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Normas y directrices sobre discusión
1 
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We were aware that the decision will obviously not be taken favourably by everyone and that was taken into account, but we wouldn't have made it if we didn't believe that it is the best way for us to go.
That is certainly not our purpose and we wanted to underline that by the fact that the Marketplace also rewards those that provide invaluable support to the game and its players by providing servers, mods and coverage and ultimately also everyone that plays through the last step with settlement sharing.
Making a classical cosmetic DLC instead has been suggested before, but a Marketplace is much better in creating a steady source of additional income and allows to provide new interesting products regularly and hence better planning. Such DLC would likely also need to be priced notably higher to achieve similar effects, but will also limit potential buyers, as not all contents of such a DLC are interesting to everyone the same - which can quickly lead to criticism as known for other games that make heavy use of such DLC's. It is a business decision that was carefully weighted and no chosen outcome would have made everyone happy. But it is not my job to make these, as such I am neither qualified to nor can list them all.
We are also taking feedback on the actual pricing and amounts and playtesters were actively asked to provide such. The idea is not to "aggressively pull money out of people" to enrich ourselves, but to be able to have an additional steady income source from existing players that wish to support us, so we can retain or even expand our development resources without needing to change development focus towards new target groups too much.
There is no doubt to me that all existing players are our biggest asset and the people that make Eco come to live. But there is also the unfortunate fact that we need to pay our bills every month, but existing players currently are not able to support us in that - even if they wish, which was a frequent feedback. Note that noone is required to do so and that I fully understand everyone that does not wish to - be it because of the expectation that a game should be a one-time purchase and it's upon us to make that work or any other reason, they are all valid. But we can't change facts, the world (of games) is in constant change and for nowadays new players different things are important than they were years ago - development of Eco already adjusted to that but would need to much more.
Just one random example of many:
Presentation of games is much more important for buyers than when we started out. When we added animations to actions in Eco there was a massive backlash in the existing playerbase and we tried our best to refine it to strike a balance between atmosphere and the efficient play people love. But we did this to begin with because those add to the atmosphere of Eco that potential buyers nowadays expect - and that actually showed. We constantly analyse reviews, but also refund reasons and lots of other data. Still, there is a sizable amount of players that would rather want to see them gone completely. And I can understand that, but that is not going to get us new players.
Another example would be features intended towards people interested in varying degrees of roleplay, something that especially streamers do and have huge communities for. Changes related to that were considered useless and not what existing players want. But again, doing it showed.
That is a wonderful idea and I am confident that the Marketplace will enable us both financially as well as technically to reward players with occasional free content we wouldn't otherwise have made. But this suggestion does not take into account at all that we had to make a decision on having a new source for more steady income that existing players can optionally participate in or adjust development more towards reaching new target groups, which would ultimately change the game more one-sided for the existing playerbase and potentially delay other projects due to the need of a focus on those things that make us money. Gifting is a great thing, but it doesn't pay our bills.
My **personal** view, looking into my library of games, is that every second game I have in there has a Marketplace right from the start despite costing three times as much money as Eco to buy and for the potential sole goal of maximized profit (It's mostly Triple A games), which we don't have - it is by now industry standard. I play a good amount of Diablo IV and the discussions about the store are present there, but mostly revolve around value to price being low. Of course there is a steady remaining general debate about the marketplace itself, but that is not leading to any increased levels of unhappiness reflecting on the game. The Marketplace in Eco of course works a bit differently, but that is because it also is a completely different game and as such needs to be fitted for it.
Download the playtest version, try it out. Getting coins on it is free for the duration of playtest. Let us know what's too pricey or not sufficient value: dennis@strangeloopgames.com.
So you're telling me that youd have to price the DLC at 1000-2000 dollars? Cause if the store starts with around 200 items at 5 to 10 dollars a piece, that's what you're valuing this content at currently.
That's the problem with this model. And because it's limited quantities, you might need to buy multiple copies to finish a build.
It's really pretty gross.
I unfortunately can't tell you the valuation yet, as I am not working on that and because it's not yet final - it will be part of the information announced to come later when the Update releases, as respective people are still integrating playtest feedback into it. Of course a small addition to your avatar will not cost the same as a object or vehicle skin or a complete building block set, pricing will align roughly with tiers.
The marketplace allows players to get just that one item they wanted - potentially in a sale -, or get thematic or type bundles in the future that are similar to such cosmetic DLC's as they are actually used in the industry (which typically contain multiple small items around $3-5 or multiple big ones around $8-15, rarely more than ten, though). Flexibility is much higher for the customer. A marketplace can even enable a very simple customer-favourable concept of "Make your own bundle, add items you want and you get discounts", something that is hard to do with Steam DLC (and the fact that everything we offer must be available for Non-Steam-Users as well).
If we had went the route of DLC we wouldn't have put in all items we currently have (which is not anywhere the amount you noted) into a single DLC, that makes little financial sense and would be way too varied to be interesting for a wide range of people. It would have been multiple theme packs as known from other games, that still allow less targeted purchasing by customers compared to a Marketplace to get exactly what they want and needs a bit higher pricing to have the same outcome. It's not possible to talk about it without business reasons playing a role when the openly communicated reasons for adding a marketplace are generating additional income to help out development.
Of course, if your core criticism is that you think that skins should not have a valuation like this to begin with, there is nothing I could say to change your mind. They are ultimately optional content noone needs to buy, but I know that many people love to support games this or other ways and I do so myself, being well aware that I "only" got skins for a notable percentage of the price I got the full game for. For games starting with a marketplace nowadays it's a mix calculation. For us, it's a support mechanism, just like our Wolf Tier available from the very start of the game was that surely didn't offer the valuation of the $400 it costed - but nontheless was regularly (though in low frequency) purchased, but obviously not affordable to most people at all. And we're most grateful to all those kind souls that did.
Not fund you guys to hire artists to make assets for the game, that you then want to sell back to us for probably hundreds of dollars.
That seems like a pretty obvious betrayal of the reasons people chose to support the development of the game to begin with...
I had no problem paying for Dev tier, because at the time, I DID want to support the development of the game, and it empowered me to further support the game by making mods for the community.
This was an excellent way to get support for the game while not ruining the integrity of the game.
You guys could have just made user friendly modding tools. I bet that would have sold well.
But instead, you're selling individual assets for nearly half the cost of the game itself.
This isn't a live service game. You guys only host a couple servers at a time, which couldn't even hold a percentage of the player base. There are literally ZERO games that make players host their own servers, and have microtransactions.
I bet you could have run a server hosting business to pull money in too!
You have 10k reviews on steam, 80% positive. That, along with other public metrics, heavily implies to me that had this been DLC, you probably could have funded at least another quarter on existing players alone, and way more on release.
But instead someone decided to go whaling, despite knowing very well that it would be wildly unpopular.
PS:
I bet that merchandise would have worked too. But that keychain was the ugliest thing I've ever seen. It wasn't the concept of Eco merchandise that failed, it was the design of that merchandise. I mean hell, I'd buy a shirt with just the cover art on it. But that grey bowling ball of a plushie was a weird sell.
So the artists worked for free, and the assets will only be made after they've been paid for?
The source code is already available for $185 though, which includes 4 game licenses worth $100 - so the access is available for $85 (and that is since Kickstarter). The other $215 are for three cosmetic items and a discord and game icon. Unfortunately the value of source code for the average person is zero and as such not suitable to be a steady funding option.
I can immediately note Astroneers and Conan Exiles has a store as well now afaik. I'm sure there is plenty more such games. Also, while not a live service game, our intention is to make an "forever-game" that doesn't stop updating ever as long as there is interest, that has been communicated for years as well.
We actually had Cloud Worlds in alpha stage intended for schools, but scrapped it soon as it became clear that we are unable to compete with professional hosters that have dedicated knowledge, personnel, software, automation and hardware prices as that's the whole business they focus around. We don't - the only way that could have worked is if we forced everyone to use our hosting service, which is out of question.
My second post on the first page explains it. Artists work in a different way that does not require waiting on other development parts or conduct major maintenance work at work they already have finished. We already have finished assets for features that will be developed later. Such additional capacity can be used for the store that in turn can help us supporting the game to extend our ability to hire more programmers to get done more game mechanics stuff and / or more quickly. I also noted how it's a problem of the industry that companies layoff and hire artists depending on their current needs. We're not willing to do that.
That actually was not intended for any funding at all, the part that the developer can keep from that is not that high. Makeshift had reached out and suggested a cooperation, as they typically do. That the object we decided for would represent Eco best didn't hit the taste is unfortunate, but the opposite wouldn't have changed anything in regard to this topic - it would just have brought something that fans can have in their rooms in real life. I have the only existing one, by the way and I love it :) We might try that again in the future, but then with asking first what people would like to see!
Okay. So using the funds which you raised from people buying the game to support development. You retained artists, paid them a wage, had them work on assets which you then intend to sell back to us?
Yes, it's very unfortunate that artists are laid off when their work is complete. But, that's simply not my concern and goes way beyond my responsibility, when I was buying the game I didn't see a little notice that said "Part of the money you're giving to us will be paid to an artist so they can develop stuff that we intend to sell you later as it's the compassionate thing to do."
Whilst it would have been very moving. The particulars of the hiring, firing and payment of personnel is a topic for your company to manage. Not to offload the cost of onto us, the people paying for you to develop the game.
And of course the cost of the product development needs to be funded and that is ultimately done by those that buy the products, given that is the income the producer has. No matter what you buy, you always pay the costs for it. And you are of course not required to buy any of the new products we are going to offer.
Products crossfinancing is a common business strategy, so is investing some gained funds to be able to make completely new products or other products supporting the development of the main product. We did the latter and link these efforts with changes that would have been necessary anyway to at the same time bring notable improvements to players, keeping efficiency high - and for the goal of allowing us to develop what you want to see our efforts soley go into better and faster than without.
Both of these games use DLC. Their DLCs do not exceed 20 dollars. Notably, in one 20 dollar Conan DLC, you get vastly more than the entire v11 eco marketplace.
Frankly, if the prices were altered so that you could get them all for 20 dollars, I don't think id care anymore. But that isn't what the plan is with this marketplace. I mean, thank God we were spared from Eco becoming a crypto game, but this honestly isn't much better.
I know you're just trying to get through this and it's out of your hands, and that sucks. But it really doesn't change the fact that this was a bad decision, willfully made, rather than opting for one of the many (less-greedy) alternatives.
That is correct, but leaves important bits out:
Astroneers has a cosmetic ingame store, their currency being "QBITS".
Conan Exiles has Crom Coins and Battle Passes for cosmetic items.
What they actually do is having both a marketplace and DLC's.
Looking at Conan, the DLC has for 10 euro's ~40-50 items in it. Do we get the same value in eco market place? Sure they also have an in game store, but they also offer assets outside of it. Skimming through the reviews, people either don't care for it or are against it for the in game store.
I'll help you out with an example of a good implementation and a game that got commended for their market place. Helldivers 2.
Points why their MTX was well received:
* Low cost for items
* You are able to get those items from doing in game events or grinding. You can even grind out the battle pass and grinding through the battle pass would give you enough currency to buy the next battlepass.
* no in your face advertising. So no loadscreen that you have to click away saying "Look at these new skins OMG now only half price!".
I don't see these things happening in ECO. And there's still the thing that everyone just seems to ignore is you get multiple items when you buy one, meaning that you can sell them in game in your store, something someone not paying real money can't. I'm really curious to see the end pricing in the market place and the real money to assets value.
Yes a server can turn it off, but you divide your player-base that way. Since its already small at this moment in time not sure if you can afford to. Its barely passing the 800-900 users in 24 hour period and looking at servers prime time i can only count like 100-200 people spaced out over different servers.