common epic games store W

wen half-life 3

y'all should focus more on the games and less on manipulating prices for currencies that people who already can seldom afford anything on this store use.

Oh great. That means a lot more complete the set bundles are gonna be unavailable in my region. It's already bad enough some companies refuse to respect the price guidelines and charge higher prices here (EA, Capcom, Microsoft, Bethesda tack on 15-25% on top to get around our national sales tax!), this is just another slap in the face. Thanks a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lot.

so this sounds like yet another anti-indie-developer change honestly.

Originally posted by Kaldaien-WillNotReply:

RIP free software on Steam. Great job :-\

Free software does not have a price, and therefore is not affected by the minimum that has always existed.

Originally posted by Cryptic:

so this sounds like yet another anti-indie-developer change honestly.

You value your game at less than a dollar?

It's really rubbish what they're doing.

Originally posted by Cryptic:

so this sounds like yet another anti-indie-developer change honestly.

Understandably, Steam needs to comply with the difference in exchange rate, and equal pricing laws (pretty sure that they are self appointed rules though), though it won't have much of an effect on the big companies who make up the majority of Steam's income. As they continue making their money, I'll be watching my sales continue to decrease from of the ever-increasing number of cheap games, and the slowly-rising prices on the platform.

The average Steam player does not know about these pricing limitations, discount cooldowns, etc., nor do they care; they just want to spend their money. When making a game, I have the philosophy that to remain competitive in the already saturated market of Steam, you can either provide something for cheap or of decent quality.

I'm one guy, self-taught, and busy with life, so I don't have the means to make a game of an equivalent quality of somebody who spent years in school for game design, but I still try my best to address any issues the community has, so they see that I care about what I do, and that their voices are heard. For anybody who does look into my stuff, I know that most of my games look like they were made by a child (I've been making games for nearly 4 years, and I'm 18 right now — do the math 👀), so I try not to complain too much when my numbers are low, because I know that is probably the main reason.

However, it seems that no matter the quality, keeping the price low drives more views and increases the click through rate, because people with some pocket-change left in their account are (figuratively) scraping their hand along the bottom of the game barrel, looking for something cheap. The low cost also seems to deter negative reviews, because expectations are not high to begin with. I, like many others, aim for that market, and it appears to be working. With the difference of just few cents, it also changes the number of views and sales in some countries.

I was also planning on starting a custom sale at the end of the month, before school starts in September since most of my sales come from the discounts. Then, I went onto Steam earlier this evening and noticed all my games were unlisted. Apparently it was because I had everything prices at $1.19 in Canada rather than $1.29. I was forced to change the price, and now I will have to wait at least a month until I can start the next discount for all my games, thus voiding my plans for the late-August sale.

Despite my best efforts, like many other small indie developers, Steam's algorithm seems to still work against me. It also does not help when there is a weeklong developer sale pretty much every second week. While it does get discouraging at times, it gives me more reason to keep pushing the other 2 games that I have had in development for the past year, because I know for a fact that they are significantly better than my other 5.

Again, the average Steam user does not know, and quite frankly does not care about anything I just said. They want either cheap or good... usually both... but preferably free. I'll keep pushing for higher quality, but in the interim, I have to keep prices low, otherwise I will not be able to compete with literally every other game on the market.

TL;DR This change, while it streamlines Steam's operations, continues to hurt us small developers. The big companies keep making more, and we will fade further into the background, slowly making less money, day after day. It is the little changes like this that contribute to that downfall.

absolutely terrible change

Did anyone who's angry about this read it at all?

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:

Did anyone who's angry about this read it at all?

I read "If your product's base price is below Steam's lowest possible transaction price in a currency, it is no longer available to purchase in countries that use that currency."

then fact checked it on a bunch of games and dlc which are now hidden and unavailable to purchase despite living in country with a strong currency, did I miss something else?

RIP STEAM

Originally posted by FunkeymonkeyTTR:

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:

Did anyone who's angry about this read it at all?

I read "If your product's base price is below Steam's lowest possible transaction price in a currency, it is no longer available to purchase in countries that use that currency."

then fact checked it on a bunch of games and dlc which are now hidden and unavailable to purchase despite living in country with a strong currency, did I miss something else?

The game would have to be pretty close to what a transaction fee would cost in order to be affected by this.