Stardock magazine - punishing early adopters, and GC3

from Stardock Forums

I found this article in the stardock newsletter particularly annoying considering the horrible bait and switch you pulled with GC3 founders. To recap, when GC3 was first offered as a project there was a newsletter sent out saying "Last chance to pre-order GC3 at a discounted price!". I bought it at the time, but then, before release you put the game on sale for $10 cheaper during early access. Sales happen, but when your offer's selling point is that it's the last discount before release, selling it cheaper before release is a large step worse than what you describe below.

 

How do you support early adopters of games?
 
The PC game industry is in big trouble. Most of them don't know it yet but if they haven't figured it out in 2016, it'll hit them hard in 2017.
 
Early adopters of PC games are being abused. Stardock is no better than any of the others on this as many of my arguments internally are on this issue.
 
Here is how it works:
 
You buy a game for fifty bucks and then, a couple months later, it's on a Steam® sale for 25% off. A year later it's on sale for 75% off.
 
The argument given to me is that it's no different than people who go to the theater and pay $10 for a movie only to be able to watch it for $2.99 six months later with the entire family. My contention it is very different because unlike movie theaters, we have the ability to protect our most loyal fans and we have not.
 
For me, personally, it hit home with Ashes of the Singularity this past spring. It came out, it was $49.99. As I write this, the list (non-sale) price of it is $24.99. Why should anyone buy a game new? The answer is, unless developers do something about this problem, they will find that gamers will treat them with the same loyalty as they've receiving – none. And like I said, Stardock has been just as bad as the others.
 
So how did this happen in the first place? The answer is that over the past two years, the market has completed its shift from retail to digital. There was a cultural lag (and there still is) about the idea of a "new" game's value versus an old game. But the reality is, a game is a game is a game.
 
Your new game can only charge $50 if it is fundamentally superior than the $10 old game. This can be really tough for strategy game developers to deal with. But life ain't fair.
 
The problem Stardock ran into with Ashes of the Singularity is that once we realized the market was shifting, we needed to find a way to reward our early adopters but didn't know who they were. We know who our founders are. But what about those in early access? What about those who simply bought it at $49.99 in the first month?
 
As an industry, we're in unknown territory. We have to evolve or die. We have to show more appreciation to our customers and more specifically, more loyalty. But words are cheap. Actions matter.
 
So here is what we're doing:
 
Stardock Launcher
 
We have begun rolling out the Stardock Launcher. It just went out with Sins of a Solar Empire this week. It'll slowly get added to our other games soon. The goal will be to tie a user's Steam (or GOG) account so that, ideally, we can create more personalized offerings for our customers.
 
For example, let's say you bought Ashes of the Singularity at 50 bucks. We want to give you stuff to thank you for your loyalty. When you launch your game, you'll see the launcher which will, over time, provide special benefits for players, sometimes retroactively. Free DLC, many access to new games, maybe free software.
 
I wish I could say there was a set policy on this. But like everyone else will soon be, we're all still just trying to find our way to demonstrate our loyalty to our early adopters. It's a problem that game developers must solve.

 

45,772 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

This is an old issue.  The sale you are complaining about was one that was originated by Steam, not Stardock.  It is possible that Stardock could have refused to go along with the Steam sale because of their earlier statement, but that is never going to happen in the real world.  Expecting it to happen in the real world and complaining about it much later only throws shade where it doesn't really belong and isn't going to change anything.  Also, it spreads falsehood through omission of the key fact that it was all Steam's doing. I understand that you feel you lost $10 that you will never get back in your life, but that is only your perception, not the one held by the vast majority of observers of the event. Your perception that Stardock is somehow at fault here is also one I do not share, and do not see that the facts support.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Steam never puts things on sale without the publisher's permission, don't talk crazy. 

It's also not about $10, it's about breaking promises and shafting early adopters - you know, the thing the article from the stardock newsletter talks about being bad.  

The gist of your post, besides false information about how Steam sales work, seems to be "Lol, OF COURSE Stardock wouldn't keep the promise they sold the game with!" which seems to be an odd defence to mount.

Fences - Organize your desktop icons today!
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Well maybe they'll make good on their promises by giving their beta community the Crusades expansion for free.

(Holding breath.....)

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

All Elite Founders will get all content for free..period. 

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Darkrenown2, reply 2

Steam never puts things on sale without the publisher's permission, don't talk crazy. 

It's also not about $10, it's about breaking promises and shafting early adopters - you know, the thing the article from the stardock newsletter talks about being bad.  

The gist of your post, besides false information about how Steam sales work, seems to be "Lol, OF COURSE Stardock wouldn't keep the promise they sold the game with!" which seems to be an odd defence to mount.

You have your interpretation of the events.  I have mine.  Obviously, neither of us have any chance of convincing the other of our righteous principles.  Therefore, we have both spoken to the members of the forums at large instead of each other. They are free to form their own interpretation, which may even be a third alternative, different from yours or mine.  That is fine with me.  I have no real need to convince or defend. I'm just posting on a forum. Enjoy whatever satisfaction you get by raising the issue. The soapbox is yours.

And I always talk crazy.  I can't seem to stop it, so I have given up trying. It is as addictive a behavior as playing GalCiv.

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Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

Well, I work in games and I know Steam don't put anything on sale without permission, it's not a matter of opinion. The fact that you're so proud of an opinion formed in ignorance is sad, and the spreading of such misinformation is unhelpful, but if you're so opposed to facts then you're likely correct that there's no convincing you.

Perhaps you could tell us though, did you just imagine one day that surely Steam just sets sales prices willy-nilly, or is your opinion based on anything substantial? Has Stardock ever said the lower price was Steam's fault or is this purely an assumption you have made? Is there any level of evidence that would change your mind? Hypothetically, if Brad came into this thread and said "Yeah, we set a lower price for a Steam sale, deal with it" would you still think the practice was fine?  

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

https://forums.galciv3.com/460069

 

 

I knew this sounded familiar^^

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Oh good, that solves the need for hypotheticals, Brad states in that thread that he agreed to the lowered price. Screw keeping to you word, screw giving refunds to unhappy customers, but send out emails claiming to condemn poor business practices when you are one of the worst examples. 

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Darkrenown2, reply 8

Oh good, that solves the need for hypotheticals, Brad states in that thread that he agreed to the lowered price. Screw keeping to you word, screw giving refunds to unhappy customers, but send out emails claiming to condemn poor business practices when you are one of the worst examples. 

Did you read the article you posted? It is all about how Stardock is also an offender in this area and has to do better. I'm not sure why this article pissed you off so much, its just Brad agreeing with you. Also, yes, Brad agreed to the sale, but his point is basically that Steam now owns the keys to the kingdom and a smaller developer like Stardock is not the position to turn them down when they come calling.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

I'm not sure why it pisses anyone off...

 

Everything goes on sale eventually.  Things going on sale before they're even released is pretty damn special ed, but that's another issue entirely.

 

When something is new, it does indeed have a higher value, and any wishful thinking on the part of a particular game designer doesn't change that.  It may not have a higher value to a particular individual, but people are not logical so even an entirely offline experience is going to be valued at a higher level when it's new.  This would hold true even if games stopped progressing visually, other mediums of entertainment that do not suffer from advancing technology so quickly decay in price just as fast.  For a primarily online game, new is the only time it's a worthwhile purchase for most people.  Your online community will almost certainly die out within months, to a small fraction of it's original size.  That early community is what many people are interested in, the large, diverse player base, with which to match themselves against.  Once it peters out, they move onto the next.  A six month old game holds no interest to them at all unless it's one of the rare few that hold a massive community long term.

 

What we're seeing is the changing industry allowing games to simply exist in perpetuity.  When they were purely a thing of retail, the stores dumped their stock, either to a warehouse, or in a bargain bin, once they got tired of the last few copies taking up shelf space, and they were rarely seen again.  Perhaps when they came back up on peoples radar, they were actually worth more than originally sold because of the scarcity of the product.  Once you remove concerns of scarcity and shelf space at retail, by providing them "forever" via direct download services, they should follow the natural curve purely based on demand.

 

Game companies might should be charging much higher prices at release, from a profit maximizing perspective.  It would be interesting to see just how many people simply couldn't wait and would pay a hundred bucks, knowing a game would cost half that a month after release.  There is a risk that such behavior would turn gamers off of course, and that newness factor might result in far fewer sales a month in than there would have been originally, but the natural progression down the demand curve requires a steadily shrinking price to get all those people who weren't interested in the product at it's original price, but are at half.

 

Price reductions are also good for the early adopters as well.  Sins of a Solar Empire probably doesn't have even a dozen people still playing regularly that bought it originally.  Out of hundreds of thousands of people, the community of active players is probably only a couple thousand.  Most of the mods wouldn't exist, the online community would have completely dried up years ago.

 

That said, I actually like the early adopter plans, but that's because I'm someone that buys things early on specifically to reward companies, so I'll benefit from it.  Giving stuff away to the people who can't wait, and are the primary driver of such add-on sales, is potentially a really stupid idea.  It will require the loyalty buys, like mine, outweigh the can't wait buys that would have gone to the DLC anyway.

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Early adoption is less of a financial incentive than a "I want to support the dev, play earlier, and get a couple perks here and there". Not "I'm buying early to save more."

 

Reply #12 from LittleTinyFrogs Forums Top

Yes, it's time for you to join the masses who only buy at discount a year later. Or buy at full price if you want to suppport the developer. Either one will make you feel better.

Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting tilyas89, reply 11

Early adoption is less of a financial incentive than a "I want to support the dev, play earlier, and get a couple perks here and there". Not "I'm buying early to save more."

Cool, except I was buying it explicitly to save more, which was why I jumped on the "Last chance for a discounted pre-order" offer, you seem to be missing this. I bought it under the premise that it wouldn't be any cheaper until release, but then it was cheaper before release. Again, a simple refund when the deal changed would have been fine too, but that was also refused me. 

Quoting peregrine23, reply 9

Did you read the article you posted? It is all about how Stardock is also an offender in this area and has to do better. I'm not sure why this article pissed you off so much, its just Brad agreeing with you. Also, yes, Brad agreed to the sale, but his point is basically that Steam now owns the keys to the kingdom and a smaller developer like Stardock is not the position to turn them down when they come calling.

Indeed I did. The reason it annoyed me is not just because "Stardock does this too", it's because I've found Stardock to be the very worst offender, standing out noticeably worse than the crowd. I feel it's one thing to lower the price over time as almost every company does, while it's quite another to sell something with a promise and then blatantly breaking that promise. Perhaps other companies have done similar things, but if so I have not experienced it.