Steam sales are universally awesome, right? Everyone gets cheap games, developers sell a ton of games, we're all happy. Right? Well, no.
Indie dev Jason Rohrer (Passage, Between, Sleep is Death) has written a blog post called "Why Rampant Sales are Bad for Players". He argues that a "culture of sales" has led to people waiting for a game's price to drop before buying, which in the long-term isn't just resulting in less money for developers, but also a diminished community around a game, as buyers are dispersed over a period of months (or even years) instead of being concentrated around a game's launch.2345
He's not out-andout complaining; Rohrer withdrew his own games from Steam sales last year, and says "I...get that it's impossible to escape from it now. To Valve's credit, they never force developers to put their games on sale." He's just showing us that the sales aren't some perfect thing where everybody wins all the time.
As a test, his next game - Castle Doctrine - is going to adopt a pricing scheme that goes in the other direction. It'll be 50% off before launch, 25% off in the first week, after which it'll cost its full price "forever after that".678
There's more to it than this, of course, including arguments that online games never need to go on sale at all (since they're not taking up shelf space), so you should read the full thing below.
Why Rampant Sales are Bad for Players [The Castle Doctrine]
The original article is quite long and here it is.
Original article-blog has been updated
Here is an email I recently received:
You're getting this email because you bought The Castle Doctrine sometime in the last 10 months as part of the paid alpha period.
First, a bit of good news: the alpha is coming to an end, and the big Steam release is slated for Wednesday, January 29. The game has come a long way since it launched into the alpha, and I'm deeply indebted to all of you who hammered on it and helped me improve it.
Each of you will be receive an email that explains how to get the game on Steam, for free, at launch time.
Next, the contest. This is the last week of the alpha, and to celebrate, you can STEAL REAL MONEY.
Read all about it here: (edited-go to web page)
Good luck, and enjoy!
Jason
Curiosity and good reviews made me buy the alpha so it will be interesting to see if the $16 forever doesn't waver.