The Castle Doctrine Forums

While I can understand that developers think that sales are hurting them, it simply is not true.

First, developers have to accept that their games aren't all blockbusters. Blockbusters sell well because people are eager to play the game for a certain amount of money. The problem is that this only applies to the really good games since gamers have a limited amount of money. Just to give you a quick example: Diablo III - shitty game but I was willing to pay $60 to play that game just to see server issues. My funds are limited and I bet that is the case for the majority of the gamers. Nontheless, a lot of good games are released. I just recently had to decide between Arkham Origins and Assassin's Creed IV. 2 games I would really like to play. But I only got money for one. So, I took Batman and really have a great time with it - since I still have the DLCs of AC III to go on a killing spree. Gamers don't necessarily wait until the price drops. Sometimes they just don't have the funds.

Second, the willingness to pay a price is different for every gamer. While developers think that they have put a lot of work into a game, it has nothing to do with what the gamers is willing to pay. And so they wait until that magic barrier is reached when the game is cheap enough to be bought. To not reduce the price means to miss out on a lot of potential buyers.

Third, while games on Steam do not require shelf space, there is a certain supply and demand thing going on. Gamefly, GreenManGaming, Gamersgate, Amazon.com, Humble Bundle, they all buy Steam keys in advance and paid money for it. They have to sell them, so they don't have a bunch of unused keys floating around. This is the new shelf space. What good is a key for a vendor if no one buys it. Amazon.com sold Aliens: Colonial Marines for $1.99 because nobody will buy it for the retail price and it's not even worth $1.99. But gamers will be like "Ah, what the heck." and put it into the basket. That is one more steam key that is not floating around anymore.

Sales have always been important and always will be.
What you will do is what will ruin gaming in the long run. This is nothing personal. Selling cheap in the beginning and raising the prices will satisfy your fans and will make everyone else uncomfortable. Pay the low price now? Better do that. It just might be worth playing. This will create a big wave of alpha games that have great potential at the first glance and suck when reaching beta or the developer just stops halfway through.

This is not about you. I am just saying that this way of pricing games can be misused and in the end will generate less sales.