I think it's fairly well-known at this point, but I find it interesting that the game will never be on sale [0]:
> We state it on our steam page, but people are still asking about it so I want to state it officially. We don't plan any Factorio sale. I'm aware, that the sale can make a lot of money in a short period of time, but I believe that it is not worth it in the long run, and since we are not in financial pressure we can afford to think in the long run. We don't like sales for the same reason we don't like the 9.99 prices. We want to be honest with our customers. When it costs 20, we don't want to make it feel like 10 and something. The same is with the sale, as you are basically saying, that someone who doesn't want to waste his time by searching for sales or special offers has to pay more.
I like their reasoning, and I think it helps to show how focused they are on the quality of the game (as well as, you know, 8 years of early access).
I don't have any moral problems with sales. Some people have money and less time. Others have less money and more time. Sales let each of those groups use the resources they have acquire the product. People with less money but more time can spend that time hunting for deals. Busy people with cash can pay full price.
They already price discriminate. In Latin America Steam store you can by Factorio spending just US$9,00.
Some people value the product differently. If I'd play it for hours, probably it is money well spent, but I'm a casual gamer. The game looks nice, but I wouldn't spend the price of good books in it.
Moral arguments against price discrimination center around fairness and inefficient outcomes.
For example if a vaccine for an infectious disease was priced higher for people who are more likely to be exposed to that disease (because they have a greater willingness to pay), it could create an unfair burden on this buyer segment and even place the overall population health at risk. Just because a seller knows they have greater leverage over this vulnerable population.
I think medical care is a problematic example to use because health is already fraught with moral connotations, and medicine as a product category is not at all conducive to an efficient market.
Arguing, even correctly, that price discrimination is bad for healthcare does not necessarily imply that it's bad for other things. Healthcare is different.
Parents a and b are considering whether to enroll their children in a private school.
Parent A lives in a nice neighborhood that can lobby for better funding for public schools.
Parent B lives in a worse school district.
The private school realizes that parent B has worse options, and that they can upcharge parent B. The private school knows that at a certain price point parent A will simply decide to send their child to the high quality public school in their district, so they charge that parent less.
Parent B is disadvantaged because they have weaker bargaining power, and the price discrimination is simply exacerbating existing inequalities in the community.
I don't think that price discrimination is inherently unethical. But the criteria used to discriminate can certainly be unethical. Look up "reverse redlining" for example.
Except if you try and price gouge parent B, it doesn’t work because they’re poor. So instead you price gouge parent A because they are rich, by raising tuition and giving a charitable scholarship/discount/etc. to parent B.
Again, schooling is another example that is already heavily morally loaded (the opportunity we pass on to our children may be the most important aspect of all of society) and where there is nothing even approximating an efficient market.
My problem with sales is that time spent looking for sales is not at all socially beneficial, it's human labor that's completely wasted. If we want poorer people to have better access to the goods and services richer people buy, we should just give them more money.
Edit: In a way it reminds me of mining cryptocurrency. It's a system designed to reward people who can prove that they're wasting some other resource.
> that time spent looking for sales is not at all socially beneficial, it's human labor that's completely wasted.
A more "economically neutral" perspective (not that I claim it is a better perspective) is that there is labor that this particular human has available. Letting them choose to spend it on hunting down a sale is strictly better than removing that choice. There may be "better" things they could do with it according to you, but ultimately it should be their choice.
The irony is particulary deep here because hunting down a sale is surely no less wasteful to society than actually playing Factorio which is a pointless videogame famous for being an addictive time-sink. If the goal was to maximize societal benefit, we'd remove Factorio from the market entirely.
> If we want poorer people to have better access to the goods and services richer people buy, we should just give them more money.
I think you're jumping to a conclusion that these people are particularly poor. But my only claim is that people have different relative distributions of money versus time, and that is probably true at all wealth levels. There are both idle rich and workaholics. There are poor folks working three jobs and raising three kids and others that are couch potatoes.
Sales are a way to let consumers at any economic level reflect their relative priority between time and cash.
> A more "economically neutral" perspective (not that I claim it is a better perspective) is that there is labor that this particular human has available. Letting them choose to spend it on hunting down a sale is strictly better than removing that choice. There may be "better" things they could do with it according to you, but ultimately it should be their choice.
Unless you consider the sale price as the base price, in which case you're forcing people to spend time hunting a sale to not get gouged, and it's strictly worse than having a fixed lower price.
I can see the value of letting people pay with time if they are less inclined to pay with money, but I wish we could let them pay by actually doing something useful with that time, rather than by having them waste it (and I don't think entertainment is a total waste of time).
I don't know of a good way to actually make that happen, and I'm not suggesting we should ban sales or anything like that, just that the current system wastes people's time and it would be better if it didn't.
> If the goal was to maximize societal benefit, we'd remove Factorio from the market entirely.
I suppose you're one of those people who sees video games as, well, I'll use your own words:
> pointless...addictive time-sink
The same could be said of novels, movies, sporting events, TV shows, and plays.
Removing art and entertainment from society because it's not "socially beneficial" is a terrible policy.
The end of society should be to improve human life. Producing things that are economically useful to produce more things is a means to that end. It's a very effective means. But if you confuse it with an end, you get a terrible repressive society where no one's allowed to do anything for the joy of it.
People voluntarily use their money to buy things they enjoy. Money is basically a credit the economy gives to people for helping the economy produce stuff, that then allows them to consume some of the stuff that the economy produces.
If you disallow people from spending their money on things that aren't "socially beneficial," the whole economic system implodes because (a) there's no incentive for people to produce stuff because they're not allowed to get consumption as a reward, and (b) there's no consumption to drive the incentive to produce stuff.
From what I've read sales are not about making a lot of money in a short period of time, but are instead about seeding the community for more word of mouth. That games do best over the long run when they hit a critical mass where they get most of their purchases from people recommending it and sales were a strategy to ramp that up faster.
I also like it. But I doubt that most games can afford to take a stand like that. Only the most well received can do this IMHO.
There are always people only secondarily interested in a game. Maybe it's not their first priority genre or whatever. If the game company needs to convert as many customers as possible, staying with the same price forever probably won't work out.
I think sadly this mindset really limits their playerbase, and will ultimately expedite the decline of the game and online community.
Steam Sales have a massive effect on games - thousands of new players try the game simply because it happens to be 15% off today or whatever. Even the "Free Weekend" play converts thousands of players that find the game fun. It makes trying out a new indie-type game feel less like a risk.
Now that Factorio has real competition in this type of building game (Satisfactory - which I highly recommend if you liked Factorio), they might discover their principled stance against any Sale might waver a bit.
To each their own I suppose. One day, Factorio will be on sale... once the playerbase dries up and they desperately try to inject life into the game. Or not... maybe they let it wilt away... which would be a real shame.
you're going to have an extremely hard time justifying that this attitude has or will "expedite the decline of the game and online community" given that they've been in early access for 4 years, continue to add sales, have an exclusive (and active) reddit, active modding scene, etc. 4 years is practically infinity when it comes to the uber-long tail distribution of indie video game success stories; not only that, but the game continues to add and keep players.
Eh, Steam Early Release program has this effect with a _lot_ of games that, otherwise, would never see the light of day.
You can play an ER game, get bored, stop playing for 6 months, and then come back and tons of new content is available now. This keeps the player base around too.
Usually though, once a game calls itself "1.0" or whatever, the new free features tend to stop shortly thereafter.
(which is more than fair, it's a "completed" product now)
Where will this game be in another 4 years, after little or no new content? All games have a shelf life.
The developer could stick to their principles and ride it out, and shutter the game once enough people have lost interest. Or... they could have a Steam Sale and extend the life for years at a time. We'll have to see...
FWIW, I play Factorio and Satisfactory for different things. Factorio is where I go when I want to whip around quickly with my designs, flinging around blueprints and optimizing to my heart's desire. There's also that base/tower defense element that can be a different kind of thing compared to what you get with Satisfactory.
Satisfactory is a more meditative experience for me where I enjoy building and exploring within a beautiful, hand-crafted world. I find myself building with cosmetics more so in mind over optimization.
Sometimes I'm in the mood for one or the other, but they feel distinct enough for me to not substantially cannibalize my time. Though, mine is but one point of data!
Getting on the front page of Steam is a massive boon to any game. Having a sale, even if small (not unusual on Steam) is often enough to incentivize people to try it.
I've not played the Demo version - but usually demo's are pretty limited. Free Weekend's tend to be the full game, multiplayer and everything. It's a fantastic way to get a ton of new players instantly - and many (myself on several occasions) become paying customers as soon as the weekend ends. Basically, it's letting the game sell itself at that point.
Steam Summer/Winter Sale is huge. That's why it's silly for these developers to totally write off any sale forever. Very foolish and not wise. Then again, they did say that over 4 years ago... and "they" do say to never say never.
That's not really what I said. Assuming a game must be bad because it is offered at discount is .. not very wise. Not every good game is as lucky to be an indie hit with relatively low cost and high acceptance.
Also for me I probably will never buy Factorio because of this. I absolutely accept their decision but I don't have enough time for this game to justify 25 bucks I guess. I would rather play other untouched games in my collection first. I guess the honest business model saved me from spending money :) Still says nothing about the quality of the game.
Also, for quite a long time the tradition was that a game only goes on sale after a successor has been chosen. Steam sales are a comparatively new concept.
When Factorio 2 comes out, you will most likely be able to pick up Factorio for $10.
> We state it on our steam page, but people are still asking about it so I want to state it officially. We don't plan any Factorio sale. I'm aware, that the sale can make a lot of money in a short period of time, but I believe that it is not worth it in the long run, and since we are not in financial pressure we can afford to think in the long run. We don't like sales for the same reason we don't like the 9.99 prices. We want to be honest with our customers. When it costs 20, we don't want to make it feel like 10 and something. The same is with the sale, as you are basically saying, that someone who doesn't want to waste his time by searching for sales or special offers has to pay more.
I like their reasoning, and I think it helps to show how focused they are on the quality of the game (as well as, you know, 8 years of early access).
[0] https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-140