Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags

Steam or itch.io?

A topic by Coletrain1 created Oct 09, 2022 Views: 213 Replies: 1
Viewing posts 1 to 2

Hello again! I played this game like crazy about 2 years ago while stuck at home with a back injury, and absolutely loved it. Ended up well over 150 hours of farming and mining fun haha. With all the patches and updates since then I am wanting to buy it and start fresh. I noticed however that on steam it is about $17.49 CAD, while on itch.io it's $15 USD (which equates to about $20.59 CAD). I'm wondering are steam patches released at the same time as from here? Or are steam updates less frequent for polish sake? I've been curious because I wanted to be as up to date as possible, but the price difference between the two sites confused me and led me to the conclusion there must be a difference lol. I was wanting to get it on Steam just to keep all my games in one spot, but not if its behind patches compared to here. Or am I over thinking it and really its the same either way?

Thanks in advance! I hope I'm not asking a dumb question I should know the answer to x'D I checked and couldn't find any info one way or the other. Also I wanted to add I'm so happy to see the development is going strong and after looking over the roadmap for the game I'm excited to see your plans for the game set in stone!! Looking forward to the combat patch, I remember when it was first suggested to put into the game haha. 

Developer

Hello,

Man, I sometimes forget I’ve been working on this game for so long, it all sort of just runs together at this point. If you haven’t played in 2 years there should be a fair number of new things for you.

To answer your question, well, I’m not 100% sure to be honest. So, to give you a little peek behind the curtain here is my guess. On itch you set 1 price in USD. So for itch it is set at $14.99 USD. When you put a game on Steam you also set a price in your local currency, so again I set it to $14.99 USD. However. Steam has a feature when you post a game where you set a price in your local currency and then it generates prices for all the other currency.

So truth be told I’m not really sure, I could go editing prices but it generally isn’t recommended according to Steam unless you have a grasp on that sort of thing. I can say with much assuredness that I am not an economist, not even close.

I did just google and the conversion for 14.99 USD is 20.59 CAD so I guess itch is more precise? I also double checked Steam, apparently they set their automatic pricing based on how other games at similar price points are set. So basically Steam has some extra algorithm stuff going on to modify the price where itch is probably just a flat conversion.

Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to go an economic adventure at 1:30 in the morning, but I certainly learned something. The pricing, despite the oddity, will probably remain the same as to be honest I trust Steam to price things in an appealing way to consumers more than itch. I suppose I’m selling the game cheaper in other currencies, but I trust there’s a reason. Steam is taking a cut of sales so I’d guess they got a team of people figuring out why setting the conversions in such a way is better than just a flat conversion.

As for the game itself, its all the same. When updates are put out I update Steam and Itch with the same copy so there isn’t a difference. I guess the only thing I can think of is that in the next patch I’ll enable cloud saving on Steam and Steam achievements are getting added. So the itch version will lack those for obvious reasons but otherwise it’ll be the same.