I wanted to bring this up before the 1.0.0 release, and in public on the dev forum so everyone knows what I said. Thrive is a free game, but it’s also 4.99 USD on Steam (in the USA, prices can vary by region even in the same currency). We’ve held that price since launching on Steam in 2021 (when the USD was worth a little more ), and while we see it as a “recommended donation”, most people who ever bought Thrive probably assumed the game is just a for-profit indie studio like everyone else, and was willing to pay on those grounds. Thrive is offering a good bit more in terms of features since 2021, and Thrive is still running out of money. Even adding 1 dollar to price would up revenue by almost 20% (we get some money from Patreon); is it worth upping the price?
There’s reasons not to: the “under five dollars” Steam category probably does us favors. The game also hasn’t gotten any longer, even if there’s more “stuff” in it. It also does feel weird hiking the price for something that is, again, free. Maybe 5 dollars is just the right price for Thrive, and people would walk away and our overall revenue would go down, but I doubt it. If we want to keep the price the same, I think it’s worth doing so intentionally, since it might be a decent chunk of money in the years to come.
The developer Wiki (and perhaps other places) has stated for years now that we would be updating the price once more of the game is released. So I don’t think it would be unexpected to do so at least.
But I do see the merits for keeping it under $5, as that is a particularly good number for impulse buys without having to decide if the game is worth it. Maybe $5.99 is still close enough, but going any higher might not be worth it until we get to the point where we have enough content to justify maybe a $9 price. (I think $9 or $9.99 is the next best interval for psychological reasons, before you go up one digit to $10)
And 5.99 would still let us have the under $5 price if we have any 20% off sales, which seems like a ideal state for our sale price.
But it might be best to check with someone who really knows about steam pricing. Perhaps we could ask on a subreddit or some place that we could consult to help us out with that decision?
Also, it might be good to have a final announcement as part of the last 0.9.x release before 1.0 about the last chance to get the game on steam before the price increases if de do raise it (even if I do think it sounds a bit strange due to it being sort of a donation)
I basically agree with this. I think it is still too early to increase the price. I’d say that once we are starting to really add macroscopic content would be when a price increase would make sense in my opinion.
I wouldn’t see yourself too short here. The length of a game in one play-through is not the only measure of quality, and that’s assuming 5 dollars was a fair price before. A lot of content has been added since people started being happy paying us five bucks.
Obviously you have the most personal stake in this decision, but sticking to this price point for a stage and a half is going to be years of potentially lower funding. You also said yourself in the last podcast that at the current rate there won’t be any budget to continue into Macroscopic unless something changes…
I am not against raising the price a bit, and don’t think there is anything wrong with it on principle. We obviously have miles to go and room for improvement - but, like Thim says, I really don’t think we should discount your work Hh (the work of other volunteers of course, but ya know, full time and everything). We have a genuinely fun game, that gets very good reviews, and which has demonstrated that consistent progress is possible with funding. It also is available for free and everything.
I do think there is a certain inelasticity with indie games. Multiplying the price by two (not saying we should do this, just an example) would not result in half the number of purchases - prices can differ to a greater extent and churn similar purchasing volume.
There’s also other things to consider, like discounting. People are more responsive to the value of the discount than the discount rate itself - a 10% discount on a 100 dollar game (10 dollars) would draw more attention than a 50% discount (2 dollars) on a 4 dollar game, even though the rate of the latter is larger. Just another piece to consider.
So I do think we have the right to consider bumping up the price (I say 2-3 dollars at most for now). It not being in the “Under 5 Dollars” category is the only thing that gives me pause, and I think we should research that a bit more. But as for the inherent principle of increasing the price, I do think we can increase it. I also don’t think there’s too many people going “I’ll ONLY look in this Under 5 Dollars section, and not the under 10 category!”
Ultimately, I will defer to Hh’s decision. He has every right to price the game however he wants it. Though I do think his work over the past 2 years is worth a bump in price
Maybe we can lock certain membranes behind small contributions as well /s
A lot of players on Steam have very weird ideas about indie game pricing, which to me doesn’t seem fair, but that’s just how it is. You can have way more content relative to the price than an AAA game and people will still complain about the price and leave negative reviews.
Not necessarily. Increasing the price may lower sales more than the additional price of remaining sales increases revenue thus leading to overall reduced funding.
I think this is also a big point for us, because if the inconvenience of having to download Thrive outside of Steam is less than the price, then people are going to just download the free version. Once we reach that point, our sale profits might just nosedive once we reach that critical price.
Exactly. And even if we had double the amount of content / game length we had at 5 bucks, 10 bucks might still be viewed by the players on Steam as too high price.
Honestly, I have a pretty good idea that as red blood is likely to have a very disproportionate impact on Thrive’s age rating (if we were ever to get one, but I think we should still follow the rating guidelines as if we are aiming for a specific age rating) as a result we probably should put haemoglobin into a separate download. And due to recent Steam rules we would be “forced” to put a price on that. So once we reach macroscopic we can sell a haemoglobin DLC for a dollar.
), and while we see it as a “recommended donation”, most people who ever bought Thrive probably assumed the game is just a for-profit indie studio like everyone else, and was willing to pay on those grounds. Thrive is offering a good bit more in terms of features since 2021, and Thrive is still running out of money. Even adding 1 dollar to price would up revenue by almost 20% (we get some money from Patreon); is it worth upping the price?