Choosing the right price for your game
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- Опубліковано 27 тра 2024
- How do you make sure you're earning a fair price for your indie game? In a world where you can get games with tens of hours of gameplay for just a few bucks, how do you even determine a good price point?
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Timestamps:
00:00 Pricing is hard
01:04 Upper & Lower bounds
03:02 What determines price
04:53 Impact of dev time
05:30 Target audience
06:05 Gross vs. Net income
08:30 Race to the bottom
10:32 Regionalized pricing
12:00 Better price too high
12:36 Need help?
13:25 Conclusion
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You missed one important component - genre. Players will compare games to others in their genre x region. What a customer is willing to pay for a genre with many options/lots of competition is usually less than what they'll pay for a niche genre with few options. The price pressure there is based on what the supply looks like for that type of product/game.
Thank you! Finaly, someone is talking about making price a bit higher and then doing discounts. That's a great approach.
I worked in a startup company for a few years and went through a lot of sales related stuff (though I was a game designer / programmer). And discounts from higher price really do work.
The second unexpected thing was just increasing the price - once we just multiplied our prices by 2 and it didn't affect the conversion AT ALL. We just started to earn more money with the same product and the same auditory. This was insane. Sure, it's not viable for every case and if your price is already high enough it wouldn't work. But to this day I'm quite impressed by that situation :)
Wow, didn't knew you're origin yet 😮
Hello fellow game dev country man !
Coming from someone who bought alot of games as a kid.
I have bought so many AAA games, most i only played a few hours, but Halo 3 i probably played for 2-3k hours.
thats 60€ basegame and like 40€ for dlc mappacks. So 100 bucks for thousands of hours, compared to 600€ for 10 games that i didnt even play 100 hours.
which makes it so that if i get bored of your game after 2 hours i feel ripped of cause i cant return it no more.(small 2-5 buck indies are a diffrent story)
besides the game being a masterpiece there are loads of factors that made it so worthwhile for me.
good campaign, coop, good multiplayer, fun but challenging achievments, forge, custom games, theater mode, fun glitches
you dont need all of that to get people to pour so many hours into your game, but you need something atleast.
like in halo 3 campaign sometimes enemies would spawn diffrently, it doesnt happen all of the time but you get those moments where its fresh again.
foremost factor is people actually enjoying your game, next factor is giving the people who like your game enough content and replayability to not get sick of the quickly.
Unlocking a diffrent character or a hard mode, giving players alot of choices with their builds or how the story plays out are enough to motivate a player to replay your game without them getting instantly sick of it.
Thanks. This is honestly pretty valuable insight.
-slightly high price + discount combo
-don't go under $2 nor over $20
-don't use whole numbers like $10 use $9.99 instead
-steam takes 30% of your earnings and don't forget taxes
Man you keep getting out quality content. Thank you for these vids😊
Awesome video, but there's one thing I'm still somewhat confused with. Can I sell my game on Steam as well as Epic? I remember seeing something about Steam allows you to sell your game and steam keys as long as the the place they are being sold isn't for anything cheaper than the steam price.
You can definitely, just make sure that like you said, both places are generally priced the same, so even if EGS (Epic Games Store) takes only 12%, you can't factor those 18% savings into your price. Both games would have to be priced the same on both storefronts for customers, even if you will earn different amounts from it. -M
nice video, a while back I was going to charge 20us and i came to the same realisations as you have in this video. I think 10us is a great price point for most indie games. It just means more sales, there is no excuse your brain can make for the cost unless it's a really bad game. Last night each beer I bought was worth more than the selling price of my own indie game (10.23 us vs 9.99us!). My rule is if its not that much different from 1 beer then eveyone who fancies it will buy it. If its good then word of mouth will spread and people will say hey its cheap too. One thing to remember during those hellish development moments that go on for years, its easy to think no worries i will charge 20us, but when u look at it in the cold light of day that might be just because of the moment you were in, stand back and consider could you reduce the cost or even half it to get more sales. look at among us, theyre rich and its always been cheap. -- final note beer is prob not that expensive in some countries and maybe lower your game price in them places!..
im from Uruguay!! we are the more expensive country in south america!!
Very cool.
When I am there I would love to send you a copy for you to check out.
Pretty sure by that time I will be too emotionally damaged to have a good perspective on it's value commercially.
I have the daily stoic book too :)
hallo komen jullie uit belgie ik uit nederland
there's also the value-added tax (VAT) and similar taxes that user's pay on top of all that in many countries. One has to take that in mind too. Not sure if Steam charges that depending on the user's country and passes it on to say EU countries as other stores are doing or you as dev are supposed to have it in the price and somehow pass to each different country around the world (hope not).
Steam handles each country's VAT for you, that's why I generally say you get around 50% net paid out by Steam, 30% cut + VAT (0-25% depending on country) -M
5:35 Older people, like perhaps even over 25! :D
I thought India has 30% tax but it was 18 that's a relief
an alternative is just comparing your game with others in the same price range
Not necessarily.
Games can vary in quality, and as developer might feel their game is better than a comparable title in the same genre.
As they say in the video it also comes down to how much effort have you expended, so are you going to price a bit higher to compensate.
Isn’t this exactly what he said to avoid? *One* example being the Witcher being underpriced to sell better.
7:08 If i am from a country that doesn't take taxes at all... and someone from another country that takes taxes buys my game, i am not affected whatsoever ? So i take all the money after steam takes 30%?
Yes, that should be correct, you get 70% of the gross earnings then, lucky you. -M
@@bitemegames 🤑🤑
Depends on which countries, and which type of taxes. Some taxes are attached to the seller, some to the buyer, and some to the product/transaction itself. The platform might take out those taxes from your gross revenue, or they might just report to the relevant gov't entity, for you to sort out via filings later.
Usually you can read up on the platform's terms and your own country's business laws, if you're just curious, or contact a local business accountant if you're actually in-business.
my local dance club charges around 5€ for a drink. You don't need to compare your game with other games. Just compare it with real stuff like pizza, beer, drinks. It's crazy what people pay for stupid shit like this but overcompare and simply complain for anything "too high" when buying games haha
Can you just update all of the art and re-release "forge industry"? Has that worked historically? I assume you all are super bored of working on that game either way so I doubt you actually wannntttt to do it. Just curious if that's a viable strategy.
In Italy the % fax Is very hight. 35% o 40% i think
50
The tax referenced in the video is VAT, I should have been a bit more clear on that, so Steam will take 30%, and then another 22% of the remainder for VAT. The rest will go to you, after which your company may get taxed another time if you make profits. -M
@@bitemegames ok, steam + vat + other ... a lot of money go out from the developer :(
@@DailyPaily :( true
Looks like some games have achieved success due to the low price they chose to charge for their game. This is evident in the huge success of Vampire Survivors. I am currently contemplating the pricing strategy for my game, The Choice, in case I decide to port it to PC (it's currently a Flash game).
imo anything around £10 is low enough for people to impulse buy if the screenshots look good.
Low prices get impulse buys which gives you more word of mouth marketing, can possibly get you into the front page of steam from selling copies that wouldn't have happened until your game was on sale, etc. Games also do raise prices over time like the game you mentioned Vampire Survivors released at $2.99 then increased to $4.99, 20 minutes till dawn also went from $2.99 to $3.99, and another game is Factorio which went from $30 to $35 I think. It also is easier to increase a price everyone agrees is undervalued, like $3, to a higher price without facing backlash. I think aiming for a huge launch with a low price is a legit strategy that has worked for multiple games in the last couple of years so its something I am considering if my marketing efforts do not seem to be paying off.
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