Backstory in Game and Pirate King tiers have seen a ton of sales, which is great, except it’s taking a lot of time to edit all the content that’s coming in.
Before the Steam release, I had a good balance of work time between editing player content and working on game features and bugs. With the influx of new players from Steam, that’s been thrown off. In order to balance my time more like it used to be (back towards working on the game features and bugs), I’m planning on increasing the prices for these higher tiers. I do love player content, but I don’t want to impoverish the game development itself to add more and more backstory characters. Let’s let them be special.
This will take effect in the upcoming days – I’m not sure exactly when. Just a heads up for anyone considering one of these tiers.
August 3rd, 2016 - 9:34 pm
You’re doing great.
After all; you have created more content and better gameplay mechanics in six months than many triple-A development teams seem to create in a full year.
For what it is worth, much as I am a little sad that I didn’t grab an upgraded tier back when I had the cash, I am actually glad that you are raising the price for the tiers.
I do indeed see those tiers as being worth more than they were being offered at.
On another note, I have a question.
Is there a way for me to donate some extra cash atop the pirate king tier in the future?
Or should I just buy my friends copies of the game?
August 3rd, 2016 - 11:08 pm
You’re going to charge _more_ than $200!?
Well… I suspect that’ll have your desired effect, in any event.
Hopefully you’ll let animals breed like animals again in the future.
August 4th, 2016 - 5:40 am
I salute this decision!
August 4th, 2016 - 8:16 am
I was thinking “fair enough” to Tynan’s comments, and idly wondered how much the Pirate King DLC was. After checking, I’m thinking “WTF!!!!!11”
It’s £150 (Backstory in game is £95) and you’re getting swamped with it? Lol, good for you Tynan, putting integrity above £££ earns big respect.
Make PK DLC £500 🙂 someone will still buy it!
August 4th, 2016 - 12:14 pm
If you do raise the pricing then it won’t be fair is you reduce it later in my opinion. Unless you make it very clear that it’s only increased for a while. Later on you may not be so busy and may choose to lower it again. It could seem unfair. But I don’t know Tynans plans if he will lower it again or what type of warning he will give to the public.
The only alternative I could see instead of raising price is to temporary disable the ability to purchase these packages and only allow limited purchase after each Alpha release so the devs are not swamped with entries? Just my thoughts on the subject but overall I don’t see any real negatives of raising the cost as long as it’s fair.
August 4th, 2016 - 2:22 pm
Jayson, the same argument could be made against lowering the price of any game, or basically any product ever, which is why it’s flawed. The price of any video game will inevitably be lowered over time to keep demand up after interest tapers off. It’s not unfair to people who purchased it before the price reduction, because they got to own it sooner and play it sooner and longer.
The same is true here. Any Pirate King that is purchased now will exist in game for longer than ones purchased later.
Plus when you purchase anything you are only agreeing to buy the product as it exists at the price that is listed. You aren’t entitled to a refund if the price is lowered later, because that was never part of the deal.
August 4th, 2016 - 10:36 pm
Instead of selling them for a fixed price you should auction off a fixed number of slots and award them to the highest bidders.
August 5th, 2016 - 1:10 am
I stand behind Tynan’s decision, and it makes sense. Tons of content has been added since those prices have been listed, not to mention he may not have the manpower or time with this new wave of players.
I do think that if he plans to lower the price again, he should tell us. A kinda late alternative is Tynan could make it so only so many can be bought per week or what ever, so he can manage the income. This is easier said then done and can have its own issues, but it is an idea.
Regardless, the game is great and please Tynan, keep moving forward.
August 5th, 2016 - 3:26 am
Thanks for announcing this beforehand, Tynan. While I don’t intend to purchase, it gives a clear sign about how serious this is for you.
August 5th, 2016 - 5:55 pm
This even makes sense from a marketing standpoint, price is going up but so is the “Specialness” of the item. In one AMA T said he sold like 140,000 copies – that’s a lot of people who might read your little story or whatever. (Also yeah if EVERY pawn I get has a backstory I might find it less special when I get a special one.)
However I would say that I do consider this content, so don’t worry too much about it slowing down dev a little bit because I would like to see a lot of new names and stories just because I’ve read the old ones. But yeah, no worries m8. Makes sense.
August 9th, 2016 - 1:29 pm
May I suggest you simply limit/disable the DLC for a while instead? I don’t think your argument makes a whole lot of sense, raising the price of DLC simply to discourage people from buying it seems like a complex solution to a simple problem, and I have no doubt many people will not understand this and complain about it.
You could also hire someone part-time to do the grunt work so you can focus on the game?
August 10th, 2016 - 7:49 am
Marketing gimmick.
August 10th, 2016 - 9:23 pm
It appears that the idea is that a higher price means less people willing to buy the tier.
A rise in price will deter some from buying this tier.
However, the supply is, (at this time quite literally) unlimited for this “interesting” item.
So, this tier is not particularly price sensitive.
That is to say that people will still buy it, in nearly the same amounts, regardless of the price.
So, correct me if I’m wrong, or if I left something out, but I believe that there are a few key points.
1) The supply is supposed to be (virtually) unlimited.
2) The *total* volume of *all* tier sales to date, or in the future, is not the issue; see 1.
3) *Monthly* tier sale volume is an issue that is reducing the development time for other features.
Taking those into consideration, I am not sure what would be best.
Obviously, a hard limit cap on *total* tier sales is undesirable, as the tier being virtually infinite is part of the design.
A *monthly* soft cap for tier sales would be effective, though likely quite difficult to implement.
The current price increase method, while somewhat effective in eliminating a percentage of the *total* tier sales, may only delay the problem with *monthly* tier sales instead of solving it.
Then again, maybe I’m wrong, and this price increase will actually bring a huge decrease in *monthly* and *total* tier volume sold.
After all, I am working off of my somewhat simplified and quite rudimentary knowledge of basic economics, specifically relating to supply:demand:price correlation.
(Supply limited + demand high = price high? Supply unlimited+ price medium = demand unknown; depends on product. Supply unlimited + price high = demand unknown; depends on product;slightly lower?)
Regardless, I do hope that this works out the way it was intended to.
(Reduction in monthly tier volume sold, allowing for more feature development time and less backstory proofreading and implementation. If I’m not mistaken.)
August 10th, 2016 - 9:35 pm
A very understandable decision though for me a sad one. Though at some point I had hoped to save enough to purchase a higher tier, at higher prices this takes the option from me but is acceptable. Nothing in life can be expected to stay the same, be the same, nor feel or be fair.
I’m not saying this is unfair, quite the contrary. I’ve had a few years to have had the chance to save up and buy in though chose other things. This is now something I have to live with and congratulate you on the overwhelming success that has driven you to this decision. Quite literally, you have been overwhelmed with people throwing money at you! Ha-Ha!
Enjoy the success and keep making the hard choices… I’ll keep playing and enjoying your hard work!
August 14th, 2016 - 10:39 am
TY You could have a draggy knob on the trade screen before the arrows that acts, like a thumbstick or something, to allow the drag for units mechanic.
Could also draw a line between mouse and the knob to designate a percentage of units instead of representing rate of change, or not. But that draggy knob idea you (someone?) had is seriously legit and preferred.
August 16th, 2016 - 4:43 pm
Yeah this should just be turned off at some point. Some argue we need it but this kind of stuff normally ends before it hits steam. I mean its neat but like he said having to waste programming time over and over again because more are doing that is why most people turn off those options for good after they hit this stage.
I mean you haven’t done it by now no one to blame but you for not doing it sooner. I want see new content we got tons of story as is, but there is so much more just content related we could do. hell removing some of these pesky mods by making the fix they created vanilla would be nice its my least fav part of modding community being involved so much in alpha, then people gripe when you want something the mod has already in vanilla that frankly should be in it in some form.
I mean we shouldn’t be depending on the moders for new content, when its alpha I want see how far this will go vanilla before I got mess with mods.
August 22nd, 2016 - 10:25 pm
Lots of good comments and great ideas above. I didn’t have time to read every one of them, so I’ll probably be repeating others with my own opinion variation here.
All tiers above “Name in Game” should have been removed completely before the game was released on Steam. I love Ludeon and I love RimWorld, but surely, surely, Tynan saw all those extra high-tier sales coming when the game released on Steam.
So now the tiers still remain, but cost even more. Tynan: wealthy != special. Capitalism is an intractable bitch that way. If you really wanted to make those tiers more “special,” they should have been made available to early adopters of the game (pre-Steam or even earlier), and then eliminated entirely.
I certainly understand the requirement for fundraising before and during development, but this high-tier pricing model is probably my only serious gripe. Ludeon missed a chance at foresight (long ago) and created this “problem” themselves.
I remain an ardent supporter of RimWorld.
August 22nd, 2016 - 10:34 pm
Well, the goal wasn’t to make high tiers ‘special’. As the blog post explains, the goal was simply to reduce the number of them that are entered per month, so I have time to actually work on the game. That’s all.