You may have heard murmurings of the indiepocalypse, how the price of your average indie game is quickly approaching zero as desperate developers race to run bargain bin sales or join pay what you want bundles that net 2 cents per sale.
Are creators proud to list their game at 75% off after months/years/decades of development? In some cases, just weeks after a launch. Maybe when sales were novel, when the amount of units sold recouped for the reduced price. Sadly it seems selling your game for pennies on the dollar is just one of the many stages of a release you’ll trudge through as you try to make your game known among the thousands of sales and hundreds of bundles going on at any given time.
Can we solve this? I don’t know. But I do know that itch.io can make it easier for you to collect more money.
When you’re creating a sale you’re typically doing two things:
We think the second point is valuable. We’re surrounded by countless industries pushing to drive down prices, often at the expense of creators. It’s easy to get caught up in the first bullet point without really thinking about the second.
A sale is a celebration of your work. Why not celebrate by letting people pay their respects to your hard work by giving you more?.
Will this feature really fix anything? Probably not, but we think it’s cool and fun so happy April Fools*.
Go forth and host some sales, but don’t feel obligated to always lower the price :).
* This feature is here to stay
Enjoy!
- Leaf
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yhank
wonderful thank you
genius
I was confused for a moment, but honestly, I dig it.
That is hilarious
prices are for completed games.
pre-alpha testing periods are for goodwill and testing.
People need to eat.
then they better get to work and finish the job so they can get paid.
Extremely cringe opinion. Indie dev is totally different from AAA and people gotta eat
then they better get to work and finish the job so they can get paid.
beta testing is a paid occupation performed by qualified individuals WHO NEED TO EAT.
YOU just want free shit, commie.
everyone wants to support a game developer, but noone wants to pay more than the game's already established price...
(unless its for charity, in which case, i agree!)
I agree with you !
That can help a lot us developer, but people don't like spend more
That can help a lot us developer, but people don't like spend more
Tears of happiness
This seems like a pretty neat feature, especially since I can see it allowing people more flexibility in pricing (i.e. not being locked in to the same low or high price all the time). But I'm sure it will never fire up most people like 'getting more for LESS' will.
If you don't already you might try to have the site make it a little bit more visible when this is enabled (at least as an encouraged choice on the seller's part). As is the minus in -100% isn't much and still strikes as discount. It would seem more honest as a different color (magenta vs cyan -- vaguely reminiscent of red/green, but not quite so charged with meaning) and possibly '+100%'. Buying something for more intentionally is all well and good, but at a first glance I think some people would be annoyed to find a game in a 'sale' list and then realize post-purchae that the price was actually increased.
Tangentially when it's a simple doubling ($1 -> $2) at most and the resulting price is around $8-10, I doubt most people would care, but slapping $5 more on top of $25 would be offputting when many other games are actually on sale.
P.S.
I found this article via someone using this feature for Black Friday this year.
greedist wet dream...
Cute idea but will ultimately make people laugh at those who actually do this UNLESS all the extra money is guaranteed to go to charity. If THAT happens then shut up and take my money O_O
Is it possible to tie this in with giving 100% of the proceeds from Black Friday sales to the charity?
Estou usando agora mesmo: https://itch.io/s/12515/ningum-vai-ganhar-ou-perder-vai-todo-mundo-perder
(Using it right now in my pt-br only project)
No amount of words can express my love for this.
Same!