Price change

[meganothing]

I understand the game is worth that, but boy, how can my luck be so bad? I just made this post so I had some friends to cry with. Cry with me please?

Your sad story was tearing me apart. I cried and cried, went to the piano and played a very sentimental song. Then shredded the piano in frustration. Also wrote a letter to my government representative how unfair it all is and that he should do something about it instead of combating world hunger.

I also will name the next train station in your name so your plight is never forgotten.

[DaveMcW]

How many of the prices can you guys set?

It seems plenty of countries get a much better deal on this.

This is due to purchasing power parity.

People in low-income countries buy locally produced goods at low prices (because their local suppliers are also low-income). In order for foreign products to compete, they need to reduce the price.

[fiery_salmon]

How many of the prices can you guys set?

It seems plenty of countries get a much better deal on this.

Probably because in say Ukraine the same price is in absolute terms is not the same in relative terms.

For reference, YEARLY minimum wage in Ukraine is less than 2300 $ (according to https://www.minimum-wage.org/international/ukraine ).

In Poland YEARLY minimum wage is around 7100 $ (24 000 PLN).

Post above is 100% correct.

[Mr. Tact]

If you think the scaled pricing is unfair, I invite you to move to Saudi Arabia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, or Uzbekistan.

[Aeternus]

I also wouldn't like subscription as a player, so I wouldn't impose it on others as well.
Providing reasonably big paid expansion pack would be very similar to subscription money-wise, but much less hateable way of getting more money from people who already bought the game, if we wanted to do so.

Subscription based games don't work for single player or limited player games anyway. Setting that only encourages piracy. An expansion pack with a crapton of content that the -players- feel adds a lot to the game can be given a pricetag, as long as that is kept infrequent (twice per year or so max). But there's a bunch of problems with those expansions as they tend to fragment the playerbase if the expansion based players can no longer play with the rest - or if the expansion options are disabled when playing with said rest. Recurring monetization is a minefield in the gaming world, currently more then ever. You can thank EA for that...

Factorio might benefit from some merchandise instead. T-shirts are a nice start, but a Factorio toolbox/bag of hard hat come to mind as well. The game itself, even with the price hike, has a fair price I feel for the content it provides.

[Omnifarious]

One of the interesting problems of software is that almost all (digital distribution makes this effect even more pronounced) of the cost is design cost, and very little per-unit materials or labor cost. You want a pricing model that can cover the design cost plus a nice profit. But your also deal with the utility loss caused by people not being able to buy your product because you've priced it too high.

Ideally, you'd want to be able to charge everybody the most they're willing/able to pay and no more. Pricing by region is a crude approximation of this that is unable to account for variations in individual purchasing power within a region.

One nice thing about crowd-funding is that you can get a much better approximation of this model by asking everybody to pay as much of the design cost as they're willing to up-front before the game is created.

Another way to get a closer approximation of the ideal model is to start the price really high, then degrade it slowly over time. You encourage the people who are willing/able to pay a lot to pay and then enable people who have much lower purchasing power to get it later. Of course, the utility of a game can also drop over time, especially if it's a multiplayer game who's value relies on network effects.

Anyway, I'm not really an economics person, I just think about stuff a lot. And if you think carefully about price of goods like computer games, a lot of what happens makes a lot of sense and is not unfair at all.

[Klonan]

Factorio might benefit from some merchandise instead. T-shirts are a nice start, but a Factorio toolbox/bag of hard hat come to mind as well. The game itself, even with the price hike, has a fair price I feel for the content it provides.

So far the income from all the merchandise we have sold is an order of magnitude lower than even a single week of selling the game,
Not to mention it has far higher costs (Costs for the goods, administrative workload/labour etc.)

Merchandise will just frankly not work to supplement the company revenue in any significant way

[Oktokolo]

Merchandise will just frankly not work to supplement the company revenue in any significant way

A model inserter or plush bitter could look good on your booths though.

[Nexarius]

Factorio might benefit from some merchandise instead. T-shirts are a nice start, but a Factorio toolbox/bag of hard hat come to mind as well. The game itself, even with the price hike, has a fair price I feel for the content it provides.

So far the income from all the merchandise we have sold is an order of magnitude lower than even a single week of selling the game,
Not to mention it has far higher costs (Costs for the goods, administrative workload/labour etc.)

Merchandise will just frankly not work to supplement the company revenue in any significant way

This says something different https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNZove4OTtI