Factorio Forums

What do you think about a retail version of this game? It would allow the users to play without an internet connection, thus reaching a lot more people as there are a lot of people including myself that like to own a physical copy of the game without the need of a internet connection.
Opinions? Will it ever happen?

It might happen sometime,
But not while we're in early access

Yeah, basically... A physical copy (CD, DVD etc) is useless if the game changes every week.

When the game hits version 1.0, then MAYBE you could see a physical copy on the shop of your local game store. (do those things still even exist?)

bobingabout wrote:Yeah, basically... A physical copy (CD, DVD etc) is useless if the game changes every week.

When the game hits version 1.0, then MAYBE you could see a physical copy on the shop of your local game store. (do those things still even exist?)

Believe it or not they still exist and a lot of people still prefer physical copies. And yes, I didn't meant a retail copy before release.

Part of me is all for it, while another part is against it.

I do understand that having a physical non-downloaded version of a game has a certain appeal. But it also has downsides that a lot of people (sometimes even devs) don't consider before they jump on that wagon.

First off is the cost of making a retail version of a game. If you don't make enough copies to distribute, then you don't get any real-estate on the shelf at a retail location, which turns out to mean less sales. However, making many more copies is prohibitively expensive. Then there's all the stupid inter-country laws and tariffs and all that state-level bullshit which is controlled by these morons that haven't figured out the internet has made the world one big ass community and that they're obsolete.

Jab against society there, back on track -- the costs associated with making retail media generally ends up requiring a publisher to handle all of that. The problem is that they have to find a steam-friendly one (since they already are distributing through it), that also doesn't screw the devs, or force them to release shit later on down the road that isn't ready.

Personally I'd rather they avoid that whole gamut of trash and stick to how they are doing it now. With the money that they get from this game, they can invest more into retail stuff down the road, perhaps keeping it all in-house, or negotiating terms that are favorable to Wube Software instead of being hammered into a corner if they jump in too early.

Sakata wrote:Part of me is all for it, while another part is against it.

I do understand that having a physical non-downloaded version of a game has a certain appeal. But it also has downsides that a lot of people (sometimes even devs) don't consider before they jump on that wagon.

First off is the cost of making a retail version of a game. If you don't make enough copies to distribute, then you don't get any real-estate on the shelf at a retail location, which turns out to mean less sales. However, making many more copies is prohibitively expensive. Then there's all the stupid inter-country laws and tariffs and all that state-level bullshit which is controlled by these morons that haven't figured out the internet has made the world one big ass community and that they're obsolete.

Jab against society there, back on track -- the costs associated with making retail media generally ends up requiring a publisher to handle all of that. The problem is that they have to find a steam-friendly one (since they already are distributing through it), that also doesn't screw the devs, or force them to release shit later on down the road that isn't ready.

Personally I'd rather they avoid that whole gamut of trash and stick to how they are doing it now. With the money that they get from this game, they can invest more into retail stuff down the road, perhaps keeping it all in-house, or negotiating terms that are favorable to Wube Software instead of being hammered into a corner if they jump in too early.

It's also worth considering the monetary distribution. IIRC, between publishers, distributors, retailers, and all that, the developers themselves may see about 10%-20% of the purchase price actually going to them in the end.

On the Factorio Webpage, I think Paypal and other internet banks might take a cut, but nearly everything goes to the devs.

Steam might be around the same cut to the developers as physical distribution or it might be somewhere in the middle ground (25%-50%). I forget what the figures were for Steam's paid mods thing that got abandoned a while back, but I'm told that that was actually on industry standard cut for developers. (It would not surprise me if I learned that, despite making nearly 4x the sales on Steam, Wube has actually made more money from the website.)

That said, it's been a while since I last looked all this up, and the situation may have changed since then in addition to the limits of human memory, so take it with a grain of salt.