

Re:thanks

[5of0]

Read it again. Those three aren't options, they're displayed figures, designed solely to subconsciously influence the buyer's price. They still have a blank box when it comes to actually choosing how much to pay.

Re:thanks

[nametaken]

I thought the sale ended on the anniversary date.

Anyway, I paid $5 as well, and I kinda feel bad about it. They specifically said they chose to not DRM it... and just asked people to be decent.

I wish more good games were done this way.

Re:thanks

[Just Justin]

Even more interesting would be if they offered a special secret gift or something to all who paid above average price. It would slowly make that average price rise, and a special secret gift could be nothing more than just a post card / thank you note in the mail.

Re:thanks

[Doggabone]

An option would be to provide the customer with 3 figures at the pay point: Retail price ($20); Recommended price (say $10); Average price so far ($X)...

Sounds like something Jane Siberry did with her music - first link I found: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/419-jane-siberrys-you-decide-what-feels-right-pricing

Re:thanks

[Kashgarinn]

I think you're way too far into "group-think" mode here. This is an entertainment commodity, and as the price is supposed to be up to you, what should be happening is that you should try and value the entertainment to adhere to your own personal value-meter.

Who cares what others payed for it, try out the demo, if you're still interested in playing it and having fun with it, then buy it for the price you think it's worth.

That's the whole point, but if you want to feel superior to everyone else, go ahead, pay the "I'm superior" tax, it's about double what everyone else is paying, but you get the warm glow of feeling superior.

Re:thanks

[10Neon]

Or the option to be placed on a public list of generous members.

Re:thanks

[Hurricane78]

I'm sorry to tell you that, but that makes you a beta-male. One with a weak own opinion, who mostly follows the realities of others. A potential human cattle.
I was like that too. But I realized, that because of the way I was raised, I never acquired the natural own set of values and the strong reality I should have.
So I stopped reacting to others, and started to question every matter of course I always assumed without thinking. That was the first time in my life, that I was really myself.

I really recommend to try it too. If nothing else, it will make you live a much more happy life. And the strong reality is very attractive to women, and to every beta male out there. (And for a good reason!) Before you know it, you're the one that people use as a guide, instead of as a menial. :)

So many others could benefit of similar methods

[Thanshin]

Rather than imagining an eternal life for their products, more developers could find ways (not necessarily this one) of selling their obsolete products to pay for the newer ones.

For example, l4d costs now about 15$ if bought together with the still unreleased l4d2. As they are almost equal and not very distant in time, the developers could wait another year or so and then release l4d for 2$. Make a little cash and go on.

Instead, they get so attached to IP they end up owning games that nobody wants to buy.

And, as today's pointless bad analogy, it's like trying and failing to sell the last apples at half the original price after they've started rotting, when they could be sold as fertilizer and use the money to buy more land, even if just a little.

Re:So many others could benefit of similar methods

[ZXDunny]

And, as today's pointless bad analogy, it's like trying and failing to sell the last apples at half the original price after they've started rotting, when they could be sold as fertilizer and use the money to buy more land, even if just a little.

What, iPhones?

Re:So many others could benefit of similar methods

[djMouton]

Indie rockers Speechwriters LLC did something similar with one of their albums, in their case giving it away for free once its associated tour had been paid for and the next album released.

Of course, they're still fairly unknown, so that's not the best example. But I'm sure the number of gained listeners outweighed the number of lost sales, which is clearly what you want if you're considering this kind of price tinkering.

Re:So many others could benefit of similar methods

[Ash-Fox]

For example, l4d costs now about 15$ if bought together with the still unreleased l4d2.

I already have l4d, I don't want to purchase it again and I am not buying l4d2 because I spent a pretty penny already for l4d and got a underwhelming experience.

In my opinion the l4d2 stuff hasn't really worked out as well as VALVe planned with some of their hardcore players.

Re:So many others could benefit of similar methods

[T Murphy]

I forgot the exact amount but I recently bought Halflife 1 for under a dollar off of Steam during a sale. They do sell their old games at low prices, you just have to catch when they do it.

Re:So many others could benefit of similar methods

[Jaysyn]

GOG.com?

Re:So many others could benefit of similar methods

[bjorniac]

IIRC it was 0.99, the same price for Opposing Force and Blue Shift. Since they have the technology in place this seems like an awesome way to make a few thousand out of games that don't sell anymore. They had Bioshock for $5 a while back, and Assassin's Creed is $5 right now. I just bought it :)

Re:So many others could benefit of similar methods

[Fozzyuw]

For example, l4d costs now about 15$ if bought together with the still unreleased l4d2.

L4D was on sale for $15 recently, but not anymore. The package deal is $65. L4D2 is $45 pre-order. L4D costs $20 if bought in the package deal. Not $15. It was $15 as a weekend promotion, like 2 weeks ago or so.

I already have l4d, I don't want to purchase it again

Why would you? It's not mandatory, like Half-Life 2 did with their episodes. Though, if you did buy the package deal, it's plainly stated you can "gift" the extra L4D to a friend. If you want, you can get $20 from that friend and break even and give your friend a deal.

I am not buying l4d2 because I spent a pretty penny already for l4d and got a underwhelming experience.

Huh, "a pretty penny" means to me that you spent more than normal. L4D was $45 brand new, on release (if you pre-ordered and got the $5 discount like you can get now with L4D2). I don't see how that's "a pretty penny" unless you're not looking at it context of other game costs and just that "$50" is a decent amount of money, I can agree with that.

As for the experiance, I think L4D is by far the best FPS zombie game out there. It's unfortunately short, but the first couple runs are well worth it and well polished. It's *still* a good game to jump on and frag some zombies. =) And upping the challenge level is decent replay value. L4D does fall short on the nearly non-existent mod support and new "official" maps. If they got their tools out sooner, L4D might have felt like more of a value. I can agree of the unfortunately limited number of "stories" to play, but that doesn't take away from the great experiance those few missions offered.

I am looking forward to L4D2 and what they do to improve up on L4D. I'm hoping for being able to split up more and the to see how melee weapons work.

What about absolute sales?

[EvanED]

How does the absolute intake compare to what it was before the experiment though?

I'm reminded of a sale Valve had for L4D a few months after it was released; Jeff Atwood relayed the results. In short, Valve cut the price of L4D in half, and the result brought in more money (not just more sales!) than the launch day.

So how did World of Goo's experiment do in absolute numbers? Did the revenue increase or decrease from before the experiment? Certainly sales increased, but that's a far cry from revenue increasing.

Re:What about absolute sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the phrase you are so desperately seeking is "Net profit margin."

Re:What about absolute sales?

[OverZealous.com]

I doubt very much they made more with this experiment than before.

Based on the charts / average price paid from the article, they made about $115,129 (probably about a hundred more, I skipped really low data points) on 56,714 sales. They admitted that they lost money on every sale below $0.30, and they had to pay up to 13% to PayPal in fees even when they made money.

I think for any game to have made 56,000 sales (which implies as many as 56,000 new customers to support), but only bring in a little over $100K, that's not a great revenue, unless you are using the iPhone / other app store model.

To look at it another way, at $20 per copy, they only had to sell around 5700 copies, and the profit margin should be significantly higher without Paypal fees.

Re:What about absolute sales?

[Trepidity]

It wouldn't have made 56,000 sales in a week without this experiment, though, so comparing to what revenue a game could've made on 56,000 sales at a higher price point is kind of irrelevant. A better question might be: is $100,000 in a week (implying $5.2 million/year) rate of revenues a good one, or could they do better with another model?

Re:What about absolute sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably an indication that games are seriously overpriced. After all, this is exactly how economic theory predicts this would happen. It just seems that valve did not take 200-year-old economic theory into account, it seems it exclusively took some faraway overpaid manager's word into account.

But I doubt that this pricing model would hold once a significant amount of games were for sale for 10$.

Re:What about absolute sales?

[EvanED]

Actually since costs are relatively fixed for online distribution of games that are already written, revenue probably varies basically directly with profit, so either one should be a decent indicator of the other.

Re:What about absolute sales?

[SkunkPussy]

although you can't extrapolate to 5.2 million/year because its unlikely that they could achieve this level of publicity for more than a week or two

Re:What about absolute sales?

[Trepidity]

Their one-week revenue is actually considerably higher than $100k to begin with, though, since that doesn't include Steam or console sales. I wouldn't be surprised if a few $million is accurate.

Re:What about absolute sales?

[JesseMcDonald]

$100,000 in a week (implying $5.2 million/year)

What makes you think they can keep up this rate of sales? This was a one-time promotional fluke. There are only so many people interested in their game, and most of them have probably taken advantage of this offer to get it at a bargain price, meaning that they won't be paying retail in the future.

Re:What about absolute sales?

[nametaken]

What everyone should take away from this...

Don't ever, ever, ever use PayPal. Ever.

Re:What about absolute sales?

[clone53421]

No, no, no...

The real way to look at this is very simple.

How many of these 56,000 people were potential customers at $20 per copy? If over ~5000 of them were (about 1 in 11), they lost money in the promotion, but the vast majority would probably not have bought the game (ever) for $20. Thus they have opened a market which was, formerly, almost entirely untapped. Finding untapped markets never hurts.

My own experience

[Random Walk]

I offer some of my software for 'pick your price'. I recommend a price, but clearly state that any price is ok. Most buyers buy at the recommended price. Very few pay significantly less (pay is through Paypal, which I think imposes a minimum price of $1). And - not quite unexpectedly - almost nobody ever pays more :-)

Re:My own experience

[TheRaven64]

It's worth noting that this is not unique to software. A few restaurants have started doing this in the last few years. I read about one in London a few years ago that removed prices from their menu, and found that their guests were paying more than they had done previously for their meals. A couple of years ago I was taken to a hippy cafe in Salt Lake City that has the same policy. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet, and when you leave, you drop a poker chip and some money into a bucket. At the end, they can divide the money by the number of poker chips and find out how much people paid on average. My grant was paying for food, so I dropped in $20, but the recommended price was $10, which was quite cheap for the amount and quality of food that I ate.

Re:My own experience

[Twinbee]

I also have been offering software at "choose your price" for quite a while. Interestingly, a good number of people pay twice as much as the 'recommended' price. I suppose it depends on the market.

Re:My own experience

[Chelloveck]

Back when I was in college some 20-some years ago, one of the organisations I was in occasionally had bake sales to raise funds. We invariably collected much more money when the items were left unpriced and the buyer just donated some amount. It's interesting to see this model being experimented with in the real world.

Re:My own experience

[Bryansix]

Not to be cheeky or anything but I'm pretty sure your sales were also in the "real world".

Re:My own experience

[clone53421]

Don't be ridiculous. College Is Not The Real World. If it isn't a universal law, it should be.

(Sort of kidding.)

Re:My own experience

[Chelloveck]

That was exactly my meaning.

one purchase - multiple platforms

[masterQba]

i don't know how many people know about this but if you've bought the game once directly from their website you have access to versions of the game for diffrent platforms. just revisit the download link you got in your mail after your original purchase.

Re:one purchase - multiple platforms

[ZXDunny]

Quite a few people that I know bought this multiple times for multiple platforms - bought originally for $20, then for $10 for Mac/Linux versions, simply because they felt it was right to do that. It's kind of odd, as I doubt many people would buy a AAA title more than once but folks don't seem to mind doing it for a small indie studio. The price could well be a factor in that one though...

Re:one purchase - multiple platforms

[Jedi Alec]

It's kind of odd, as I doubt many people would buy a AAA title more than once but folks don't seem to mind doing it for a small indie studio.

Think of it as their(our) way of saying: "Thank you for not only making an awesome game, but also for not being a total jackass like all the other game companies. Have some extra money!"

And yes, when the service is really good I'm quite a heavy tipper ;-)

Ubuntu Software Store...

[xtracto]

This is a game that should *definitely* be available in Ubuntu Software Store for next release.

Worth the $20

[lgftsa]

I downloaded the demo a couple of weeks ago and when I went back to buy the full game, the sale had started. I still paid full price though, because it's quite easily $20 worth of fun.

I bought it

[monkeySauce]

for $10. I had considered buying WoG in the past but always hesitated because I wasn't sure it was worth $20 to me.

Sure, I could have got it for $1 or $0.10 or $0.01, but the site says "Pay whatever you think it is worth" which isn't quite the same as "name the amount you want to spend". Considering the game is fairly simple but a lot of fun, Linux native, and DRM free; I think it's definitely worth what I paid.

Re:I bought it

[VGPowerlord]

Before this sale, the cheapest I'd seen World of Goo was when it was a Steam Weekend Deal for $5. Incidentally, that's when I bought it.

It's a sales tactic, not an experiment

[goldcd]

Commercially published game sales tend to spike when they're released - and then tail off afterwards. For Indie games I assume the 'spike' is a bit further down the line as people have to find it first - but sales will trail off once everybody is aware of it and has decided whether or not to buy it.
"Back in the day" the game ended up as a budget release (if it were lucky), maybe first at £10, then £5 - and you know only a teensy proportion of that shelf price ever made it back to the developer.
The "name your own price" strategy seems designed to mop up anybody who had an interest in the game, yet never got around to buying it for whatever reason.
Basically if somebody doesn't buy it - they were NEVER going to buy it under any circumstance at all.
So - nice idea for games in the 'tail' of their lives.

What I'd like to see a publisher try (just to satisfy my idle curiosity :) is to raise the price of games from release up to a point.
i.e. We are going to sell this game for $25. We are launching it at $10 and every day for the next 2 weeks, we're adding a dollar to the price - seems an ideal way to get your headlines, and convert those waverers (the vast majority who will never buy) into purchasers.

I guess in summary, the general rule is that when you get somebody looking at the purchase page, there should always be a reason for them to buy now, rather than next week.
I for one have been hearing about WOG for aages - have I got around to even playing it - no - I had something 'else' to do. I now see the name your own price is about to finish so in my head I can heat "It's now or never time for me to buy it." *wanders off to purchase*

Re:It's a sales tactic, not an experiment

[clone53421]

It's a sales tactic, to be sure, but enough people claim it doesn't work that actually implementing it is also an experiment.

Re:It's a sales tactic, not an experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

What you described was the sale tactic Mount and Blade used, except they start with a beta state and get to full price at release.
It's the only game that I have ever bought online, and I don't think it's just because it's good.

Cool, I missed the deadline

[Anonymous Coward]

I own Windows version, which I bought in gaming store in Europe for about $5! Now, it would be stupid if I paid more if I wanted to buy, so average price might be influenced by that.

But I am happy they extended deadline, I missed it and I am going to get Linux version too :).

same experiment

[Tom]

I did the same experiment with some Unity3D tools/scripts of my own, offering them at four different prices with a suggestion as to what I think they equate to, but a very obvious statement that no matter which price you pay, the download will be the same.

Interestingly, the distribution is 6-2-1-1 over the prices, showing that people do not always pick the lowest price, even if they can. Like the World of Goo makers, I consider the experiment a success and may use the model in the future.

It even checks out economically. I made ~180 US$ this way. If I had offered the scripts for $20 (2nd price), even assuming that half of the $10 buyers would have bought it at that higher price, I would've made only $140.

Who bought this...

[musicalwoods]

Who bought this not knowing anything about the game, solely supporting this pricing model?

*slowly raises hand*

Re:Who bought this...

[xtracto]

I had played this game before and just spend $10.00 on it to have a "legit" copy of it.

Re:Who bought this...

[BoredAtWorkWhatElse]

Well I already own the game (on Steam) but I just "bought" it again just to support the pricing model.

Re:Who bought this...

[Anonymous Coward]

me me me

Re:Who bought this...

[boyter]

Me. I paid $10 for it never planning on playing it either. I do hope this model works out.

Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[Bazar]

what bugs me is that 16,852 people paid $0.01 for the game. Which is nothing but legally pirating the game.

If you were doing it for an OS port of the game thats fine, but otherwise at least throw in a dollar.
The bandwidth and credit processing would cost them more then the cent provided.

At least they got the marketing, and my business, which is some good from the cheapskates
Thats my $2.00 cents.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[amRadioHed]

Legal pirating? I don't believe that's possible.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[cjfs]

Legal pirating? I don't believe that's possible.

Arrr, as per the EULA that you agreed to by running this program, I now commandeer this computer.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[howlingmadhowie]

well, as we all should know by now, pirating is only about teh money. that's the only reason anybody ever pirates anything: because they want to rob other people. it never has anything to do with sharing with friends, or convenience, or a desire to have something now and not wait 6 months until it becomes available legally. no, if you pirate you are a criminal and you hate america ... (i could go on like this all day)

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[Anonymous Coward]

"Which is nothing but legally pirating the game."

Piracy is illegal copying of works, legal pirating is an oxymoron.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[ledow]

Why is that at all surprising?

I would expect more, to be honest, out of 57,000 and you have to take account of that when you run any such event. Personally, I'd have said any *dollar* amount, so it would have gone for at least $1 and made the maths a little easier but if it was *possible* to buy at 1c, I quite expect to see a hefty percentage of people pay that.

The so-called "honesty box" system works on the basis that *enough* people are honest (not that all of them are, or even most of them), whether you've put bunches of flowers in a tub by the side of the road, with a tin for collecting payment, or you're selling a game on the Internet. (The flowers thing is quite common the rural UK - a few pennies and you can take as many flowers as you like because they are effectively surplus, and very few people run off with the tin full of change, either).

I've personally purchased two World of Goo's, one for me, one for a friend, and think it's a great game. On reading this article, I emailled a couple of friends that might be interested. I don't really care if they pay $10, or $1, or 1c, so long as they get the game - it's not "costing" the authors anything that they aren't already paying, and it is with their blessing, and the publicity etc. they are getting more than makes up for it.

The fact is that most games are too expensive, and I've often thought "If that was a little cheaper, I'd buy it" but rarely tell the author. The feedback from knowing what/why people are spending what they do if a phenomenal statistic to have. And I don't think they did bad out of a game that most people already have and most people already paid full-price for, and for which sales are sloping:

(57,000 times $2.03) - 13% (Paypal small-transaction fees) = just over $100,000, before they even make the front page of Slashdot. IN A WEEK. I don't think the authors have suffered. I think a lot of people who couldn't justify the expense now get a great piece of entertainment. The authors get a shedload of easy money from an "old" game, tons of free advertising and lots of useful feedback, a few pirates make themselves legit, some people get that warm glow of supporting and author, some cheapskate people get a "free" game and Paypal make a shedload of money too. I think that's pretty much win-win.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[TheRaven64]

Why does this annoy you? Did you lose money from it? Did the authors of the game? I'm not really sure how you accept payments for $0.01 without losing money, but if they had a good micropayment system in place and were paying something close to a flat rate for bandwidth, then that works out at $168.52 from these people. Maybe $100 after they've covered the costs. Assuming that these people would otherwise have either pirated or not got the game at all, then that's $100 that they would not have otherwise received. And each of these people, having bought the game, might be willing to pay $0.50 for the next game. Not much per sale, but still over $8k, which is a nice addition to the bottom line.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[Hitman_Frost]

No, they actually got no money at all from those people. From their site -

"For all purchases of around 30 cents and under, we actually saw no money, PayPal took it all, but they probably ended up losing money on most of those transactions ($0.01) as well, they’re not the bad guy."

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[Bazar]

Yes its an oxymoron, i chose it for that purpose.
It doesn't change the fact that people are copying it without paying the agreed amount.

The publisher/developer is allowing anyone to buy it with whatever they think its WORTH. They didn't say pay what you want.
You ask anyone who "purchased" the game at 1 cent, and ask them if they got a bargin, and they'll say hell yes. Its because they just got something vaulable for dirt cheap.
Anyone who actually thought the game was only worth $0.01 cents wouldn't even bother downloading it.

If you ask me, such actions not only breaks the spirit of the sale, it also breaks the agreement it was purchased with. Its also just being a selfish arsehat.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[TheRaven64]

That makes a bit more sense, but makes you wonder why they didn't just make $0.50 (or whatever the minimum you can accept is) a minimum.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, sorry, you seem to be trying to make a sarcastic point about all the pseudo-intellectual waffly bullshit that people spew on the net when they are trying to justify theft.
Yup, there are lots of them.
The real reason is still because you are a lazy fucking thief that think the world owes you free entertainment.
fucking grow up

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[amRadioHed]

Well my point sort of is that if you pirate you necessarily are a criminal since that's how pirating is defined. You can object all you like to what is illegal in the states these days and I'll probably be right there with you, but illegal is still illegal.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[JayGuerette]

Consider it a loss leader. If those people play the game, love it as much as the average person, and mention it to others or directly expose them to the game, while also sharing the great value in the deal, then those people will probably go an and buy the game as well. Most people wouldn't admit to paying $0.01, so their friends are likely to spend more than that. Personally, if someone introduced me to the game, and I found out they paid $0.01 for it, I'd pay MORE just to make up for them.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[Aladrin]

Because it was an experiment. While I'm sure they hoped to make money by it, it's pretty clear that they decided to throw caution to the wind and just see what happened.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[Rude Turnip]

They're selling their game, not their dignity. I don't think there would be anything wrong by setting a breakeven price floor that only covers transaction costs.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[TheRaven64]

So give an option of $0 as well, but selling at an amount that doesn't even cover the cost of processing makes no sense.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[clone53421]

Fuck off. They permitted it, it was a huge success, and you're bitching just because some people (essentially) got their way paid by the folks who paid more.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[Anonymous Coward]

It is hard to know how much it is worth, without trying it first.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[Anonymous Coward]

a desire to have something now and not wait 6 months until it becomes available legally.

So the justification is 'I want it now and shouldn't have to wait'?

Leave the altruism behind please, everyone knows the real reasons behind pirating is self-gratification.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[TheBlackSwordsman]

I paid one cent for the game (actually, I paid two cents for it, as the site crashed on me during the first transaction and I was forced to do it all over again). I don't feel bad about it, though. Fact is, for me this game wasn't worth buying. I tried the demo and it was pretty enjoyable, but not enjoyable enough that I felt like spending money on it. However, if offered the chance to get the game for free, or in this case almost free, then sure, I'll take it. How exactly am I a pirate? 2D Boy told me to pay what I felt like paying and that's what I did.

Your argument is just as bad as claiming that a pirated copy of a game, song, movie etc. automatically equals a lost sale.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[Anonymous Coward]

and I’ve often thought...but rarely tell the author.

As if you could.

I mean, there are notable exceptions, but for a lot of games, getting somebody's email address will generally involve more than creative Google-ing.

Like I played that Plants Vs. Zombies game and I wanted to email the lead dev. and say, "Hey man, your bonus rewards are far too time-expensive. Your game is good, but not 100 hours after I finished it already good."

And I couldn't find anything resembling a contact that would go anywhere near where I wanted it to.

But re:re: the parent, while a penny might not cover the actual cost of the transaction or whatever, one has to remember that we live in "The Information Age," where we spout such platitudes as "Information is Power" and somesuch. That 16,852 people paid $0.01 for the game answers the question of, "How many people would only pay $0.01 for the game if we gave them the option?"

And that, friend, is Power.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[Backward Z]

(accidentally posted anonymously)

and I’ve often thought...but rarely tell the author.

As if you could.

I mean, there are notable exceptions, but for a lot of games, getting somebody's email address will generally involve more than creative Google-ing.

Like I played that Plants Vs. Zombies game and I wanted to email the lead dev. and say, "Hey man, your bonus rewards are far too time-expensive. Your game is good, but not 100 hours after I finished it already good."

And I couldn't find anything resembling a contact that would go anywhere near where I wanted it to.

But re:re: the parent, while a penny might not cover the actual cost of the transaction or whatever, one has to remember that we live in "The Information Age," where we spout such platitudes as "Information is Power" and somesuch. That 16,852 people paid $0.01 for the game answers the question of, "How many people would only pay $0.01 for the game if we gave them the option?"

And that, friend, is Power.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[2obvious4u]

It is costing the authors something. It is costing them server space, hosting fees, electricity and bandwidth. I have no problem paying a minimum fee to cover those costs of distribution. I don't like the myth of free internet content. I also don't like the idea of paying $1 for an iTunes song since those distribution costs are probably closer to $.05. iTunes songs at $0.25 and you've got a new customer and I'm sure other people would join at a $0.10 price point.

Currently digital publishers are pushing a physical price point model. What they don't realize is that if they lowered prices the increase in customers would more then cover the lower price of the product.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[ledow]

And I repeat my original statement: "it's not "costing" the authors anything that they aren't already paying"

Server space - I don't think they've taken on any extra servers. 57,000 purchases in a week = 5 or so a minute, that's not exactly taxing even a single server on top of normal usage.

Hosting fees / Bandwidth - Unless they *seriously* exceeded their bandwidth, I don't think that's a problem either - and to be honest, they probably had more traffic on the game launch day with everyone downloading the demo, etc. Any decent small company can afford gobs of bandwidth nowadays.

Electricity - They probably *don't* pay any extra for this at all for the sale event... in a hosted environment, it'd be fixed-rate. And if they're hosting it themselves, I think the $100,000 should cover the extra $1 or so to count for the extra electricity.

I'm not saying it's "free" for them to do it, but it's so miniscule a percentage of their profit it's not worth talking about, and probably zero cost on top of what they'd need if they hadn't run the sale. It's a different thing entirely to say "I needed to put a server up to do all this" instead of "well, our server got a bit more traffic".

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[AP31R0N]

1) Unless they pulled their corsair along side a frigate full of copies of WoG, it isn't piracy. Piracy is ship to ship armed robbery. Unauthorized copying of copyrighted material is copyright infringement.

2) If we make light of real world murderers and hostage takers like those operating off the coast of Somalia, this STILL isn't piracy, these people paid. It may not be enough to please your highness, but they paid. So again, not piracy. If i buy a CD from the penny bin i haven't "pirated" it just because you paid more. i still paid more than the people who shoplifted it or DLed it from BT.

3) If the creators wanted to set a higher price, it was within their rights to do so. If they wanted to set the price at a minimum of $1, they could have. They set up the situation to allow one cent purchases.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[clone53421]

people are copying it without paying the agreed amount

What are you smoking? The "agreed amount" was whatever you think it's worth. If you undervalue it, or if you (gasp) lie about what you think it's worth just so you get a spectacular deal on it, the amount that you agree to pay in the end is still the agreed amount. They took your money, they gave you the download, the transaction was made, and all for the agreed amount, whatever that was.

There's a whole element of "worth" above just the monetary worth. There's the value of the entertainment, the value of the affordability, etc. If you think something is worthwhile because it's affordable, if you translate that directly to increasing its monetary worth that would make it less affordable and thus worth less – to you. Someone else might think it's worth that much, monetarily, because they feel like they can afford that amount.

If I download something for $0.01, what I'm saying is "I can't afford to buy games". Thus, I'll buy them if they're practically given to me, but a $5 game is not worth $5 to me because I value the other things my $5 could buy more than I value the game. You might say "if you can't afford to buy games, why do you expect to play them?" Well, that's a valid criticism. I have never, not once, in my entire life, bought a computer game – believe it or not. However, this looks kinda intriguing, mostly just because of the promotion; I was thinking about buying it for $1, but I ended up spending $5 for it in the assumption that I'll probably enjoy it (so technically I can't say I've never bought a computer game anymore). Plus, I'm putting my money where my mouth is, and I'm more than willing to spend a few extra bucks to help out the people who only wanted to spend $0.01. However, $20? I'd never buy it for $20, simply because I'd rather save my money and play Tetris. (Heck... $20 can buy a few months' worth of ramen, a few week's worth of potatoes, a few double cheeseburgers once a week for several months, or a week and a half's worth of cheap booze.)

Basically, my entertainment budget is very low, because I'm content to make do with whatever I can get. I download movies, but if I was forced to stop doing that I'd probably play more of the games I can get for free. I'd probably also read more (both dead tree books and Project Gutenberg e-texts). I don't have cable or satellite TV (no, not that guy... I do have a TV, now that my brother bought one), don't have a decent computer or digital camera (two of those things I'm going to buy, supposedly, but such low priorities that I haven't gotten around to it). There are really only a few sorts of entertainment that I think I'd reluctantly pay for if I couldn't get them for free: computer, digital camera, and internet. Oh, and booze...

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[clone53421]

Practically speaking it doesn't, but for the purposes of an experiment, it's pretty interesting.

How many of the people who paid $0.01 would still have bought the game if there had been a minimum price of $0.50? I'm guessing the vast majority of them would. However, it's interesting to look at the histogram and see exactly how many people did pay $0.01.

I actually just bought it for $5.00. I was thinking about $1.00 but I figured it'll probably be a halfway fun game and I'll give them a little extra for it. This is the only computer game I have ever purchased. All the other games I have played were either free demos, free full versions, or pirated (and relatively few were pirated, in fact).

The one game I probably spent the most time on? Hard to say. I spent long hours in the multiplayer of DFLW's demo, the multiplayer of UT's demo (classic), the free version of Runescape (my avatar's handle is Eldurn_Radmr, look me up ... I don't play anymore, but I amassed some fair statistics), America's Army (mostly when it was in version 1.7; my alias on there was the same as here), and the versions of Tetris and Minesweeper that came with Windows (Tetris actually came in the BOWEP).

'Course, I've also spent countless hours writing programs in BASIC (GW-BASIC at first, then later I had a PowerBASIC for DOS compiler). In college, I had to write in Fortran, C++, Java, and assembly for the 80x86, Motorola 12HC-86, and MIPS, although the only of those languages that I have continued to do anything with was 80x86 assembly. More recently, I dabble in Javascript, PHP, and just a wee smidgen in assembly when the itch strikes (check this one out).

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[TheRaven64]

I wonder how many people who paid $0.01 are aware of the cost of processing credit card transactions. With a proper micropayment system in place, I wouldn't mind paying $0.01 to $0.10 for a few Flash games that I've played. It's not much, but given that most of the ones I've enjoyed have had 100K to 1M plays on a single site, that would quickly add up to a lot of money if everyone paid the same. Even at $0.01 per play, a reasonably decent game would be making tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.

Re:Legal pirates made me a annoyed panda

[clone53421]

Exactly. I'm truly annoyed by the outrage shown by people who, clearly, are just jealous that somebody got something for free that they personally were obligated to pay for (either with no decision, or based on their own sense of fairness).

It's exactly like the situation in Matthew 20:1-16. To summarize the story, some people "bought" a full day's wages with a full day of hard work (12 hours), while others got the full wage for only 9, 6, 3, or 1 hour of work. Then the people who did the full day's work were angry and wanted to know why these other people got the same wage as they did for doing less work. The answer? "We agreed on the wages, you received the amount we agreed on, and what right do you have to be offended if I pay someone else the same amount for less work? Don't I have a right to be as generous as I want with my money?" (not a direct quote).

Pricing Models

[Swanktastic]

There's all sorts of interesting pricing models an indie developer with zero retail distribution could try if they're controlling the sales.

I think an interesting experiment would be to auction say X copies a day, with the price being set at the lowest winning bid. Folks who MUST have the product on day one can pay more, those who wait can pay less. Obviously there are some challenges, but it's at least an interesting intellectual exercise.

It would be fascinating to see what folks would pay for, say, a week of exclusive access to WoW: Cataclysm. Sort of ruins the spirit of the game, but interesting nonetheless.

   

Re:Pricing Models

[TheTurtlesMoves]

There's all sorts of interesting pricing models an indie developer with zero retail distribution [costs] could try if they're controlling the sales.

Running a server that is reliable and can handle ./ is not free. Its not even a close approximation of free. Its real money and its an expense that is incurred every single month. Decent bandwidth for a larger game is also a long way from free, and even if you don't get many sales you still have to pay.

Re:Pricing Models

[batdog]

Similar refinement: I would do a descending clock auction: start at $19, every 6 hours price goes down another $1, maximum number of copies sold in the auction is, say, 100,000. An optional (in my opinion useful) subtlety is to keep progressive sales information private, so the fear of missing the deal is the more palpable to potential buyers.

I think a similar format would work for a site like woot.com. Maybe it has been tried?

Re:Pricing Models

[wzzzzrd]

na, just be clever. for example...

try google app engine. seriously, no upfront cost, you set limits to what you want to pay and you actually pay only for the bandwith/ whatever resources you use. combined with some clever use of convential web space hosters, you get a really cheap solution. you just need to be clever and to think a bit, but hey, we're talking about indie developers.

like, make your engine open source and close up only vital parts of the game data (ie scripts etc), so you can serve the engine and most of the game data from sourceforge or any similar site. the internet is a powerful tool indeedd if you know how to use it.

Re:Pricing Models

[Swanktastic]

I meant zero retail distribution as in "can't be found in stores." Having bizarre pricing schemes is bound to cause channel conflict, so this model would presumably make no sense to typical publishers who have their product in Walmart, Best Buy, Gamestop, etc.

Re:Pricing Models

[Just Justin]

I know exactly what you're talking about, and I've thought the same thing before too, not just with games but with other things too. Really with anything that comes out in a limited edition amount.

Re:Pricing Models

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Right. Sorry, i assumed wrong.

What about adding an extra category, donationware

[Provocateur]

Add another price category where you'd want half to go the indie developer's preferred charity? Now THAT would really make things quite interesting imo, in a social experiment kind of way.

Arrogant comments...

[blahplusplus]

... I notice a lot of people complaining that people paid so little. But that is irrelevant.

World of goo is for all intent's and purposes a small indie game. It is competing against all other older AAA games with many million dollar budgets that have now hit the bargain bin, for the same or similar prices (5$-10$).

I think people forget that the value of a game is what people are prepared to pay for it against all other games. Let's not also forget that games are massively overly produced.

Re:Arrogant comments...

[Anonymous Coward]

so you think that a piece of digital entertainment that keeps you amused for hours is worth less than the price of a dog biscuit?
really?

People are just being cheapskates because they don't have to look the developers in the face.
Its sad, and people excusing that attitude are even sadder.

Re:Arrogant comments...

[blahplusplus]

"People are just being cheapskates because they don't have to look the developers in the face."

The average gamer isn't even thinking about the developer, only the hardcore like us think about the developer. The average human being is thinking about how best to spend his money, versus ALL the other games he can spend it on.

No one in a free market is entitled to succeed, this is what I really hate about developers. They don't understand what a free market means and the level of competition for dollars between all other games that gamers could spend their money on.

Any developer should ask: "Why should people spend this amount of money on my game when the canget this game which is x times better for the same price or less?"

That is the fundamental outlook developers need to apply to themselves since that is how the market works in the real world.

are people stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see any reason why any rational person would pay more than a penny on this. It's not a school fundraiser, it's a commercial business selling a product. If you go to your favorite retail store and see 100 copies of this game on the shelf with all different prices, you'd have to be stupid to not get the cheapest one.

Re:are people stupid?

[clone53421]

Maybe because I know that without people actually paying for the game, it would never have been created? Maybe because I'm glad somebody can buy it for a penny, and I'm willing to throw in a few bucks to make that possible?

No, I wouldn't spend $20 on it, but I bought it for $5, which I feel is more than generous – I'll probably enjoy it a fair amount but I don't expect it to be one of my all-time top games (most of which, by the way, have been free games or free demo versions).

I'm sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but why should I have to re-buy the game just to be able to get the Linux binary? I got World of Goo a couple days ago for $4 on clearence at a retail store. Why should I have to pay more just to get the Linux binary? iD doesn't do this. Nor do any of the other Linux game compaines do this.

Re:I'm sorry...

[Ash-Fox]

Sure they do, you have to buy a seperate copy of a game for Windows, the PS3, the xbox 360, the Wii and the DSi. This is no different.

Re:I'm sorry...

[HAKdragon]

Well, it is a little different considering that when you buy World of Goo directly from the developers, you get a download link for Windows, Linux, and OS X versions of the game so you can download the one that's appropriate for your platform or all of them at the same time.

Re:I'm sorry...

[Ash-Fox]

Well, it is a little different considering that when you buy World of Goo directly from the developers, you get a download link for Windows, Linux, and OS X versions of the game

Happy days.

don't donate just to paypal

[Devistater]

Anything less than around 33 or so cents goes to to paypal from fees. So just keep in mind that you are donating to paypal not the indy game developer if you do that. There's a lot of people who donated 1 cent to paypal. On the other hand, if you WANT to cost paypal money, donating 1 cent with visa card probably costs paypal money.

Re:don't donate just to paypal

[mrchaotica]

On the other hand, if you WANT to cost paypal money, donating 1 cent with visa card probably costs paypal money.

Ah ha! So the best idea is to buy the game once for $20, then a whole bunch more times for $0.01 each! MUAH HA HA HA HA!!!

Thinking behind my price

[cowbutt]

I picked up WoG for US$2. I'd never played it before and had never been bothered enough to even download the demo. Effectively, I was happy to pay US$2 to take a chance on something which I might not like or play at all, or I might love and play relentlessly. I wouldn't have regretted that US$2 if I played it once and never bothered again.

I should add that I'm not a big gamer; I get all my games used for £1-4 for PSX, original XBox and PC and generally stick to recognised AAA titles. I pay similar prices for movie DVDs. Only CDs and DVD box sets get better prices out of me; anywhere from £8 to £16 usually.

Re:Thinking behind my price

[SkunkPussy]

Ye i also paid 2$ for it on the basis that I hadn't heard of the game and may or may not play it. I'd have probably paid more if i'd found out beforehand that they had a linux build.

Re:Thinking behind my price

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here, but I paid $5, because I am considerably richer than you.

Pay afterward...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why make someone pick a price to pay up front when they don't know what the game is like? Have them get the game for free then pay after they've played it for a while and know how much its worth to them (basically a demo).

With how much I've played Fallout 3 and Mass Effect I probably would have ended up paying full price for them...

Re:Pay afterward...

[HAKdragon]

Why make someone pick a price to pay up front when they don't know what the game is like?

Well, they do have a demo available...

But I thought pick-your-price didn't work...

[clone53421]

Over 57,000 people took advantage of the offer, which was enough for 2D Boy to term it "a huge success."

Wut?!

But everyone knows pick-your-price is infeasible! The music industry proved it! Didn't they?

More seriously, though, let's do some straight math and see how this turned out.
57,000 x $2.03 = $115,710

Anybody care to guess how much they'd have made off the same 57,000 people if they hadn't held this promotion?

All in all, they netted over $115 grand in this. Not bad for their one-year anniversary promotion (in fact, I'd almost call it a "huge success" — oh wait, they already did).

Re:But I thought pick-your-price didn't work...

[Sielle]

The music industry did prove it. Pick your price only works when you have a product worth buying. So it doesn't work for the RIAA. ^_^

Re:But I thought pick-your-price didn't work...

[clone53421]

Touché!

Re:But I thought pick-your-price didn't work...

[darthvader100]

Anybody care to guess how much they'd have made off the same 57,000 people if they hadn't held this promotion?

Answer: $0
I always thought it looked nice, but $20? not so much. Even though i shouldn't be spending, i still gave them $2 for a copy

Bill me later

[Jainith]

How about a bill me later option?

Sure WOG was hyped, but so are many terrible games. I've recently gotten to the point where I won't buy any game without trying it either in the form of a demo (yay xbox live), or through GameFly.

I know now that that I have played it that WOG is certainly worth more than $2 to me. I would consider it to be in the $15-$30 range in terms of fun and satisfaction.

So here's my thought, let me play the game for a couple days, if it totally sucks you'll only get a token sum. If it roxorz then you get the lucre...

Re:Bill me later

[TheLink]

Just buy it twice?

First time buy it for 0.01.

After you play you buy it for whatever.

I'm surprised it's not obvious.

But since it isn't, I guess most of the 0.01 buyers didn't do that - otherwise it might explain the two peaks - people buying it for "free" and then buying it again.

Re:Bill me later

[Anonymous Coward]

They did provide a free demo, which is the first Chapter of the game, that is almost a quarter of the content. So why didn't you play the demo first?

Ahh... the Radiohead of gaming

[revlayle]

glad it worked out, at least a little bit.

Recognition

[AlpineR]

I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly don't like to be perceived as stingy

Who's gonna know? In public, you have to deal with the cashier, your companions, and any other customers nearby. Online it'll all be handled by computers unless someone with permission specifically looks at your purchase. Otherwise they'll just track statistics of everybody's purchases.

It might be wise to post a scrolling list of recent purchases with real names. Pay the retail price and get the game anonymously. Or pay a lower price at the extra cost of a little publicity. Actually, you should have the option to be public if you pay more than retail so you can bask in your own generosity.

Versions...

[GerardAtJob]

You can download all versions if you want when you buy...
I got Win32 and Linux version for my little 5$ (5$ for 8hours of play = okay)

Nah

[ErikZ]

How about a "Getting it running under Windows 7" experiment?

Downloaded it off of Steam, and it doesn't work. :P

Re:Nah

[ledow]

An OS that's been available for customers for a whole day (and that's special pre-orders for certain customers in certain countries)? Why should 2DBoy sign up on MSDN just to get advanced previews of whether their software will work? That's a serious question for a small business. Either give them time, wait for a patch, patch it yourself, try it in every compatibility mode or bitch about how a program that's never seen an operating system that's been out for one day doesn't work.

Re:Nah

[n17ikh]

Works for me. If you have multiple monitors you have to disable them though, as I found out through trial and error - otherwise the game just switches resolutions back and forth at you.
I paid $5, my roommate paid $.01, FWIW.

Lost Revenue?

[sleeponthemic]

I see the figure of 17k as a particularly effective way of rebutting many of the so-called, inflated "lost revenue" figures we read/ hear.

Nothing quite says "you were never getting the money, anyway" better than offering them the chance to pay 2c, and having them pay the absolute minimum.

If you read this report and have trouble / get angry at the 17k, you're missed the point. The point is, some will NEVER pay for it. But hey, many will. They're the ones we're selling to. They're the ones suffering when we remove features / lockdown / DRM our software. I suppose it's easier to be optimistic when you're made 100k in a few days and the only opportunity cost was the realisation that a pirate is infact, a pirate though.

Personally, I wasn't interested in this game (played the demo), but I am interested in donating $2 to see that that the experience of using this model is furthered, so I'll definitely buy it, simply to show support. Much to the contradiction of popular gaming industry opinion, they haven't lost money by me not paying full price, they've gained $2 they would have never seen, otherwise.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page and reload, you will just how quickly sales are occurring (and this represents only a fraction who take the survey, I believe). http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=MZpIFVRQn99e_2fJukiNVWR9Rm3Xg1MSQ85QQk09BNH3s_3d

Re:Lost Revenue?

[Larryish]

I bought the game at $0.01 two hundred times.

Does that count as paying $2.00 ?

Re:Lost Revenue?

[clone53421]

Yes. To PayPal. The developers didn't get a single cent from any transaction of less than $0.30.

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

The majority of the people who bought the game were nerds trying to support the payment model. I wonder what the outcome would have been if these buyers were removed from the data?

It's this simple

[dmorelli]

The game is well-made. It's fun and interesting to me. I have not found any bugginess so far. They produce a native Linux version. They don't harrass us with DRM.

I paid them US$20. That was my pick-a-price. Because, you know what?, the developers felt it was worth that much originally and I agree.

This isn't some contest where I have to make sure I win over the other tens of thousands of customers.

worst idea ever

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be wise to post a scrolling list of recent purchases with real names. Pay the retail price and get the game anonymously. Or pay a lower price at the extra cost of a little publicity.

Yeah, because nothing improves sales like shaming your customers.

I'm kind of glad that when I buy toilet paper on sale, my grocery store doesn't flash my name on a giant billboard with a caption "This cheap bastard refuses to pay full price to wipe himself!"

Re:I paid $0.00

[Anonymous Coward]

So I got World of Goo from Rapidshare, but it didn't provide options of payment to the authors. Pity.

You, sir, are killing independent game developers. The game has been out for over a year now, and you just *had* to have it today? It was so important that you couldn't wait a few hours to process the transaction?

I hope your computer erupts into flames.

Why pay more?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pick Your Price" sounds to me like "We want to give you this game for 1 cent". I don't understand why so many people payed more.

If VW suddenly offered Jettas for $100, would you opt to pay them $5000 or more because of your perceived value, or would you take advantage of an almost free car?

Re:Why pay more?

[coolsnowmen]

Troll?or just a Dick?-- You are the reasons [evil] corporations act the way they do.

If VW offered jettas for 100$ and you only gave them that, they would be out of business and then noone would ever offer a car that low again. Yes you might have a car, but this is a doubly bad example for your case, because you actually cost them money.

The real point is: I want the company that is giving me this deal on a rare-good-professional linux game to live on and prosper. So I donate more than 1 cent because I want there to be another game like this, and another deal like this sometime. I want to reward their behavior and not spit in their face.

I feel tremendously bad if you teach your kids the same sentiment: "lie/cheat/steal/abuse/take/copy do what ever it takes to get what you want in life w/o regard for others"

What ever happened to "do unto others, as you would have them do unto you."?

Re:Why pay more?

[Toridas]

Troll?or just a Dick?-- You are the reasons [evil] corporations act the way they do.

If VW offered jettas for 100$ and you only gave them that, they would be out of business and then noone would ever offer a car that low again.

So how much did you donate to your dealer above the minimum asking price last time you bought a car?

I feel tremendously bad if you teach your kids the same sentiment: "lie/cheat/steal/abuse/take/copy do what ever it takes to get what you want in life w/o regard for others"

I feel tremendously bad if you teach your kids "if you think a price for something is too low, pay more!"

Re:Why pay more?

[coolsnowmen]

I bought a used car.

And, did you completely skip the part where I like this company and want them to succeed and not fail?

I will teach my kids EXACTLY what I said I would. If you read what I wrote, it is there. There is no need to infer.

Re:Why pay more?

[clone53421]

I feel tremendously bad if you teach your kids "if you think a price for something is too low, pay more!"

There wasn't a price. You got to choose the price you thought was appropriate. If you really think an appropriate price for World of Goo is $0.01, the obvious reason is that you wouldn't pay for it but you're willing to buy it for a penny just because it feels like you're getting something for free (and who doesn't like free stuff?).

Note that if this wasn't an experiment, they would have set a reasonable minimum price, say $1.00, since they didn't actually make any money off people who paid less than $0.30 (PayPal got it all). However, letting people pay $0.01 if they wanted was an interesting experiment – if given the option, how many people would pay $0.01? Since a dollar is hardly anything anymore anyway, a lot of the people who paid $0.01 for the game would probably have still bought it for $1.00 if that was the minimum, but this experiment was still interesting.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

.01 the magic number

[Anonymous Coward]

Just got my copy for $0.01

Makes me happy inside considering I almost bought it the other day for $15 when I saw it in a store. Now I feel like one of those rare deal finders.

Your built-in assumption...

[Petersko]

"Multiple tens of thousands for one week, i.e. millions of dollars per year, is a "miserable salary"?"

Yeah, well, I once found a $20 bill on the ground. Took me about five seconds to see it and obtain it. Given that I should be able to get 12 such discoveries in per minute, I should be able to retire wealthy in under 1 year.

Naturally that can't work, since I can't count on finding another $20 every 5 seconds, just like they can't count on next week's sales being as good as this week's. So their REAL salary is their gross sales minus expenses, divided by the number of salary periods they've been working on the product.

It probably isn't a good salary.

Nope, you aren't a pirate

[Petersko]

"Fact is, for me this game wasn't worth buying. I tried the demo and it was pretty enjoyable, but not enjoyable enough that I felt like spending money on it... How exactly am I a pirate? "

So "pretty enjoyable" is worth 1 cent? So I take it to get you to part with $10 the developer would have to give you a hand job.

So no, you aren't a pirate. You are, however, a cheapskate.

Re:Nope, you aren't a pirate

[clone53421]

Maybe he also appreciates all the other "pretty enjoyable" stuff that you can do without spending a penny, and doesn't think anything makes this game all that much more special. Thus, he didn't feel like spending money on it.

If you somehow looked back at my entire life and tallied up all of the time I spent on entertainment, the entertainment I got for absolutely nothing would vastly outmatch the entertainment I spent money on. And no, I don't just mean I pirated everything. I do download movies, but I've probably spent years reading, writing computer programs for fun, going to social activities, and playing free games that I found or sometimes wrote.

As a result? I'll take free stuff when I can get it, but I rarely spend money on entertainment – basically only when no free alternative exists (you can't go to the cinema with some friends without parting with some money, nor can you go to an amusement park, ball game, etc. ... while there are free activities that are similar, they aren't the same experience).

This was actually the only computer game I've ever bought, and I paid $5 for it, which was more than the $1 I initially figured I'd give them for it. I upped it mostly just because I want to support their experiment. I wholeheartedly cheer the fact that a lot of people were able to get this game, legitimately, for $0.01, and I'm willing to spend a few extra dollars once in a while just to put my money where my mouth is. Not much, but a little, because as I said, I'm mostly content with entertainment that I can get for free.

How boring!

[Steeltoe]

Obviously new exciting discoveries will not come from you then..

Maybe they fudged the statistics?

[macraig]

You didn't even for a moment consider that perhaps 2D Boy might have fudged the statistics for just that reason? Sucker! ;-)

I've never heard of it

[goldcd]

so possibly you can guess my comment on their strategy.

Re:I paid $0.00

[SharpFang]

Not today - 5 days ago.
I retried today, it failed just the same.
Independent developers are killing themselves by preventing people willing to give them money from doing so.

Never Wanted this Game...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but I bought it for 25 cents.

These kind of people are why...

[AmazingRuss]

... I'm considering getting out of the business. Let them pirate Madden 25 and bitch about how derivative, unoriginal, and just plain awful it is, as justification for stealing it. The megacorps that crank out sequels are the only ones that can survive when gamers basically rob and shit all over game developers.

Ultimately, you get what you pay for.

Re:I paid $0.00

[clone53421]

It's probably your computer. I had no problems and I downloaded it the same day you posted your comment.

It's still being offered, BTW... the promotion lasts until the 25th.