Whats with steam's pricing recently?

[SenMithrarin85]

Every new game coming out in near future is selling for £44.99! Getting too damn expensive.

[shiel]

Then wait for sales. Publishers set the price, not Valve(unless it's a Valve game of course).

[Start_Running]

引用自 shiel：

Then wait for sales. Publishers set the price, not Valve(unless it's a Valve game of course).

Also I think there may be some wonky taxes in your region.

[cinedine]

The real question is why games are often reduced to 10.99 or 11.99 instead of the nice 9.99. Made me not buy into quite a few deals over the time. It's not much, but it just reeks of nickel&diming. Even more so if the discount percentage is 40% or something like 27%.

[shiel]

引用自 cinedine：

The real question is why games are often reduced to 10.99 or 11.99 instead of the nice 9.99. Made me not buy into quite a few deals over the time. It's not much, but it just reeks of nickel&diming. Even more so if the discount percentage is 40% or something like 27%.

True. I tend to ignore sales under 60% off.

[Start_Running]

引用自 cinedine：

The real question is why games are often reduced to 10.99 or 11.99 instead of the nice 9.99. Made me not buy into quite a few deals over the time. It's not much, but it just reeks of nickel&diming. Even more so if the discount percentage is 40% or something like 27%.

Easy answer it's an old mind hack trick. People read left to right so they prioritize the left most number. 19.99 registers as 19 , not 20 in most people apparently and they think of it as such.. It's been used by retailers for decades

Never worked on me since I emply lazy math when shopping. I round everything up to the nearest whole. and i round each whole up to the nearest multiple of 5.

12.33 or 12.99 bth just become 13 to me an where i see 13 I just call nit 15.

It's a trick my dad taught me to save money on grocceries or just about anything. By artificially inbflating the price mentally you evaluate it's worth to you at that inflated value . It also means you alweays over estimate your expenses which means you'll always spend less than you think you are.

引用自 shiel：

引用自 cinedine：

The real question is why games are often reduced to 10.99 or 11.99 instead of the nice 9.99. Made me not buy into quite a few deals over the time. It's not much, but it just reeks of nickel&diming. Even more so if the discount percentage is 40% or something like 27%.

True. I tend to ignore sales under 60% off.

You're shootingf yourself in the foot there. Game lower their base prices gradually over time so while it may never be discounted more than sasy 30% the figure that discount is being aspplied to whill nlikely be lower next year than it is this year.

DOolm (2016) sold for $60 oin release. Now it's $30

[shiel]

引用自 Start_Running：

引用自 cinedine：

The real question is why games are often reduced to 10.99 or 11.99 instead of the nice 9.99. Made me not buy into quite a few deals over the time. It's not much, but it just reeks of nickel&diming. Even more so if the discount percentage is 40% or something like 27%.

Easy answer it's an old mind hack trick. People read left to right so they prioritize the left most number. 19.99 registers as 19 , not 20 in most people apparently and they think of it as such.. It's been used by retailers for decades

Never worked on me since I emply lazy math when shopping. I round everything up to the nearest whole. and i round each whole up to the nearest multiple of 5.

12.33 or 12.99 bth just become 13 to me an where i see 13 I just call nit 15.

It's a trick my dad taught me to save money on grocceries or just about anything. By artificially inbflating the price mentally you evaluate it's worth to you at that inflated value . It also means you alweays over estimate your expenses which means you'll always spend less than you think you are.

引用自 shiel：

True. I tend to ignore sales under 60% off.

You're shootingf yourself in the foot there. Game lower their base prices gradually over time so while it may never be discounted more than sasy 30% the figure that discount is being aspplied to whill nlikely be lower next year than it is this year.

I do a similar thing while shopping lol. Basically I always round up to the nearest 5. In other words, even something that's $10.99 I look at as $15.

I get what you're saying in your reply to me... I should have elaborated that that's more for newer games that still maintain the higher base price. Unfortunately, since flash sales disappeared there seem to be far less opportunities to get those big discounts.

[Start_Running]

引用自 shiel：

引用自 Start_Running：

Easy answer it's an old mind hack trick. People read left to right so they prioritize the left most number. 19.99 registers as 19 , not 20 in most people apparently and they think of it as such.. It's been used by retailers for decades

Never worked on me since I emply lazy math when shopping. I round everything up to the nearest whole. and i round each whole up to the nearest multiple of 5.

12.33 or 12.99 bth just become 13 to me an where i see 13 I just call nit 15.

It's a trick my dad taught me to save money on grocceries or just about anything. By artificially inbflating the price mentally you evaluate it's worth to you at that inflated value . It also means you alweays over estimate your expenses which means you'll always spend less than you think you are.





You're shootingf yourself in the foot there. Game lower their base prices gradually over time so while it may never be discounted more than sasy 30% the figure that discount is being aspplied to whill nlikely be lower next year than it is this year.

I do a similar thing while shopping lol. Basically I always round up to the nearest 5. In other words, even something that's $10.99 I look at as $15.

I get what you're saying in your reply to me... I should have elaborated that that's more for newer games that still maintain the higher base price. Unfortunately, since flash sales disappeared there seem to be far less opportunities to get those big discounts.

Those were never the games that went on Flsash discounts anyway and the quirk is the loass of flash sales has meant an overall improvement in the discounts. Rather than a 30% discount standard and 70% discount over a limited window. wWe bnow get 2 weeks at 50-60%. It's not uncommon for the standard sales now to actually align with the pervious lows, when the final price is taken into account. Again remember that reducing base thing I mentioned. a 30$ sale on doom last year would have brought the game down to 40, now it brings the game down to 20. Same discount.

Also nlets face it, that model was not sustainable. I'd rather a sustainable mnodel that promotes the long term success of the publishers and the platform than the short term windfall.

[Violeta]

"not sustainable" yeah, I mean steam failed the first year it had those low prices.

[Start_Running]

引用自 Sashie：

"not sustainable" yeah, I mean steam failed the first year it had those low prices.

Not sustainable for the publishers. They were the ones taking the brunt of the hi, and unfortunately it hurt the smaller devs more than the larger ones. the large ones can afford to take a $400K loss leader on something. Mid to small devs can't.

In the end it wasn't sustainable and you may have noticed in the last couple sales that had flash sales you saw more repeat offerings.. I.e they couldn't get enough publishers to kick in on the promotion to give unique offerings each day.

Then there's the matter of the refund policy which more or less disincentivises such flash discounts.

[Radene]

引用自 Start_Running：

引用自 Sashie：

"not sustainable" yeah, I mean steam failed the first year it had those low prices.

Not sustainable for the publishers. They were the ones taking the brunt of the hi, and unfortunately it hurt the smaller devs more than the larger ones. the large ones can afford to take a $400K loss leader on something. Mid to small devs can't.

In the end it wasn't sustainable and you may have noticed in the last couple sales that had flash sales you saw more repeat offerings.. I.e they couldn't get enough publishers to kick in on the promotion to give unique offerings each day.

Then there's the matter of the refund policy which more or less disincentivises such flash discounts.

And finally....well, many people who are avid gamers simply don't have the option to keep checking in every 8 hours.

[Kargor]

It's been difficult to get good sales from Steam for a while, but that's just because Steam and Steam sales are too big.

Arguably, I'm not seeing a lot of postings regarding other stores, but I've never seen someone posting comments like "I've bought $200 in shop credits for the upcoming sale, any recommendation what I should get?" for anything but the Steam store. If people are so predetemined to spend their money without looking left and right, publishers have no reason to give them a good price.

The reason dailies and flahes were killed is for the refunds, not for the lack of quality on the deals offered. There has always been the recommendation to wait until the the end of a sale before buying a game that's not on daily/flash, but being able to refund a game just because a normal-sale-price went to a daily/flash-sale-price would be a killer.

I do buy a lot of games outside of the Steam store these days. Occasionally, other shops get a better discount, possibly because they are much smaller and don't offer refunds. On top of that, being in a EUR country means that even when converting USD through PayPal, it still ends up being better than Steam's usual 1:1 conversion.
Whether or not these other shops can survive for an extended period of time -- it's not my job to ensure that. I really have no idea how they can possibly do business outside of sales.

Personally, I never had much of an issue with flash sales. I've always missed at least one on 6-hour flashes, but the 8-hour schedule from Steam wasn't too bad -- and if I miss one, so what.

Most sales are simply bad for me because I cannot deal with "thousands of games on sale". Or even "hundreds of games". I rarely go through them, and mostly rely on my waitlist picking them up. More selective sales have a MUCH better chance of me taking a look at the games, although they also have a higher chance of me missing them since I'm not getting mails from all shops.

[cinedine]

引用自 Start_Running：

引用自 cinedine：

The real question is why games are often reduced to 10.99 or 11.99 instead of the nice 9.99. Made me not buy into quite a few deals over the time. It's not much, but it just reeks of nickel&diming. Even more so if the discount percentage is 40% or something like 27%.

Easy answer it's an old mind hack trick. People read left to right so they prioritize the left most number. 19.99 registers as 19 , not 20 in most people apparently and they think of it as such.. It's been used by retailers for decades

So ... that's why you change from 9.99 to 10.99 or 11.99? To trick people into thinking it's not nearly 10 bucks? Dude, get your coffee.

引用自 Sashie：

"not sustainable" yeah, I mean steam failed the first year it had those low prices.

Steep discounts are usually a way to penetrate the market.
Steam has multiplied its userbase since then and become the de facto standard of purchasing/distributing PC games. The famous Steam Sales played a major part in it. Paired with inflation and gamers willing to pay the higher price, there is simply no need for drastic discounts anymore.
But that's why you still see them on smaller platforms - to get that marketshare.

[Start_Running]

引用自 cinedine：

引用自 Start_Running：

Easy answer it's an old mind hack trick. People read left to right so they prioritize the left most number. 19.99 registers as 19 , not 20 in most people apparently and they think of it as such.. It's been used by retailers for decades

So ... that's why you change from 9.99 to 10.99 or 11.99? To trick people into thinking it's not nearly 10 bucks? Dude, get your coffee.

There's a surprising amount of research that says yes. and no it's not from 9.99 to 10.99

you use 9.99 to hid the fact that the person is fundamentally paying $10 because the first figure is 9, not 10.. 10.99 would be if you wanted to sneakily charge $11.

Have you ever wondered why so many great offers and deals end in .99.

引用自 Sashie：

"not sustainable" yeah, I mean steam failed the first year it had those low prices.

Steep discounts are usually a way to penetrate the market.[/quote]
Particularly when you're establishing a market. Before steam there wasn't much to be said for digital distribution. It was a new form of ownership for users and they had a lot to over come. Sort of like how when the kindle and nook first came out the kindle versions were quite cheap.. Because it was new . Now the kindle versionms aren't that much cheaper than the paperbacks.

[cinedine]

引用自 Start_Running：

引用自 cinedine：

So ... that's why you change from 9.99 to 10.99 or 11.99? To trick people into thinking it's not nearly 10 bucks? Dude, get your coffee.

There's a surprising amount of research that says yes. and no it's not from 9.99 to 10.99

you use 9.99 to hid the fact that the person is fundamentally paying $10 because the first figure is 9, not 10.. 10.99 would be if you wanted to sneakily charge $11.

Have you ever wondered why so many great offers and deals end in .99.

Dude, READ.

I am talking about deals no longer being 9.99 but 10.99 or some weird sum above 10 dollar.

As seen in
http://store.steampowered.com/app/424840/Little_Nightmares/
which is EUR 11.99 instead of a 50 % discount for EUR 9.99

or
http://store.steampowered.com/app/349040/NARUTO_SHIPPUDEN_Ultimate_Ninja_STORM_4/
which is stupidly priced EUR 10.19 instead of EUR 9.99

or in a similar vein
http://store.steampowered.com/app/374320/DARK_SOULS_III/
EUR 23.99 instead of EUR 19.99 for 67% off

If you are using pre-paid card that means that you get less games for your cards. Common maths is two 9.99 games a 19.99 game for a 20 bucks card. But that is often times not the case as you will be short just that one or two bucks.
I found there are less and less games that are priced with a nice multple of 5 and instead sit in-between, making budgeting more of a headache.

[Violeta]

"If you are using pre-paid card that means that you get less games for your cards. Common maths is two 9.99 games a 19.99 game for a 20 bucks card. But that is often times not the case as you will be short just that one or two bucks.
I found there are less and less games that are priced with a nice multple of 5 and instead sit in-between, making budgeting more of a headache."



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