Exclude stuff from bundles

[Eldin]

I'll take Borderlands: The Handsome Collection as an example.
It reduces value of the games and DLCs I already own from the total value so I don't have to pay for them again. And that's great.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1698505822

But there's one thing about bundles like these.
This bundle for example has crapload of characters skins that most of the people won't even use.
So it would be nice if we could uncheck items we don't want and they would be reduced from the total price same like the items we already own.
So we'd buy the bundle only with stuff we'd actually play/use.


And buying items you want individually is usually more expensive than buying the whole bundle with all the stuff.
So that's not a solution.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Ask the publisher to set up a bundle for things you want to include with it.

Valve has no say in what is included or not.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by Eldin:

And buying items you want individually is usually more expensive than buying the whole bundle with all the stuff.
So that's not a solution.

But that is the solution and the reason for the bundles. The reason they are so cheap, is because you are buying a lot in one go. They have no reason to allow you to make it cheaper by excluding things from it.

If you want the individual items, buy them separately. If the bundle is cheaper then buying them separately, then just buy the bundle. You don't have to download everything form it or use them, you just get the better deal.

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Ask the publisher to set up a bundle for things you want to include with it.

Valve has no say in what is included or not.

:qr:

I don't think that is an option, but the developer/publisher could be asked to put all the items in the bundle at the same discount, though that would defeat the purpose of having a bundle to begin with.

[Eldin]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Ask the publisher to set up a bundle for things you want to include with it.

That would require every single use to contact developers with a list of stuff they want. And developers would have to set up separate bundles for every user request. And even if they would do that, sale would end until that.

It's much simpler for developers to add all their games and DLCs to the bundle and let users uncheck stuff they don't want.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/bundles

[Eldin]

Originally posted by Spawn of Totoro:

Originally posted by Eldin:

And buying items you want individually is usually more expensive than buying the whole bundle with all the stuff.
So that's not a solution.

But that is the solution and the reason for the bundles. The reason they are so cheap, is because you are buying a lot in one go. They have no reason to allow you to make it cheaper by excluding things from it.

If you want the individual items, buy them separately. If the bundle is cheaper then buying them separately, then just buy the bundle. You don't have to download everything form it or use them, you just get the better deal.

You'd still buy a lot of things in one go. For example in that Borderlands bundle, if you don't want character skins, you'd still buy 22 items from that bundle.

And then there are bundles like this
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/4910/Eidos_Anthology/
It basically contains purchasable Cheat DLCs for the games.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/byuwraindmaizwei/recommended/208805/

[Eldin]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/bundles

One thing I noticed about that is developers/publishers have to manually update their bundles every time they release new game or DLC.
That EDIOS bundle for example contains all their games and DLCs that existed before they created the bundle.
But everything released after that is not included.

It would be nice if developers could set up "Everything" bundle that would automatically get updated whenever they release new Game/DLC so we can buy stuff we don't have in that bundle and exclude stuff we don't want (like skins, cheat DLCs and multiplayer items/weapons/maps for games with dead multiplayer)

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Yeah... They have to manually add as they release new games.

[cinedine]

So in short you are just asking for stuff to be cheaper.

What's the point in selling games individually if you can just buy a "bundle", uncheck everything but the one game and still benefit from the bundle discount (at least -10 %)?

Oh, and then buy another of these bundles, uncheck everything but another game and benefit from the bundle discount and the "I already own stuff" discount?
And then do the same with the third game.
And the forth ... making your price go down everytime you hit a threshold for stuff owned.

[Eldin]

Originally posted by cinedine:

So in short you are just asking for stuff to be cheaper.

What's the point in selling games individually if you can just buy a "bundle", uncheck everything but the one game and still benefit from the bundle discount (at least -10 %)?

Oh, and then buy another of these bundles, uncheck everything but another game and benefit from the bundle discount and the "I already own stuff" discount?
And then do the same with the third game.
And the forth ... making your price go down everytime you hit a threshold for stuff owned.

There should be some rules.
Like for example you have to buy all games included in the bundle.
You can just uncheck some DLCs.

[Eldin]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Yeah... They have to manually add as they release new games.

So then, there's one more suggestion in this thread.

Allow developers and publishers to set up that bundle which contains all stuff they released and automatically update it when they release new stuff.

And combined with my first suggestion, users could purchase bundles with all games they released and exclude DLCs they don't want.

[Gwarsbane]

You need to ask the developers to make 3 or 4 different collection bundles for their games.

One that includes everything.
One that includes just the games with no DLC
One that includes the games and the character/story DLCs
One that includes just the skins DLCs.

Some might say ok, but I bet you the majority will not. BUT I bet you if they did set it up like this, in the long run it will be cheaper to get the bundle with everything because they will give that a bigger discount than the other ones. If I remember right thats what happened with the handsome collection, the "everything" bundle was cheaper than buying everything separate or in other bundles.

I have seen a few store pages setup like this over the years, though I don't remember them at the moment.

In the end its not up to Valve to convince the developers/publishers to set up stuff like this, its 100% up to the players to bug them to do it.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by Eldin:

Originally posted by cinedine:

So in short you are just asking for stuff to be cheaper.

What's the point in selling games individually if you can just buy a "bundle", uncheck everything but the one game and still benefit from the bundle discount (at least -10 %)?

Oh, and then buy another of these bundles, uncheck everything but another game and benefit from the bundle discount and the "I already own stuff" discount?
And then do the same with the third game.
And the forth ... making your price go down everytime you hit a threshold for stuff owned.

There should be some rules.
Like for example you have to buy all games included in the bundle.
You can just uncheck some DLCs.

If you have to make rules and exemptions for your feature to work, your feature isn't thought-through.

[Eldin]

Originally posted by Gwarsbane:

You need to ask the developers to make 3 or 4 different collection bundles for their games.

One that includes everything.
One that includes just the games with no DLC
One that includes the games and the character/story DLCs
One that includes just the skins DLCs.

Some might say ok, but I bet you the majority will not. BUT I bet you if they did set it up like this, in the long run it will be cheaper to get the bundle with everything because they will give that a bigger discount than the other ones. If I remember right thats what happened with the handsome collection, the "everything" bundle was cheaper than buying everything separate or in other bundles.

I have seen a few store pages setup like this over the years, though I don't remember them at the moment.

In the end its not up to Valve to convince the developers/publishers to set up stuff like this, its 100% up to the players to bug them to do it.

It's up to the players to convince developers to do that.
But Valve can give ability to the developers to make some stuff excludeable from bundles.
Only reason why I won't buy that Borderlands bundle is because those skins that I don't need are making that bundle much more expensive (and they aren't even on discount)

Originally posted by cinedine:

If you have to make rules and exemptions for your feature to work, your feature isn't thought-through.

It wasn't thought-through from the beginning.
But now I know exactly what it should be.

-You have to buy all games from the bundle but you can exclude DLCs you want

or

-Developer sets core items of the bundle (items that will be bought when you buy bundle) and add other items that user can exclude from the bundle.

[Gwarsbane]

Then I suggest waiting for a big sale because when I bought the handsome collection during the last big sale, the price for the Pre-Sequel DLC was around 7 or 8 bucks CDN and included something like 8 or 9 of the BL2 skins along with all the DLC for the Pre-Sequel Seeing as how I don't think the Pre-Sequel season pass has been more than 50% off, getting it for much cheaper was great.

I personally don't care about the skins myself, all the ones I have I got for free, I just wanted the characters and story/map DLC.

I'm not opposed to a feature where you can uncheck some stuff that you don't want, but I can also see them lowering the over all percentage saved when you start unchecking stuff (though it keeps the percentage the same if you already own an item but does lower the price over all.

It would be complicated but could be done. Not sure how much of a major rewrite it would take of the back end of steam to be able to allow something like that. I think it might be simpler to have them do what I suggested, offer more than one bundle setup.

Heck they could have had a specific bundle for each game in self. Handsome collection for everything. Than a bundle with just the BL1 stuff, a bundle with just the BL2 stuff (including and excluding the skins) and a bundle for the Pre-Sequel stuff. Which would just be on each page, but again I'm guessing that the over all discount would be cheaper with the handsome collection and not the individual bundles. Like say 85% for handsome, and just 75% for the other bundles. They could do that now if they wanted.

[Washell]

If you make a suggestion here, any suggestion, you have to find the motivation for Valve and/or developers to get behind it.

The three main motivations you can see behind any feature they release is:
- Does it make them more money?
- Does it reduce their workload (thus save them money)?
- Does it improve customer retention?

Any time you make a suggestion that can be boiled down to "I want to get stuff cheaper/for free", you're really just wasting your own time, and that of everyone reading it. Valve is not in this to give away stuff.

Now, to the root of the issue, if buying the Borderlands content you want separately:
- Is cheaper than the bundle, congrats, you got your cheaper custom "bundle"
- Is more expensive than the bundle, congrats, you got your cheap bundle, with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!

The whole point of the bundle is to make you pay the most for the content you want. A single bundle at the same or higher price than focused bundles would be, catches everyone and is basically marketing 101. It's unlikely to change.