"Indie games are damn cheap": Sergey Galenkin on the wrong pricing policy of small teams

Why indie developers should stop lowering the price tags for their games and take advantage of the experience of the creator of The Witness, – Sergey Galenkin, the author of Steam Spy and the main publisher of Epic Games in Eastern Europe, told on the pages of his English–language blog. App2Top.ru publishes a translation of the material with the kind permission of the author.

Sergey Galenkin, Head of Publishing for Eastern Europe at Epic Games
Today, the price of an indie title averages $8.72 on Steam.

At the last Summer Sale, it dropped to an incredible $ 4.63. At the same time, the average sales volume of indie games on the market reached a historic low of 21 thousand copies.

Small indie titles – with rare exceptions – have a very small audience. The problem is that people today have begun to consider the appearance of super–successful hits as the norm, at the same time believing that any project that has not sold a million copies is a complete failure.

But this is simply not true. One can understand the desire to move towards the popular American dream of “get rich or die trying to make money,” but in order to build a viable market for indie titles, we must accept the fact that most of them will not be able to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. For this reason, indie developers should make sure that their projects are profitable within a smaller audience.

And here lies the problem noted in the title. Indie games are damn cheap.

You can find indie in any entertainment market. In movies, comics, music. Everywhere small teams face the same problem: everything in the final comes down to a relatively small audience. Being indie is not easy, and it will never be easy, but in most other industries, indie products are still sold at the same price as AAA titles from recognized brands and companies.

It’s simple. Let’s say you are an indie rock band and your next indie album will sell only 20 thousand copies. Meanwhile, Jennifer Lopez’s latest hit will be bought by millions. Do you seriously think her fans don’t buy your album because they can’t afford it? Do you think they’ll decide to try it if you give it a damn big discount?

You have an initially unprofitable position, because your audience is noticeably smaller. So why are you reducing your chances of survival by letting your fans pay less for the game?

The average sales level of 21 thousand copies does not seem to be large, but in fact it is not bad. I worked for a magazine that had about the same circulation in the worst years and existed almost without advertising. Despite this, his sales allowed him to support a team of several talented specialists and pay for a modern office and printing. And our magazine didn’t cost less than, say, Vogue or Men’s Health. In fact, it cost a little more.

Yes, your indie title may have been interesting only to a small group of players. Yes, you may not be ready to put a price tag of $59.99 on it, as the big guys do (in truth, they get even more from each user thanks to the release of collector’s editions, IAP and season tickets). Therefore, please stop harming your own game just because for some reason you think that it is not worth the requested money. Add extra value if you think that’s the case, but don’t lower the price.

I applaud Jonathan Blow’s decision to sell The Witness for $39.99. The game has about 460 thousand owners after discounts and sales, according to Steam Spy. However, the price of the game has never dropped below $19.99 on Steam. Do you really think that the sales of the game would have been 4 times more if it had cost $9.99 from the very beginning? Something I doubt.

Instead of putting discounts on your title from the very beginning, perhaps it’s better to take the time to explain why your game costs as much as you ask for it? Obviously, this is more difficult than just sticking a $9.99 price tag, as everyone does.

This is especially true in the case of pre-orders. I see how many indie companies offer discounts on pre-orders, sometimes these discounts go up to 33%. Why do you charge less from your most loyal players? Perhaps, instead of asking them for less money, it is worth adding value to the pre-order, as big publishers do? Early access to the game, additional content (a la soundtrack or a playable prototype), even an exclusive achievement – everything is better for your fans than a price reduction of a couple of dollars. They buy your game in advance not because of the low price, but for the reason that they believe in you, they want you to be successful. So help them with this.

I understand the consequences you will then face. Some will say they can’t afford to pay an extra $10 per game. Others will write long columns or posts on forums about how wrong you are that you decided to make money from your work: just look at the reaction of people to the price tag of The Witness at the release, which I wrote about just above. And that’s fine. Remember that if someone can’t afford the game now, they can always buy it a few months later, when a sale on Steam will inevitably force you to put up a discount on it.

If the game is worth the players’ time, it is also worth their money.

A source: galyonk.in