I think you're referring to value-based pricing. The perception of a product's value based on its price. I guess freebies slip right under your radar, then.
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Bear in mind the difference between Freeware titles, and free to play games, there can be a gap as wide as the grand canyon.
I can understand the serious dislike for free to play. But I hope oz2mura doesn't overlook guinuinely good Freeware titles, some of them used to be sold, and the devs of them decided:"these games are too old and/or historically iconic to have behind a paywall, just have it, take it."
A few of the more memorable titles for me I've played, including my absolute favorite, Eternal Senia, were free.
(Although Eternal Senia isn't technically free, the dev politely asks for donations, since he can't legally sell it, but, I doubt I would have tried it if it wasn't free.........I definitely intend to donate at least $30 to him though, when I can, his game helped me in a way you might have trouble imaginating, I should really donate in excess of $100 for what it did for me, although, for what amount and type of content you get, it's a 5-10 USD bucks kinda game for most people, likely upwards of 15 CDN for me, our currency price sucks right now. XP)
ah, i see the misunderstanding, i'll clarify.
while it's true i don't buy free games. i have downloaded a ton of them. newgrounds, and kongregate were my main places to waste my time away. interesting enough, if those games were 5 usd and presented themselves well enough, i'd have spent it.
though i think it's great with what itch.io is doing allowing the player to pay what they think is appropriate. the thought never occured to me to use it, probably because my habitual binge free playing in the past led me to not be considerate doing so. so i'll reflect on that.
hopefully the insight of one potential buyer and my candid thought process can be of some use.
trying to explore my thoughts on that.
it's as if i have a wish for the bottom price for paid games to be 5 usd. and my expectations for a 5 dollar game is already low, my thoughts is that it's already less than min wage. so when i do see a nice looking game for less than 5 my immediate thoughts are, 'what's the catch?'. it's unfounded suspicion that shouldn't happen, but it does.
i'm going to make silly comparisons to attempt to figure out why this is. to me anything less than 5 dollars is equivalent to a snack. which i feel like even a game at all is worth more than that. and i notice that i'm willing to pay more than 8 dollars for a 1-2 hour movie. personally i enjoy small games more than movies-- so that bias itself might have to do with my thought process.
i guess what it just comes down to, i feel like games are already undervalued with the exception of triple A titles feeling overvalued. and i'm personally willing to drop 5 usd on a game that looks promising, even if it's just for an hour.
and even if these feelings don't match with the rest of the populace, i kinda wish it did.