Factorio price increase - 2023/01/26

[Loewchen]

What are we missing?

That wube is not a non profit.

[FuryoftheStars]

What are we missing?

That wube is not a non profit.

And that Wube has a full team of people and other expenses besides. $1 mil a year only covers the salaries of maybe (probably less) 10 people. Then you have to add in costs for their work facility, electricity of both lights and servers, any licensing/warranty costs they're paying for firewall, switches, VM environment and backups, etc, etc.

As someone working IT and have seen how much companies charge for this stuff, it ain't cheap.

Edit: Forgot to add in health insurance, life insurance, retirement funds, plus any other company benefits, and the licensing costs of any payroll & benefits system that they use.

[MiniHerc]

What are we missing?

That wube is not a non profit.

And yet this is a direct quote from Kovarex

"Thanks, this is appriciated. Big part of it is, that our (or at least mine) approach to money is, that once you have enough to live comfortably, and enough to financially support the ongoing (and future) projects you want to do, you don't really need more. There is no reason to squeeze the extra $ just to get yacht bigger then the next millionare, or to buy the overprised expensive stuff when you buy it just to show off. And this has some deep implications, because once you feel that you have enough, you can safely ignore all these people trying to buy % of your company for big cash. I actually reply to these kind of offers with the sentence "Thanks, but I have no use for the extra money". This feels very different to the culture I sense to be prevelant, where big amount of startups is created with the goal of "big exit" in mind.

So the implication of my approach is that we have no investors and shareholders pressuring us into the "service for investors to exploit", which would be very understandable demand once they invested big.

So in the end, we can feel smug about it, and you can't put a pricetag on that "

What happened to that philosophy?

[quyxkh]

And yet this is a direct quote from Kovarex […]

Gee, I dunno, possibly they've got a use for the extra money now?

[FuryoftheStars]

What are we missing?

That wube is not a non profit.

And yet this is a direct quote from Kovarex

[snip]

What happened to that philosophy?

And that Wube has a full team of people and other expenses besides. $1 mil a year only covers the salaries of maybe (probably less) 10 people. Then you have to add in costs for their work facility, electricity of both lights and servers, any licensing/warranty costs they're paying for firewall, switches, VM environment and backups, etc, etc.

As someone working IT and have seen how much companies charge for this stuff, it ain't cheap.

Edit: Forgot to add in health insurance, life insurance, retirement funds, plus any other company benefits, and the licensing costs of any payroll & benefits system that they use.

[Arjen]

Maybe it is way more simple:

Want to pay $35,- for a great game which will bring you hours and hours of building fun?

YES → Buy the Game.
NO → Don't buy the Game.

I've bought two keys of this game. 1000+ hours of game time, and still love the game.
No other game, for me, has this low price—playtime ratio.

[jodokus31]

What are we missing?

They are able to take their necessary time for the expansion. No financial pressure (rather due to impatience of their customers )
Usually, a lot of money gets extracted as yield for investors, which is lost. This should not be the case here and a lot of the money is reinvested into a better product and the new expansion.

[mmmPI]

I feel factorio updated regularly since i bought the game, and i didn't have to pay for that, i can make sense of the price increase, as when considering the game itself, it has much more time invested in its polish and features, and it feels when playing.
I prefer this as making 5€ DLC every 3 month, adding new content but milking players in the way, and ruining the multiplayer experience.

People have been running numbers over on the Steam discussion forums, and this is what we got.
~$105 million in total revenue, times 70% (steam cut) equals 73 mil, times 77% (taxes) equals ~$56 million. Even at $1mil in yearly costs, that's 56 years of game dev. Even doubled, almost 30 years, and you're making more money every year.

What are we missing?

I think the taxes are not only on the money your company earn but also when you pay people's wages, so if you have say 30 employee and you want them to have 2000 € at the beginning of the month, you're going to spend much more than 60K per month, 1 million in yearly cost doesn't seem that high for a company that has grown like Wube, just for the wages, and there are others fees such as electricity, servers, computers, contracts with data host, renting an office building, the private jet, the advertising, the legal thing that you never expect and so on

on the other side $105 million in total revenue seem high to me, the price was lower back in 2016 when the launch on steam occured which represented a significant share of the total sales. Not all factorio copy were sold the same price due to a policy of lower price in different geographic area that caused some trouble.

And the company exist as far as i'm aware since 2014 so it's approaching the 10 years of existence and given the risk and the few percentage of success for people that try to make video games, i don't expect talented and hardworking people to do such things for barely surviving.

I've seen many studios that couldn't manage to do it well on the finance despite their great game or being bought by larger companies to milk their successful franchise while ripping apart the team that made the game great to the point where the franchise itself became rejected.

Steam for example, came originally as a mod manager the game half life, as valve was seeking independance from his publisher the studio Sierra, which no longer exist because it was one such studio that was bought by a larger company and dissolved.

I have no real data and i certainly didn't real all the steam discussion so it is highly possible that i've missed some, i'd be more enclined to read those rather than the actual Czech book of tax law tbh but it may not be the more accurate source of information

[NoaAldritt]

I feel factorio updated regularly since i bought the game, and i didn't have to pay for that, i can make sense of the price increase, as when considering the game itself, it has much more time invested in its polish and features, and it feels when playing.
I prefer this as making 5€ DLC every 3 month, adding new content but milking players in the way, and ruining the multiplayer experience.

People have been running numbers over on the Steam discussion forums, and this is what we got.
~$105 million in total revenue, times 70% (steam cut) equals 73 mil, times 77% (taxes) equals ~$56 million. Even at $1mil in yearly costs, that's 56 years of game dev. Even doubled, almost 30 years, and you're making more money every year.

What are we missing?

I think the taxes are not only on the money your company earn but also when you pay people's wages, so if you have say 30 employee and you want them to have 2000 € at the beginning of the month, you're going to spend much more than 60K per month, 1 million in yearly cost doesn't seem that high for a company that has grown like Wube, just for the wages, and there are others fees such as electricity, servers, computers, contracts with data host, renting an office building, the private jet, the advertising, the legal thing that you never expect and so on

on the other side $105 million in total revenue seem high to me, the price was lower back in 2016 when the launch on steam occured which represented a significant share of the total sales. Not all factorio copy were sold the same price due to a policy of lower price in different geographic area that caused some trouble.

And the company exist as far as i'm aware since 2014 so it's approaching the 10 years of existence and given the risk and the few percentage of success for people that try to make video games, i don't expect talented and hardworking people to do such things for barely surviving.

I've seen many studios that couldn't manage to do it well on the finance despite their great game or being bought by larger companies to milk their successful franchise while ripping apart the team that made the game great to the point where the franchise itself became rejected.

Steam for example, came originally as a mod manager the game half life, as valve was seeking independance from his publisher the studio Sierra, which no longer exist because it was one such studio that was bought by a larger company and dissolved.

I have no real data and i certainly didn't real all the steam discussion so it is highly possible that i've missed some, i'd be more enclined to read those rather than the actual Czech book of tax law tbh but it may not be the more accurate source of information

Something else that is overlooked is that the $50~ some odd million dollars that keeps getting referenced is before ANY expenditures, let alone all the expected expenditures going forward. The $50~ some odd million only accounts, ish, for Steam cut and tax.

So, All the wages from the last 10 years, leasing growing office space for 10 years, 10 years worth of equipment and software, utilities, any licensing fees, any outside help hired for specific bits like audio or visual, cleaning staff if they didnt do it themselves, maintenance fees, and a lot more besides.

Wages alone probably knocks a further $15-20 million off the top before anything else.

There's also stuff that we may know nothing about- Any lawsuits Wube may have been involved with could've sapped money away. Keeping an accountant on retainer, lawyers on retainer, any advertising done costs money too, banking fees, insurance if they do that....


So let's say that they have $20 million banked still, all accounted for and set out for specific projects like the expansion or maybe a new title to put on their belt going forward, all the expected wages, and all that good stuff nice and pat in the books with some wiggle room.

Wham, 2021 happens, 2022 happens- Likely 2023 is going to happen too but we'll set that aside for the moment. After 30~% unexpected inflation, That $20 million, even without spending a penny, just became an equivalent of about $15.4~ million dollars. Almost $5 million dollars of value equivalence gone just like that. But they also had expenses during this period so even more of that money is gone, and with inflation seeming like it's going to stay high going into 2023...


TL;DR: I doubt Wube is in immediate danger of going bankrupt even after the inflation. But, They also don't have 50+ years of money in the bank. Maybe 3-7 years.. And even then, that's assuming zero growth of the company from this point on, no additional projects, no way to put a second game in the works, none of the things that take money. And this insane inflation spike is directly reducing the purchasing power of the money they DO have.

Iuno, To me, A $5 increase is fine- They didn't even bring the price up to what it 'should' be if they fully matched the increase by inflation, which in my mind tells me they were specifically countering the insane inflation currently going on and probably some of what is projected going forward, so that the factory can continue growing and flourishing, as it were.

[MiniHerc]

TL;DR: I doubt Wube is in immediate danger of going bankrupt even after the inflation. But, They also don't have 50+ years of money in the bank. Maybe 3-7 years.. And even then, that's assuming zero growth of the company from this point on, no additional projects, no way to put a second game in the works, none of the things that take money. And this insane inflation spike is directly reducing the purchasing power of the money they DO have.

Iuno, To me, A $5 increase is fine- They didn't even bring the price up to what it 'should' be if they fully matched the increase by inflation, which in my mind tells me they were specifically countering the insane inflation currently going on and probably some of what is projected going forward, so that the factory can continue growing and flourishing, as it were.

Seems reasonable, thanks for the writeup.

[GluAp]

What is this miserable discussion concerning a 5$ increase of the sales price?

Wube is located in the Czech Republic. I don't now, what expenditure wube has for a game dev per hour before taxes (including healthcare, pension, ..), but I'm guessing 40€/h. How many devs are currently working for Wube? 30? That's at least 2.5 million € per year? That's not including workspaces, infrastructur, running cost and so on.

Inflation average across the EU should be around 8-10% for 2022, energy prices have gone up by approx. x2-x4 and forecasts assume no easygoing for 2023.

The 5$ increase equals 17 points percentagewise which is not much against all the other increases. I assume salary for many people in the EU will grow around 5-10% this year, so maybe that'll help.

But when comparing to my local takeout where I get food once a week, where pricing went up from 5€ to 7€ (40%!!!), do I really have to have this discussion?

I feel like either you are in a position where you have trouble having 20$, 35$ or 80$ (really, SquareEnix?) for a game anyway (please report to your local politicians), or it doesn't matter to you anyway anymore.

These days you have to choose what you need and what you want to save your money on. That's how it is now, isn't it?

ps: Btw - on steam I own around 160 games whose total playtime equals that of factorio. But guess, how much money all those games did cost.

pps: And please guess who doesn't have the Mass Production 3 achievement, too

[Xenomorph]

I don't care about the new price. I allready own the game since 0.13

And for a AAAAAAAAA game like factorio the new price is still ok

[pointa2b]

You could charge >$100 for this game and it would still be well worth it. Wube has clearly demonstrated their value.

Does anyone really care about $5?

[ptx0]

You could charge >$100 for this game and it would still be well worth it. Wube has clearly demonstrated their value.

Does anyone really care about $5?

i don't get the point of these comments. they have their feelings and you have yours. did you think you would change their mind with that question?

[pointa2b]

You could charge >$100 for this game and it would still be well worth it. Wube has clearly demonstrated their value.

Does anyone really care about $5?

i don't get the point of these comments. they have their feelings and you have yours. did you think you would change their mind with that question?

I don't care what they think, and neither does Wube. 99.X% of the playerbase will continue to buy the game/expansion based on what they deliver.

[MiniHerc]

Someone on the Steam discussions did some digging and found these official balance sheets for Wube Software. Suddenly the reason for the price increase is all too apparent. I hope Wube Software doesn't run out of money..

[mmmPI]

Someone on the Steam discussions did some digging found these official balance sheets for Wube Software. Suddenly the reason for the price increase is all too apparent. I hope Wube Software doesn't run out of money..

When I read steam discussions it's never that interesting, thanks for bringing information that seem to be accurate.

Maybe i'm a naive enthusiast but it seem to me that you make more money being software engineer rather than making video games, and as such when software engineers start making videos games, they don't do it for the money, i was not correlating the price increase to greed but to the time required to polish the expansion relative to the cost.

Those sheets looks pretty good to me, although i'm no expert, the "current net asset" has increased steadily over the years that's what you expect from a wealthy company no ? although there is nowhere near 100 millions showing up anywhere yet ^^

[MEOWMI]

If they keep the price constant, as they have, then it's only completely logical that it should account for inflation too. The game's been around for a very long time, this kind of small increase is definitely due.

N.B.: They did increase the price a few times due to the game becoming complete but that doesn't count I think. Early Access price and full price are different things.

Finally, I saw some discussion that for some people the increase was really big, I wonder if Steam is doing something really weird with its pricing. Well, that sounds like a Steam problem to me.

[TheKillerChicken]

Good day Engineers,

Next week, on Thursday 26th January 2023,
We will increase the base price of Factorio from $30 to $35.

This is an adjustment to account for the level of inflation since the Steam release in 2016.

I understand this because, to what I am witnessing, the world economy is violently thrashing right now. I have seen SimCity 4, Cities Skylines, and Rust even inflate on Steam (these are games I own). It saddens me how so many people can flak you guys over this. It is not just software/games, but also hardware, food, fuel, and raw resources have inflated. It does not help that we do not have enough submerged arc-furnaces for the silicone demand, thus causing electronics demands outpace the supply, hence the silicone shortage. I got this game as a gift when it was in 0.16 stage, and always hove loved it. In fact, where I live in British Columbia, Canada, the food has inflated by a 10-fold over the past 2 years and as someone like who is living on income assistance, it is near-impossible to live. I do not even know how or why the economy is thrashing like it is, but it is, and it hurts. Thank you for this great game. I love playing with the fluid dynamics and thermal dynamics in this game with mods. The game is $45 CAD here now, but I believe Canada''s economy is on the brink of a total implosion, which I will not get into at this time. You guys are awesome at WUBE.

[pancreas]

The game is a value at 60 bucks, IMHO. Honestly, it's a museum-quality work of art and I struggle to think of any other game that approaches it for overall quality, replay-ability, balance, stability, mod-ability...

AAA titles get 60-70 for pretty graphics, epic music, voice actors, etc. How many of them also hit you with constant DLC, loot boxes, pay for play crap, crashing, etc.? I'd trade a lot of pretty 3D graphics for even half of what Factorio delivers in most of those titles.

I have 2266.7 hours of game play on Factorio and I'm probably a baby compared to many. Let's see... 35 dollars / 2266.7...

1.5 cents per hour seems reasonable, and I'm not even close to done playing it.

That said, marketing wise, it's hard to get people to jump on a 60 dollar 2.5D game (unless your name is Civilization...) so 35-40 seems right to me.