Liam E 🚲 🦝TANUKI
@liambme.bsky.social
2.8K followers 390 following 530 posts
Game designer in Kyoto 🗾 Co-Founder of Denkiworks. Directing & Designing TANUKI: Pon's Summer. Creator of Cursed to Golf. 🦝⚡
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liambme.bsky.social
Aw Dale, I'm so sorry. My condolences.
liambme.bsky.social
Haha it certainly is very hard to not be cynical at the moment... but, what people are interested in design wise (as consumers) comes in waves imo. Bonk.
stuffedwomb.at
small games by tiny devs finding huge success by dropping all notions of expression and focusing on dopamine delivery has done some sort of heavy damage to whatever I believed in in the 2010s about game design
liambme.bsky.social
Yeah agreed. The "what is this person in relation to you" for your household question, when I am the only person in my household threw me a little. But, was generally pretty standard.
liambme.bsky.social
Yeah just did it, thank god one thing in this country that's an online form was easy... haha.
liambme.bsky.social
No, I totally agree with you on that. Steam's largest issue is the complete lack of curation, which means lowering your game to the lowest possible bottom line for visibility = bad. I definitely agree.
liambme.bsky.social
Haha not to disagree, your question of asking was "Do devs control steam sales?" - not, "How many devs do opt out?".

That itself is a larger question, that is ultimately not really related to value necessarily. That can be a myriad of factors such as; is it doing well? How long since launch? etc
liambme.bsky.social
100% control. The amount. Opting in. All of it.
liambme.bsky.social
I don't disagree with you. But, at least discounts are decided and controlled by Devs. But, yeah they all are indicative of a wider problem.
liambme.bsky.social
It just isn't a conversation point I'm having about this issue. (3 posts down, I literally say "I can see how poor anti-consumer this is"... so 🤷)
liambme.bsky.social
Because the post isn't about value for the consumer, it's about the effect GP and it's original pricing had on the perceived consumer value of video games and the detrimental effect. I'm a dev, commenting about a dev issue and then how we all eventually ended up here at $30 anyway.
liambme.bsky.social
"Forgot" lol. I mean it's a matter of value preference... it still doesn't change my point about the original pricing being wrong in general. Same as purchasing coffee from a cafe vs supermarket bought vs home grinded etc.
liambme.bsky.social
I mean, I agree with you that they weren't necessarily in the strongest of spots. But, the "netflix of games" was certainly something many was asking for and this was as close as it got. I think the biggest miss was also the awful ways they tied it into Xbox Live.
liambme.bsky.social
If you're thinking that yes, it would have continued to scale in price... beyond 40/50 bucks. Then perhaps.
liambme.bsky.social
But, it isn't... it's literally half the price of one copy of a new Halo with 200+ games bundled.

I absolutely disagree that with this as an initial pricing point it would have changed the userbase numbers it grew to. There was nothing else like it, $30 for a seemingly unlimited amount of titles?
liambme.bsky.social
I'm going to slightly add a caveat to this post of it seemingly being a thread about GP, instead of "game value". I think while GP has definitely contributed to the devaluing, alongside other subscription/F2P. It's also offered funding for game creators in a way really unseen before (less so now).
liambme.bsky.social
liambme.bsky.social
Not to completely play devil's advocate... but, $30 should have been the price from the start. A premium service, that offers games that retail at $40/50/60/70+ at "anytime", "anywhere", "no restrictions" pricing wouldn't have tanked the game economy of "how much is a game worth" for half a decade.
liambme.bsky.social
I could go ON-AND-ON lol, about how also subscription services changed game design forever too. With the player ability to just hop in and play something for 5 mins, then try something else. Ala, how TikTok changed content. But, hey, that's someone else's GDC talk another day.
liambme.bsky.social
I mean, I'm sure they thought the income subsidization of big titles Halo, Gears, Forza being on there but still being purchased would have balanced it all out. But, with the change of what is a console now and how "exclusives" changed, it really didn't work out.
liambme.bsky.social
Totally in agreement about the poor anti-consumer nature of this change. Definitely not defending MS either, as they made a rod for their own back.

But, with someone who's game will come to GPass eventually. This could have all been a different outcome if games were still valued appropriately.