Steam sales

[Primigenia]

Dude, I'm waiting for years for this game to be on sale, but it apparently almost never is, put it on sale sometimes 😆😓

[Fel]

It is not "almost" but really never on sale.
It clearly says so in the description in the store page and there is a pinned topic about it here as well.

[Primigenia]

Yeah I know, I used "almost" in case I did miss a sale to avoid answers like "it was on sale 8 weeks ago", but I did really never saw it on sale. I totally missed the pinned topic though 🙄

[Fel]

When you want to check the price history (including sales), steamdb is usually a good place by the way:
https://steamdb.info/app/427520/

[Khaylain]

No

[shadain597]

Steam db is nice and all, but in this case it's on the store page. . . .

Discount Disclaimer: We don't have any plans to take part in a sale or to reduce the price for the foreseeable future.

[schnappkatze]

If you are cautious about spending your money and are not sure if the game is worth it full price, buy it through their website: https://factorio.com/buy

They give you a 28-day refund guarantee, so you have 4 full weeks to decide if the game is worth its price. I assure you, that is a better option compared to never playing this game to save 10 bucks.

[knighttemplar1960]

The only time it was "on sale" was during the EA phase of the game. There is a free demo if you haven't tried it yet. You can also watch some lets plays and streams. If it looks good to you then you may want to do as schnappkatze recommends. If you buy the game through the Factorio website you can still link the game to your steam account.

[SYSTEM GLITCH]

I'm with you OP. I won't pay $45 for a game ever anymore. It's a super fun game, I've probably put in about 40 hours, but it's not worth $45 to me.

[$2 Hero]

The problem is there's too many good games for $3 it makes it hard to justify buying anything full price.

To think your product is too good for sales or you are above Gaben or Minecraft etc etc is laughable.

Gonna try the demo brb.

[Viss Valdyr]

Originally posted by YE24:

The problem is there's too many good games for $3 it makes it hard to justify buying anything full price.

To think your product is too good for sales or you are above Gaben or Minecraft etc etc is laughable.

Gonna try the demo brb.

That is also my gripe. For example, you can get civ 6 with 90% off now. So I would rather tend to get civ 6 than this. Because prices matter. Sales matter. It is their own opinion to not participate in a sale. But they are leaving a lot of money on the ground.

[Primigenia]

Originally posted by Viss Valdyr:

Originally posted by YE24:

The problem is there's too many good games for $3 it makes it hard to justify buying anything full price.

To think your product is too good for sales or you are above Gaben or Minecraft etc etc is laughable.

Gonna try the demo brb.

That is also my gripe. For example, you can get civ 6 with 90% off now. So I would rather tend to get civ 6 than this. Because prices matter. Sales matter. It is their own opinion to not participate in a sale. But they are leaving a lot of money on the ground.

I was undecided between Factorio and Dwarf fortress, I definitely agree with your point. I get not being on sale for the first year or so of release and I respect that, but 4 years after release somehow it has to compete with other great games being on sale at that point

[Fel]

It's definitely not as simple as you might think.
As soon as a game gets discounted, the discounted price becomes the "normal" price and buying it for anything higher than that is a loss.
That means that you would get next to no sale at full price anymore, and people would still continue to ask for higher and higher discount as time goes.

The end result is that there is little to no long terms gains.

The example of civ 6 is showing exactly that, 90% off means that no sane person would even think of buying it outside a sale that is at least that big, which means that the game brings at best chump change.
And it's not like they are selling that many more copies of the game to have a total income that would be similar.

Either way, it's not really up to us to decide if they do a sale or not, they made their decision to not do it and have been holding onto it for quite a few years now so it is unlikely that you could change their mind on it.

[Viss Valdyr]

Originally posted by Fel:

It's definitely not as simple as you might think.
As soon as a game gets discounted, the discounted price becomes the "normal" price and buying it for anything higher than that is a loss.
That means that you would get next to no sale at full price anymore, and people would still continue to ask for higher and higher discount as time goes.

The end result is that there is little to no long terms gains.

The example of civ 6 is showing exactly that, 90% off means that no sane person would even think of buying it outside a sale that is at least that big, which means that the game brings at best chump change.
And it's not like they are selling that many more copies of the game to have a total income that would be similar.

Either way, it's not really up to us to decide if they do a sale or not, they made their decision to not do it and have been holding onto it for quite a few years now so it is unlikely that you could change their mind on it.

your point is valid. But still, you except to get sales for things that are "not new". Those who would pay full price for the game already did. There won't be a lot of people left buying it full price, if the game doesn't give anything new. So lowering the price (permanently or sale) would be a good idea in the long run.
Any luxury item is usually sold in a lower price after a while. It is not without exceptions, but it usually is like that, just to squeeze the last € from something.

[Fel]

You would be surprised, there are always seemingly new players asking questions on this forum.
Based on that, it is safe to asume that the game is still selling even without doing sales, and the arrival of a major expansion later this year (unless it is pushed back) is unlikely to make the value of the game fall soon either.

It's fine to think the game is not worth the asked price, everyone has a different view on what is or is not worth their money and time.
What I fail to understand is why so many people care less about the price itself and more about the presence of a discount, because the whole system is built to be favourable to the sellers but they managed to make it look like it is in favour of the buyer.

I mean, look at your steam library, it looks very much like mine, a whole lot of games you never even touched and more than half that never went past 10 hours.
A quick guess would bring the conclusion that most of the unplayed games as well as those you barely played (less than an hour) were bought on a sale just because they were cheap on a sale, thinking that you might one day play them.

I used to do that at some point too, a decent amount of years ago, until I noticed just how many games were like that in my library.
I went to dig into my mailbox to see just how much I paid for these games and compared it to how much I "saved" on games I did end up playing.
What I found was that I had paid a lot more than what I had saved compared to buying the games at full price.
As a result I decided to buy games only when I want to play them "now", sometimes it coincides with a sale and that's great, often it doesn't and that's fine.
My game budget went down doing it that way so it's a double win for me, I get to play games I want and I spend less for it overall.

Of course it might not apply to everyone, but that's what the sales tend to do (not just for games, it's the same for clothes for example), you actually spend more money but most of it is wasted on stuff you'll never use.


Some people also like to do a "dollar per hour" comparison and games bought on a sale tend to end up at a significantly worse rating (since you often buy them "for later" that might or might not come and it is easier to just let go of a game that you got for cheap).



Now, it's not a "buy this game at full price or leave" argument, just a different view on the whole sale thing from someone that did get burnt by it.

[Primigenia]

Originally posted by YE24:

"Civilization VI is the fastest-selling title in the history of the series, selling to date more than 5.5 million units worldwide."

Civ6 dwarfs factorio. Good try though.

Speaking of Dwarf Fortress thanks for reminding me. Oh and don't buy the game and they will put it on sale. They have a staff of 30+ people. That's millions per year in salaries, even Czech salaries.

That's another thing. Steam allows foreigner on platform to make good living and they are not even grateful. Never give back to community. They have no respect for Steam users.

The company is literally all white men too. Yea ♥♥♥♥ it I'm going hard. :InjusticeJoker:

The ethnicity or nationality of the devs has absolutely nothing to do with this post, please leave it out of it.