Post by redonihunter in Do Players Lose Access to Paid Itch.io Games After Price Increases

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I honestly thought, people would keep ownership over the files they bought.

And that is why I rant over this feature. It is misleadingly named. A customer does in fact not buy the files individually. It should be called tiered bonus items or whatever.

It is an attempt of a dlc mechanic, without need for creating separate projects. Ok. But then they should have the functionality, to increase your tier. The feature is broken and unusable except for the most trivial use case: one payment and never changing prices and the user knows at first purchase, which bonus item tier is wanted - and there are projects with several tiers.

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FluffyStudio183 days ago(+1)

But how can it be used as a way to sell DLC's without making a new project, if the the file price cannot be lower then the minimum price.
So lets say my game once its finally done is 10 euro and I create a DLC, how can I justify that DLC to be 11 euro, just because I cannot have it less then the projects minimum price? Its infuriating.

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redonihunter182 days ago(+1)

If you have game for 10 and an individual priced file for 11, a user that pays 11 has access to the individual priced file. The price for the "dlc" would be 1. The problem is, that a user that bought the game for 10 and later decides to get the dlc, cannot do so without buying the game again for 11. And as you have found out, if you would later rise the minimum price of the project to 15, the dlc will no longer be available to anyone that thought to have bought it. Because their payment price of 11 will not match the new individual price of 15+1 = 16.

Having two items to sell is always more elegant with two projects. The individual priced file mechanic is very bad for this. People use it anyway, because it exists.

It might once have been meant as an incentive in the pay what you want scheme. Offer a game for free, give a goodie for 3, so people that do pay, pay 3 instead of 2 or 1. Something like that.

Straight from the pricing faq

itch.io lets you set minimum prices on individual files. For example, if you're selling a game for $1 you could offer the option to get access to the soundtrack when paying $2 or more.

You can even added priced files when your project is normally free. Encourage a donation by offering additional content like levels or music. For example, you could offer a level pack for $2 with an otherwise free game.

The example already is ... very bad. If you offer a soundtrack or a level pack, make a separate project with the soundtrack and create a bundle of the game and the soundtrack, so people can buy both at once, or the soundtrack later.

There is a difference between a demo version and a free public version, so I understand why many devs chose that pricing option. But it is inflexible for future price changes. And uncertain in regards to bundles and discounts - at least I do not know how this works.

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FluffyStudio182 days ago(+1)

What I have done now, set my main Project to Paid, have the free version be as a Demo free in the project and future DLC's I will put in separate projects where I can use the Sale function, like if they have bought the Paid version they get the DLC 50% off. That's one system I really like on itch. They did a good Sales system.

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redonihunter182 days ago(+1)

Ah, I read about that function, but never noticed it in action. The conditional sale or whatever it is called.

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FluffyStudio182 days ago

Exactly. Where you can set another game as a condition, for them to have in their Library to be able to get that promotion. But, only those eligible will see the promotion, which is a point that is annoying. Would be great if it's public so everyone can see it and then maybe Increase your sales of both the game and the dlc.

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