🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 09:27:42 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:56:39 +0300, "Andrew Rybenkov"
><aryb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 00:18:12 +0300, Zaghadka <zagh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 19:19:20 +0300, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, Andrew
>>> Rybenkov wrote:
>
>>>> http://www.pcgamer.com/steams-autumn-and-winter-sales-will-ditch-daily-deals-and-flash-sales/
>>>> It seems Gabe have earned all money he wanted.
>
>>> Meh. Games will still be on sale, just not on "obsessively click the
>>> refresh button" sale. I'll wait to see what the longer term sales look
>>> like. I'm guessing, pretty good.
>
>>Flash sales were a major device to lure people (me, for example)
>>to buy games they did not plan to buy.
>>Obviously there will not be crazy "80-90% off" anymore.
>>Steam/Valve/Gabe became rich and boring.
>
>Gotta agree; this pretty much kills my interest in the seasonal sales
>now. I almost never bought a game at the "duration sale" price; if I
>didn't see it at the "flash-sale" super-low price, it just wasn't a
>consideration. I bought a lot of games at flash-sale prices though...
>
>Of course, there have been a number of articles that show that these
>flash-sales really aren't that beneficial to the developers /
>publishers. Yes, they get a lot of sales but the lower price means
>they didn't make as much money as they would have had they kept it at
>the "duration sale" price. 
>
>The flash-sale prices are mainly to draw attention to either the
>retailer (e.g., Steam) or the product. But seeing as Steam is already
>huge and every PC gamer worth his salt goes there already, there's
>little advantage to Valve to maintain the sales. Big-name games don't
>really need a sales-frenzy to draw in customers; they'll buy the
>latest Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed regardless. Meanwhile,  the
>ones who would benefit most from the "advertising" that is Flash Sales
>- small Indie developers - are the ones who really can't afford it in
>the first place, since it cannibalizes the full-price sales that would
>keep their business afloat. 
>
>The only ones for whom these sales are advantageous are the customers,
>so it is no surprise that Steam is killing them.
>
>Having said all that, these days I buy most of my games from GOG
>anyway. Their "modern games" selection - while still significantly
>behind Steam's - is becoming ever more competitive and their old-games
>selection is unsurpassed. Plus, not being the "big dog" in the digital
>retail space, it is still to their advantage to offer flash sales in
>order to siphon customers away from Steam... like me. 
>
>
>So I guess this is a plus for me: Steam and developers make more
>money, and I won't have to bother visiting Steam every day during the
>seasonal sales anymore because I'm not going to buy any of their games
>anyway ;-)

The value to the developer in flash sales is in marketing, not the
revenue from the sale itself.  It's not about whether they would
realize more direct revenue by selling more copies at a lower price
point, it's whether the marketing opportunity of having your offering
listed in a very prominent, frenzied environment with a high turnover
/ transaction rate results in side benefits that ultimate benefits
your company (since "sales" get the attention of the consumer,
sometimes selling a product so cheap it's almost giving it away has
additional advantages that are worth the marketing "cost" of the loss
incurred on lower price point).

Whether or not a flash sale really works for a developer or not really
depends on a lot of things, but at the end of it all it's a marketing
opportunity.  When dealing in goods that require physical inventory,
sometimes it's good to unload surplus but of course that doesn't apply
with digital downloads.

Ultimately it will not mean Steam or developers make more or less
money, since the volume of downloads moved and the price paid for game
vary on a game-to-game basis.

What it does mean is a change in habits for some.  Those who like the
flash sales will be upset that someone moved their cheese.  Those who
found them to be kind of an annoying distraction won't care one way or
the other.  I'm in the latter group.

Personally I like to identify titles I might be interested in when
they are released on Steam (of course they aren't discounted very
heavily at that point), then add them to my wishlist.  Devs can see
how many people have wishlisted their game but are not going to buy it
at that price point, so it encourages them to put it on sale.  Then
just leave it on the wishlist until it hits a price point that I'm
willing to pay.  It can be a long wait in some cases, I wishlisted
Wasteland2 a long time ago but I've never seen it come low enough for
a buy, so it stays on the list until it does.

I never run out of stuff to play and I spend very little overall
because I'm not creating a huge backlog of useless nickel and dime
games I'll never play.