Blog post: Early access price and final price

[Jesterino]

are we going to have to re-buy the game once it gets released into 1.0?

No, just because you bought it during early access doesn't mean you'll lose access to it once it fully gets released. No worries.

That aside, I'm sure 40 USD would be fair price for a game like this.

[Kagea]

For me money is most of the time tight so when I saw a streamer play this game and I got interested in it 30$ sounded at first a bit much (mind you I buy most of my games on sale or when they drop heavely in price). The more I watched it the more I wanted to play it myself so I bought it in the end. I don't know how many hours I played of it because I play the DRM free Version (thank you again for giving us the possibility to choose) but I guess in the high hundreds. I never regret buying this game for the full price and tbh it didn't even feel early Access to me (compared to nowadays early access game standards).
Is this game worth 30$ YES! Is this game worth 60$ SURE! But will someone who never played the game see it that way? That I guess no one can tell. But what I am sure of is that the Rimworld Community will help make people understand that the game is worth it's price if it will be 30,40,50 or 60$ in the end.

[Ser Kitteh]

I think people are misunderstanding something about playtime. Playtime is NOT a good indicator of a quality of a game. I'd rather play 8 hours of amazing gameplay than 30 hours of average gameplay.

That being said, the fact that people have spent so much time on Rimworld can be a good indicator of quality.

[RawCode]

gametime itself is not indicator of content, quality and replayability.

yes i have ~300 hours and this makes game cost less then 0.1 per hour, but i could not know in advance, will i play that long or not...

[Cpt. DuctTape]

While I think that RimWorld has definitely earned a higher price tag with the amount of content it offers, I think that if the price was higher than 40-50 euros, then many potential players would think that "Eh, I'll buy it on a sale", and then never look at the game again. The thing with this game is that until somebody sinks some time into it, they won't get just how much you can do here, even without mods. Once they do then they will understand why the game costs 40/50 euros, but for a new player who has never tried the game before, that price might be too risky.

I don't know how Ludeon feels about demos, or if you can even make one for RimWorld, but having one for 1.0 might make the decision to buy easier for less wealthy players.

[lazyl]

I love this game and definitely think it's worth the money but of course I didn't know that before I bought it. It's extremely rare for me to ever buy a game that costs more than $30. I'll get maybe one every 3 years. I just have too many unplayed games in my library to justify it. Even if the game looks really good if it's $50 I'll just wait for a sale and if it never goes on sale then I just won't bother. There are more than enough good games out there to fill my time. I thought this game looked interesting for a long time but was always turned away by the price. If it was $20 I probably would have bought it at least a year earlier than I did.

[pktongrimworld]

personally, I got more time and enjoyment out of it than say, jurassic world evolution (60+ usd)

as for new comers, given how this will be compared to other games. I would say somewhere between 30 to 40 is the limit where you can push the price before naysayers get too judgemental and hold on it.


We KNOW how much fun this is from playing it, but most people will say: "oh, another one of those bad graphics"...

[Valkjosandi]

I personally think Rimworld is worth upwards of $40, but at the same time I must admit that I played a cracked version for quite a long time (I think this was back in alpha 12, and well before I had any kind of personal income lol ) and I bought it this evening, because I do feel that it's worth the asking price.

That said, I think that if there were a time-limited demo, 1-x hours playtime then it would be apparent just how deep this rabbit-hole goes. Especially if people are willing to read reviews and see the massive playtimes that people put in on Steam.

I feel that Rimworld is very much a case of gameplay > graphics, without the graphics necessarily even being bad.

P.S. Or there could be some more creative way to make a demo work.

Perhaps not allowing mods to be run with the demo, and then cutting it off when the player's base reaches a certain level of wealth, or research or progression &c. A gimped game so to speak. Because there will always be ways around copy protection, especially if you're an advocate of DRM-free. Which on its own gives the game some merits.

Sorry if this seems kind of all over the place, it's Janmastami today, and I went about 20 hours without food or water.

Keep up the good work! <3

[Consigliere]

Dear Tynan,

RimWorld has been a constant source of joy for me since almost two years, and there is no end in sight. Every game element is thought through thoroughly and well designed, thus resulting in a more complete experience than other genre colleagues like dwarf fortress and gnomoria (also great games!) manage to achieve. Players decisions and all the random factors come together to create stories that are truly rich and thrilling. For this unique game I personally would gladly pay above 100 Euros.

Of course, the buying decision is made before the actual experience. As others have pointed out before, the graphics may scare away some potential buyers at first glance. On the other hand, the reviews on Steam are extremely positive, and anyone looking for a story-driven colony simulator will not hesitate to buy RimWorld because of its graphics. I believe that a price of 40 to 45 € would be successful in convincing new players to buy the game and still be fair to the work that you put into the game.

I perfectly understand that the development of RimWorld needs a defined finishing point (Version 1.0). You need to deliver a finished product, and like you wrote, RimWorld would probably never reach a point at which it would really feel "done". You have been working for half a decade on this game, and you delivered the game that early backers wished and payed for. Surely, at times it has been also personally exhausting to be "stuck" with the same project for five years.

However, after a million copies sold, the community is full of people like me that would love to pay you for a professional development of RimWorld beyond version 1.0. I guess you will not feel the urge to work on RimWorld for a while, and economically wise I expect that after having created a top 25 ranked game on steam you will not need to work at all for very long. Still, since we are talking about fair pricing and making money here, I just wanted to express my wish that you may continue the development of RimWorld at a later point and transform my money into even more hours of great fun in the universe of RimWorld.

Best regards from Germany

[Tynan]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Happy to hear more views as well.

[Goldenpotatoes]

45$ is probably a good asking price on final release, although there are people who thought 30$ was too much for their wallet at the time (they may of been right a few versions ago, but it's more than worth it for the vanilla content now).

A time-limited demo (45-60 in-game days?) would probably help a ton with helping people decide on the purchase, if they aren't already the type to 'borrow' the game before buying it. It would at the least be a nice surprise in this day in age where actual game demos are rare and your 'trial' is the refund period before steam won't allow an automated refund.

[spidermonk]

I would be happy to pay a monthly subscription and see this game develop indefinitely.

[vzoxz0]

I think you should keep the price the same for two reasons:

When I bought it I was kind of pained by how expensive it was relative to many other games.

More people will buy it at the current price, and they will have an easier time convincing their friends to buy your game. Would you rather have 50 000 people buying the game at $40 or 66 000 people buying it at $30?

Obviously arbitrary numbers of sales there, as I have no data on your sales predictions.

tl;dr: I would be very careful increasing the price too much as it could hinder the "viral" spread of someone getting it and playing it, convincing his friends to get it too.

[erdrik]

...
More people will buy it at the current price, and they will have an easier time convincing their friends to buy your game. Would you rather have 50 000 people buying the game at $40 or 66 000 people buying it at $30?
...

I get what you are trying to say but your argument doesn't help.
50k * 40 = 2000k
66k * 30 = 1980k

Clearly the incentive would be the higher price...
I get that you provided "arbitrary numbers of sales" and the point is that more sales = more profit; but if you want your argument to hold weight it is usually a good idea that you, at the very least, present it in a manner that doesn't show a reason to move in the exact opposite of what you are trying to say.

[vzoxz0]

Okay, 66 677 people then, since you seem unfamiliar with back-of-an-envelope calculations.

The point was NOT that "more sales == more profit" it is _more advertising_ which leads to _more sales over time_ and _more community work_ like mods, which this game RELIES on for value.

"more sales, given that earnings stay approximately the same == more net value" is a more accurate statement.

I can tell you that for certain, if this game was priced at $40, I would never have bought it -- not because I don't have the money, but because my cost/benefit analysis would favour other games. I think more than a few other people think exactly the same way and start weighing options once prices go above $25.

Edit:

Steam Spy indicates this game has ~500 000 owners. It would be interesting to see other popular early access games (with similar stats) and what happened when they released, and whether they changed their numbers.