Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Whose greed are you referring to?  It's on sale for $23 right now.   Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion was $29.99 in 2012.  Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade was $29.99 in 2017.

Most of Paradox's major expansions are $29.99 as well 

And putting aside how much everything else has gone up in cost since 2012, the other thing that has hit hard since 2012 is the VAT that developers are forced to eat that wasn't in effect in 2012.  So for instance, the typical European VAT is about 20%. So that list price of $29.99 is really Only about $25.  And Steam takes 30% as well.  

When you add up the math, we only see around $16 of it.  And this is an expansion that took a full development team a year to make.   New music, 30+ ships, voice actors, lots of new code, etc.  Not to mention the QA costs that inv

Meanwhile, people happy pay $13 *per month* for Spotify.  Adobe Creative Cloud is $40 per month.   A Starbucks Venti Latte is about $6. The average movie ticket price is $16 for one ticket -- more than we get for our DLC that players will enjoy for hundreds of hours.

So I ask you, who is being greedy?  

 

Reply #2 from Sins2 Forums Top

Well, it would seem my sallary is stuck in 2012, so 30 EUR are big money for me. Thats it. And if your sells are doing good, that means that I am poor. All I know Steam and most game developers make tens of milions of EUR or $ in profits and I can't afford DLC, so I came to forum to cry. And we can't change anything, can we? So I wish you well. bb

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Reply #3 from Sins2 Forums Top

I am not sure where you think there are all these profits you speak of.  The game studios are going bankrupt.

We are in the midst of a game crash because developers can't afford to make games at the prices users seem to think games should cost.

I empathize with you.  30 EUR is a lot.  It is on sale for 23 EUR right now at least.   

Stardock continues to do well because we have a lot of different titles.  I can say that this will be the last time we do an expansion this big.  This DLC was massive.  Over 30 brand-new ships along with a full, brand-new alien faction.   It took a team of around 11 people almost a year to make it.  It was a big risk for us.