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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.
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.
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.