Since when does this cost more than Satisfactory?

[Antiga]

I would've sworn it was cheaper. And in my experience, games tend to get cheaper 2+ years after release. I also remember something about a final price?
What I see here is quite odd and indicative of worse yet to come.

[Dopey Shepard]

The worst part of it all was the fact they raised the game price just so they can charge 35$ for DLC because they DID say it was gonna cost the same as the main game, just like the fact they said 30$ is gonna be the final price

But now, knowing how they backtrack on their promises, are we really to expect they are gonna release DLC for 30$? Yeah right.

In the eyes of the developers their product is so amazing they are just gonna keep upping the price forever due to "inflation", meanwhile there's gonna be more and more alternatives to this game like DSP, Mindustry, Satisfactory coming out some time later in the future, games that will actively engage in sales and stuff like that

I very much doubt with all that happening that Wube would still be able to compete

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Dopey Shepard:

The worst part of it all was the fact they raised the game price just so they can charge 35$ for DLC because they DID say it was gonna cost the same as the main game, just like the fact they said 30$ is gonna be the final price

But now, knowing how they backtrack on their promises, are we really to expect they are gonna release DLC for 30$? Yeah right.

In the eyes of the developers their product is so amazing they are just gonna keep upping the price forever due to "inflation", meanwhile there's gonna be more and more alternatives to this game like DSP, Mindustry, Satisfactory coming out some time later in the future, games that will actively engage in sales and stuff like that

I very much doubt with all that happening that Wube would still be able to compete

They never said the price would never change after 1.0. Ever. The context in which the statement you're referring to was was made in was the Early Access period wherein they had been quite transparent with the userbase from the start that the price would be gradually increasing as the game grew more complete. They didn't feel it was right to charge the full intended price for a partial product.

Originally posted by Devs:

Dear all,

Version 0.16 has become stable, and this means that there is one last step for us to reach the 0.17 which will probably become 1.0 version. Then Factorio will finally step out of the Early Access zone. This will take some months but the roadmap is clear for us.

We feel that now is a good time to adjust the price of the game. The price of the game has been growing steadily together with the game becoming bigger, more stable and polished. After careful consideration, we have decided to set the new price of the game to 30 USD (or your regional equivalent). This change will become effective as of the 16th of April 2018. This is the final Factorio price update, unless something unforeseen happens, so it will also be the price for the game for 1.0 release.

As you probably know we have a strict no sale policy. The game will not go on sale on Steam or any other platform. This basically means that purchasing before the 16th of April 2018 is the only way to buy the game cheaper than the increased release price.

Relevant part underlined. It was noted to be the final price increase of the EA product, and also noted that it would remain the price for the 1.0 release (IE, That it would not increase again at 1.0 release); But even if you ignore that niggly little context, the fact of the matter is that the statement was qualified with a "unless something unforeseen happens".

You also have no verifiable evidence of them raising the price of the base game "just so they can charge $35 for the Expansion"(While technically DLC; The expansion is planned to be about as large and impactful as the base game itself. Calling it a simple DLC is doing a disservice.)

Further, If their plan was to just keep upping their price forever due to "inflation", Then why HAVENT they been upping it yearly? Why did they only do it after their country hit record highs of NINE TIMES the normal rate of inflation, which itself is double what most of the rest of the developed world went through? Almost like, oh, I don't know, Nine times the normal rate of inflation was unforeseen; And something that noone could reasonably have foreseen, and they almost certainly wouldn't have increased the price if not for that absurd increase. And almost like there was some weird pandemic that went around that threw a wrench in all sorts of things..that was also unforeseen.

Disagree with their practices all you want, But stop twisting and ignoring facts to suit your narrative.


Edit: To the OP, The price recently increased by $5, and alongside this they updated their regional pricing to match Steam's recommendations which DID unfortunately result in some regions experiencing much larger increases in the price. The reason for the $5 increase was quite simply to offset insane levels of inflation and effect of covid on their situation.

The amount they increased it pretty handily offsets the absurdly high inflation of the last two years and some of what will come in 2023 as their country's inflation level gradually comes back down(They're up at 17~%, Ideal inflation is 2%), and no more than that.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by Antiga:

I would've sworn it was cheaper. And in my experience, games tend to get cheaper 2+ years after release. I also remember something about a final price?
What I see here is quite odd and indicative of worse yet to come.

Your memory is slightly off, though the confusion is quite understandable. During EA, there was a final price update, saying that they were raising the price to $30 and expected that to be the 1.0 launch price--if nothing "unforeseen" happened. Well, we've had both a pandemic and the war in Ukraine, both with global economic impacts, things that are rather hard to predict. So, despite the insistence of some extremely disgruntled people, Wube didn't actually lie or break a promise by increasing the price.

Of course, promises or not, it is odd to see a game go up in price well after the 1.0 release. But, to give it some perspective, $35 today is worth roughly as much as $30 was back in 2018, thanks to inflation. So, really, they're charging the same value of money for a product that has actually been improving over time with bugfixes, optimizations, etc. Whether or not the game has actually retained its value over time is something that individual consumers will have to decide for themselves, and choose their purchases accordingly.

As far as the Satisfactory comparison, maybe that has something to do with your region's prices? Or was the last time you looked at Factorio 2018 or earlier? Because Factorio's USA price, from sometime in 2018 until about a week ago, was $30 USD. As far as I know, Satisfactory has been sitting at $29.99 list price for about the same amount of time, though they've also been having sales. So, on average, people pay less for Satisfactory than they do for Factorio. Which, to be honest, sounds about right to me. I bought Satisfactory on sale for somewhere around $20 and I'm still, well, dissatisfied with that purchase. It's still in EA, so things could change, but I can't see those devs fixing it to my. . . Satisfaction.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Bender B. Rodríguez:

The inflation excuse is a red herring. Imagine having the audacity to suggest inflation wasn't foreseen when a global pandemic and the largest conflict in Europe since WW2 was brewing.

By and large the industry doesn't raise prices on previously released games, especially games that haven't received substantial content updates. Wube is displaying serious management issues if they cant manage inflation despite the massive amount of sales they have made for their small studio.

The game has been out for years, sold large amounts of copies, never had a sale, and Wube has released virtually no tangible content the community can utilize outside of bug fixes that should have been taken care of before release. In the many years since it's release they could have made an expansion or released content that people would buy but no. Instead it seems they squandered their profits, coasted on the good will/hard work of the mod community, and now raise the price because of "iNfLaTiOn".

They have shown they shouldn't be trusted with their future customer's money due to their anti-consumer practices. I fully expect the expansion to be a dud and little more than an addon that pales in comparison to what the modding community does out of passion.

The pandemic hit everyone by surprise. Literally, Noone could have known about it in 2018- The first suspected covid case was on december 31st of 2019, well over a year after the statement was made. In retrospect they traced back the sytptoms and found that the earliest possible case dates back to November 17 of 2019. Which is again, Over a year after the statement was made.

Noone could have predicted it. Noone could have predicted it would become such a huge plague on our lives either. Absolutely and unequivocally unforeseen.

War, Maybe. But given the history of the countries involved, Most people would reasonably have predicted it would probably fizzle out before it came to actual war. But I'll grant there's some chance one might be able to predict that it would lead to actual war.... if they're heavily into sociology, country power dynamics and several other subjects that game developers almost definitely are not trained in.

Edit: Still waiting on that verifiable proof for the red herring thing, By the way.

[Antiga]

Despite the explanations and reason behind them, with which there is nothing wrong, there is still something odd about all this.
I didn't notice earlier but apparently this whole forum is full of these topics. I can imagine. And whether or not all of this fits just barely within the confines of past promises, the negative backlash might subtract more value from their financial picture than the price hike increases it.
Whatever, was just surprised. And apparently so are thousands of other people. Nothing good about this situation, really...

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Antiga:

Despite the explanations and reason behind them, with which there is nothing wrong, there is still something odd about all this.
I didn't notice earlier but apparently this whole forum is full of these topics. I can imagine. And whether or not all of this fits just barely within the confines of past promises, the negative backlash might subtract more value from their financial picture than the price hike increases it.
Whatever, was just surprised. And apparently so are thousands of other people. Nothing good about this situation, really...

Might want to go look through the forum threads... There's probably like, two dozen people involved total across all the recent and related topics from the last week or two.. Fifty tops. Not thousands. You'll see the same names over and over again on both sides, and quite a few other unrelated threads have been hijacked by a certain side.

You're welcome to feel like somethings odd about it, It absolutely is an unusual situation for a game to increase in price. But then, Most other games 'increase in price' by offering DLC of questionable worth, instead of being straight up and honest about the cause.

Whether the decision is good or bad, Only Wube really knows, since only they have all their financial information and access to steam telemetry that we don't.

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by Antiga:

Despite the explanations and reason behind them, with which there is nothing wrong, there is still something odd about all this.
I didn't notice earlier but apparently this whole forum is full of these topics. I can imagine. And whether or not all of this fits just barely within the confines of past promises, the negative backlash might subtract more value from their financial picture than the price hike increases it.
Whatever, was just surprised. And apparently so are thousands of other people. Nothing good about this situation, really...

I noticed the massive amount of traffic about the price change when I first came to the forum, which was sometime after the announcement. I also witnessed it's explosion over the following week, and its slow decline recently. What I have also noticed is that there have been a few user, in areas most affected by recent changes in the regional pricing, who have had honest complaints about the major difference between the before and after prices. And, for them, I actually have empathy. Unfortunately they would have seen a major increase in their price even if WUBE hadn't raised the "base" price, simply because of the regional pricing changes.

Outside of their legitimate surprise and complaints, however, all the rest of the traffic has been from dishonest actors. Some of whom have returned to this forum several times in the past to spew their own brand of hate against WUBE. I'm not going to count threads or posts, but it seems like the legitimate complaints (original posters and comments) is less than 3 dozen, and the trolls are near only a dozen, if even that.

Somehow, by posting multiple threads, and hijacking others, they can make it look like a storm of complaints, when it's only a few very active, and nasty, trolls. The future will hold the answer, but I don't thing the popularity of the game, nor the prospects of the expansion's release will be affected by the "negative backlash" by more than a tenth of a percentage, if even that.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by Antiga:

the negative backlash might subtract more value from their financial picture than the price hike increases it.

Yeah, I think most of us can agree that this is a distinct possibility, though only time will tell. Of course, they may have other considerations than whether or not the price increase will be especially profitable.

For example, based on some of their other communications I remember reading, it wouldn't surprise me if pride in their work was a factor. Like, "this is what we feel our work is worth, so either take it or leave it." It'd make a lot of sense for people with that perspective to adjust their product prices to remain consistent in the face of inflation, regardless of whether or not it's expected to be the most profitable course of action. It's not exactly unheard of for game devs to take the stubborn stance of artists first, business people second.

Another thing that has come up is the expansion. Given the promise of "same amount of content, same price" it's certainly possible that this wasn't just about increasing the price of the base game, but also the expansion. So even if raising the price of the base game ends up being a poor financial decision, it might be overshadowed by the additional profits on the expansion, once that comes out.

But this is, of course, a whole lot of speculation without any real substance behind it.

[Antiga]

For every person in this forum posting about one thing or the other, there's a hundred others who feel the same but don't post here.

Devs could have doubled the price, and the price of the DLC, and we would've seen the same separation in who is for, "neutral", actually neutral, and against. Such a hugely popular game can get away with a lot, and perhaps that first step in breaching that trust has just been taken.

I'm skeptical by nature though.

[Flubbred]

Originally posted by Antiga:

For every person in this forum posting about one thing or the other, there's a hundred others who feel the same but don't post here.

Devs could have doubled the price, and the price of the DLC, and we would've seen the same separation in who is for, "neutral", actually neutral, and against. Such a hugely popular game can get away with a lot, and perhaps that first step in breaching that trust has just been taken.

I'm skeptical by nature though.

Eh. Game is software and software outside of games tends to be expensive. I mean look at FL studio, Maya, Auto CAD and such. Idk what my point is but I wanted to throw that out there.

[DRY411S]

If as Bender claims, the pandemic and war in Ukraine could have been foreseen, as early as 10 years ago, we should count ourselves lucky that the price wasn't higher earlier.

[Khaylain]

I read the article linked by the shiny metal can, and it doesn't read as an actual prediction (in that it says "This is going to happen") but more a thought experiment ("What if this were to happen, what do we do").

Disappointing to use that as a source. If you have enough people making predictions, at least some of them will manage to predict correct 10 years into the future based only on the statistical improbability of nobody getting even close to a correct prediction. It's like Nostradamus. Make enough predictions that are vague enough and some are bound to fit.

If almost no governments were prepared for it I would call it unforeseen. If it was foreseen they would have prepared for it. But the mad scramble made it abundantly clear that there hadn't even been any thought to what should be done. Asian countries generally had a better response, since they had dealt with similar diseases and have a culture that was a bit better prepared for that type of disease.

As for the topic of the cost of Factorio vs Satisfactory. It'll be interesting to see how they match up when Satisfactory is released. It's in Early Access now, AFAIK.

[AlexMBrennan]

Since when does this cost more than Satisfactory?

Satisfactory has always been cheaper because it's a cheap knockoff clone. Next you are going to be surprised that an Apple iPhone is more expensive than a Xiaomi...

[IAMLBM]

L ok so its clear as day this is all kids just looking for a response fyi fellow adults

[DuX1112]

Originally posted by DRY411S:

If as Bender claims, the pandemic and war in Ukraine could have been foreseen, as early as 10 years ago, we should count ourselves lucky that the price wasn't higher earlier.

And you feign objectivity in other threads. But here you are actively justifying Wube's price increase. :)

There's also this bad faith take of yours:

Originally posted by DRY411S:

@dux, if I sent you $5, would you buy it and just STOP?

You were never objective my dude. You're just defending Wube all the time.