For "Visitors"

Yeah, we financed the game. It was founded. That's great. But why is awesome keep the same price? You pay to founding a game, to help it to come true. But now people just want to buy a game, not founding it (if not, they would have donated in kickstarter as many of us did).

I see no valid motivation keeping the kickstarter price to "thank you" the first backers. The first backers get the game for 20$, Isn't that enough? We got a tons of extra content and we helped to make this game become real. We were indeed rewarded.

Now we should want this game to grow more and get more players... And a 90$ indie alpha won't sell that much and won't create a nice image.

But there are rewards for buying the alpha; you're buying the Galactic Edition, I think. And if you think it's too much, well, wait half a year, and buy a brilliant game for 40!

Your questions, unfortunately, are all predicated by some assumptions that have no basis in reality, but more "well, this is how it's occasionally worked for others". That's fine to have those opinions, but it doesn't make them fact.

- I don't agree at all that your assumption that Steam is about affordable gaming. it's about widely accessible gaming. The fact that market forces also mean that in many cases that it drives prices down has nothing to do with it being Steam, but that shows the exact same behavior you see in ANY healthy market.
- You are not entitled to be in anyone's alpha or beta testing. Our presence on Steam was at the multiple requests a day to get some our early access packages available on steam. We put the package up on Steam that Valve would let us. We'll release the others when they let us do that.
- Steam is not Kickstarter. It's understandable that some people feel threatened that this might become the norm on Steam. I seriously doubt that's likely, but that's also how capitalism works. If other companies decide that it's the right way to build their game to have a smaller alpha crowd that really is motivated to see the game succeed, maybe it excludes some people who can't afford it, but it probably will result in higher quality games. That's entirely conjecture though. There are risks for any company releasing games and early access, no matter what they do or how they do it.
- Steam HAS done a lot for PC gaming but only Kickstarter has had a meaningful impact on bringing back certain genre's (Our game, inXile's games, Doublefine, etc) that publishers have refused to touch because they don't feel there's the appropriate margin of safety. So the vocal minority on Steam may not feel Kickstarter should matter at this point, but you'll understand if we respectfully disagree.

If we wanted to do a money grab, as we've been accused of on Steam by no small number of people, we'd just have said '**** the early backers, and our large number of pre-orders who paid $90' and let everyone in for $40. We have given our reasons for keeping the current bar to entry high, and even though it might make financial sense to lower it, it does not make business sense. You're feeling that we are "doing it wrong" is, frankly, less important than abusing the trust of a great many people who thought they would be part of a fairly small community who would have priority to get into the game, and help us shape it.

I'm not going to continue to go point for point on this stuff. We've explained it. Either you agree with it, respectfully disagree with it but understand it, or think we're lying and somehow have ulterior motives for pricing something very counterintuitively to single handedly change the long established flow of the free market system. Which seems to be the implication of number of the vocal Steam community. Ockham's razor. Neither reddit, our own forums, or any of the gaming press however seem to agree with your assessment. At least not that I've been able to find.

As I've said. I have no issue with negativity or criticism. Any long time members of our forum can attest to the fact that we don't quash discussion critical of our game, our business, or anything else. But for people who just want to rage and stomp, they can do it elsewhere. We've already deleted a number of threads and banned obvious trolls who just came here to stomp their feet, swear and call me, and others, racial epithets/ethnic slurs and all form of remarkably ignorant pejoratives. If you want to continue this discussion in the mature manner you've shown so far, please do. I'm sure the community will continue to be willing to talk in an adult manner with you about your disagreements. I, however, need to get back to making a game.

I was, however, just warning trolls and people coming to flamebait that the same rules we've always had still apply. It will not be tolerated. They're our forums. If you don't like it. Tough.

You, sir, are not a troll. I may disagree with you, but I'm a full grown man with a mostly grown up mind and can disagree with someone while still understanding their point of view.

Err what? To me steam was always the archetype of overpriced games. Importing games from the UK usually is like 10 to 20€ or even 30€ cheaper than buying on steam. Even going to a local offline shop often is cheaper than steam. Sure steam is nice for certain things and has great special offers now and then, but the regular prices on steam always were quite high. How do you come to the conclusion that steam is "affordable pc gaming"?

Also I think it is legit to laugh a bit about the fact that while people in the steamforums rage PA is still top 5 in the steam topsellers. Or about images that show dozens of members of "I will boycott game X" group playing game X.

Awesome post!

I full agree on this.

When i check now i see bioshock infinite in steam for 49.99
Now, then i check the prices here in holland, i see the cheapest is now 27.99
Half of all are under 40 euro's.
Source: http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/262706/b ... te-pc.html

This is with a lot of games.
Sure, steam as a lot of good discounts now and then, but overall steam is still quite expensive, even with launch titles.

For example, company of heroes 2.
49.99 on steam.
Local stores, 36 euros.
source: http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/310398/c ... -2-pc.html

There's also no reason Steam can't have a kickstarter-esque feature to it. There can be more than one person with the same idea. I just dislike when people say "Steam isn't kickstarter." Why not?

I think the whole 'Steam is about affordable gaming' comes from the sales. My Steam library is full of games that I have picked up for a couple of Euros. What people tend to forget is that those really affordable sales usually happen long after the games have been released.

If you have patience and wait for a good sale Steam is pretty awesome. If you wait for PA's release you get a pretty awesome deal as well imo. €30/$40 for PA is very reasonable in my book. You even get goodies if you buy the release version for $40 in the Uber store.


Players can complain about the alpha price but it helps the alpha. When I look at the alpha forum I see lots of interested and dedicated fans providing awesome and helpful feedback. Technical issues can be investigated and solved more quickly. It's good for the development of PA and that's the main goal here, isn't it?

Yes i have skiped your joke ,sorry for that . But that changes nothing on the topic.
I don't care if you think i live in germany or russia or even china it doesn't matter.


You still can buy the 90$ version of the finished game including the alpha on kickstarter as long as the alpha takes place(or did i get that wrong?). So why put it with this pricing on steam if nearly everybody can buy it on kickstarter, if not for the purpose of generating more profit.I don't even mean that in an negative way. You can use the additional profit for including more features in the game and you probably will.

But that again changes nothing on the topic, that you hurt the image of steam, by putting such a high priced alpha-version on the platform.As i said you could have waited till beta or till the finished game and then steam users had never seen such a high price tag on an alpha and you would have come not in this situation of explaining them why it must be 90$.

I have nothing against kickstarter . And I have nothing against people which pay an high amount of money to make projects like planetary anhilation possible.

But many(and with many i mean an huge amount) people and i have a huge problem that you exclude people, which are not as rich and don't have so much money that they can afford to pay + 40 $ extra for the alpha-version, from the alpha version.

It should not be a matter of money, if one of your fans or customers can participate on the alpha or not. That's just so wrong minded.Charge what ever you want on kickstarter but don't make the alpha exclusive for high priced packers. That's the bottomline of the problem.

You have never answered the question why or if gametesting ,feedback , bugreports and testing serverstability on a huger scale is nothing worth for you.All that is only possible if players participate on your alpha, that's what they give you, so why charge them on top of that 40 $ .Alpha is not free for the player . He/She takes his/her time to play a very unfinished game which has not many gameplayfeatures included at all at this moment which is not always fun and gives feedback as i said.

I dont care if im the only person here in this forum with this opinion but outside of this forum its excactly the oposit.

What? are you speaking for Steam/Valve? Because based on the writings for the Early Access System, they don't see to have a problem with "premium" pricing, if they didn't they wouldn't have allowed it to begin with. Seems like your displeasure is misdirected at Uber when really you should be voicing your concerns with Steam.

Mike

Sometimes you have to protect companys from them self.Steam has done a lot for the gaming community we dont care if steam is not seeing the problem at the moment.But there is a problem and we see it . It definitely hurts steam when companys like uber put such high priced alpha versions on steam, because steam was always, as i said, the archetype for affordable gaming and has introduced many people to the gaming world.

By the way with this ongoing rage of nearly all steam user about the pricing im not so sure if its a correct assumption to say that steam does not see the problem.I think or hope they see it now very clearly,before its to late.

The second and even more important problem is :

It should not be a matter of money, if one of your fans or customers can participate on the alpha or not. That's just so wrong minded.Charge what ever you want on kickstarter but don't make the alpha exclusive for high priced packers. That's the bottomline of the problem.


Especially to the second topic i would like to hear some opinion from garat or the other developers.

And yet, PA is still going pretty strong in Steam Top Seller's List, PA being on Steam in ANY respect is fully up to Steam, coming here to complain about Steam's Decisions is misdirected.

And as already mentioned before, Steam isn't always so affordable.

So why are you here then? It's not Uber's Fault thier pricing was accepted, so you're barking up the wrong tree here. It's not even the first Early Access title with 'premium' pricing either.

Second, Neutrino himself and others have been very clear that they have no reservations about the pricing(maybe about communication regarding the pricing), check around on the other threads about this topic and you'll see thier commitment to the people that helped them do something they love. They also defend the price on the merit of having higher quality Alpha Testers, that is needed because this is a Real Alpha, it's not about playing the game early, the game isn't even really a true game yet. So far it seems like only some consumers are up in arms, whereas anyone with above average knowledge/experience with Game Development back's Uber's decisions. To this point I have not seen any bad press stem from this issue.

Mike

Most alpha's tests are usually closed for very small audience, but PA alpha has 10000 participants before Steam, it's more than enough. 50000 alpha testers won't give better feedback than 10000, because only few thousands is really required. So Uber don't need more people in alpha, but they give opportunity to jump in for people who are super fan about game.

Uber will be super happy to run 40$ pre-orders on Steam, and keep early access only for backers and pre-orders from their store, but Valve not allow that.

Probably you don't get it, but there is thousands people who want to play unfinished game. But Uber don't need so many alpha testers, because game is really unfinished and they don't want to show game in that state to mass audience.

High price allow them to limit access to alpha/beta and make people think well before buying it:
http://www.reddit.com/r/planetaryannihi ... ?context=3

Because they don't need as many testers as people exist who would jump into when the price where lower. They already have more testers than any other game at this stage usually has. So it makes sense to put up a barrier to stop more people from flowing in.

The price 90$ is a pretty random barrier actually. It serves to only get dedicated fans. Yes dedicated fans who can pay 90$, which is unfair to some poorer people. But you could say the same about 60$ or 40$ there will always be somebody who doesn't have the money to get it who will have to wait till the price comes down or till he/she has made a bit of extra money. That's a problem of the world we live in, not of PA.
Also as I said: Steam is far away from being a generally affordable platform. Games on release are always pretty expensive on steam.

Ok, to address your issues here is an explanation (as I understand it):

The only reason PA is on Steam, is because the original kickstarter backers asked for it as part of the kickstarter.

Uber never intended to put PA on Steam initially, and certainly not the alpha. The only way to have the alpha available on Steam, is to sell it as an "Early Access" game.

So, put youself in Uber's shoes for a moment. You have a game that your backers want on Steam, and to do so you need to put it up for sale to the public. Do you say "screw you" to the backers and ignore Steam? If you put it on Steam, what price are you going to pick, when you are selling the same access in your own store for $90 (see the Galactic Edition pre-order for confirmation of this)?

I know what decision I would have made, were I in that position, and it is the same one Uber made. If you can buy it from Uber for $90, then the Steam price should also be $90. If people don't want to pay that for the alpha, then they don't have to buy the alpha; you can pre-order the Warfare Edition ($60 for beta access) or the Combat Edition ($40 for retail access and a couple of pre-order bonuses).

As I mentioned on another thread (which may well have been deleted now), this will blow over in a couple of weeks or less. Internet furore generally lasts 3 days or so, 2 weeks from now I believe everything will be back to normal and we can get back to arguing about the best units to put in, or the best ways to do things in an RTS.

That's not true. I've been in alpha and beta versions of games on Steam that weren't for sale there at the time.

I can't actually believe this needs this much discussion, its clear as day for me. Steam allowed Early Access for 90 bucks as did kickstarter. Price is the same cause thats a logical business move.

End of story :lol:

Well then colour me mistaken, I was under the impression that to put a game on the Steam platform there needed to be a sales aspect. Possibly it may be to do with Early Access vs. an intended retail only sale. TBH without being party to the discussions between Uber and Steam (Valve) I have no idea what options they were given in that respect.

I do know that Neutrino has confirmed that he wanted to put all 3 tiers up on Steam now ($90 alpha, $60 beta and $40 release, to match Galactic, Warfare and Combat preorders) but Valve flat refused to allow pre-orders up at the same time.

Also is that a stroopwafel I see on your avatar? Mmm... stroopwafel...

Two recent examples would be the Drunken Robot Pornography alpha and the Loadout beta. They were both on Steam for people who were part of the closed alpha/beta and didn't go on sale on Steam Early Access until more recently.

And yep, it's the best food ever.

I am too lazy to search and link it, but a mod -not neutrino, maybe ooo?- pretty directly answered that the problem with the preorder options is that steam does not allow for preorders 180 days ahead of the release.