Price Increase for All Artifex Mundi Games

Also I don't buy shit games just for easy gamerscore I have respect for myself not to say I don't have some people on my friends list that hate themselves and there bank accounts will be showing it 😂

Mttyd4 said:Says the person with Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth on their tag

Forrestal said:Hello, Forrestal;

Thanks for coming here and posting this message. Could you please take a look at the pricing in Mexico? The games used to be $135 MXN (about $7 USD) and are now $399 MXN (about $20 USD). That's almost 3x the original price! If you definitely have to raise the prices on ALL the games, at least make it 50% everywhere.

Looks like I will be waiting on sales now to get them, I do have 3 games, haven't finished any yet. Slowly but surely

Forrestal said:That's a load of bullshit and you know it!

Artifex Mundi Fantasy Bundle is the perfect example. Regular price was 14,99€ with last sale 7,50€ (early december). Last week you doubled the price to 29,99€ (100% price increase). The new "sale" is 20% off = 23,99€. That's a 320% price increase! Nobody "saves" 20, 25 or 30%. That's why people are upset.

You can spit them out on a weekly basis with the huge backlog that's still waiting for us. 10€ was a sweet price for early adaptors and we cheap guys could buy them on sale. It was a win for everybody. But now it costs 15€. There is a shitload of games in that price range that give me way more for my money. You now have to compete with those games. And to be honest: You can't even dream of competing with them.

increasing price on already-released games is a poor sales tactic, no matter what is said. i've never heard of this in ANY gaming company. ever. the older a game gets, they cheaper it gets. been that way since games started releasing. increasing price is reverse-thinking, and bad for business. think of it this way. i got a dollar raise at work where i've been for a few years. so i decided to retroactively give myself a dollar raise for the entire time i've been working there. doesn't make sense to do that, now does it?

Hi Forrestal,

I wanted to gather what I think are the major complaints in a single post that I think represents most of what people are unhappy about.

1. Prices going up on old games

Games generally go down in price over time, because development is paid for, and they aren’t incurring additional costs. Even games that are really good still tend to trend down in price over time. The decision to change prices on older games is very unusual for this industry, and this runs counter to typical industry practices. If anything, older games are generally more heavily discounted before the release of new games to get people excited about the new game in a series. The only change that I can think of is the exchange rate eroding the profitability of older titles as a “new” expense. If there are new expenses on old games making them more expensive you should call them out explicitly.

2. No announcement before price changes

Generally when companies make price changes like this they tend to announce that they will be changing in the future to let everyone get a chance at the old pricing. If this was going to go into effect on March 1st people may have been unhappy about it, but everyone would have had a chance to buy before pricing went up. Announcing price changes before you make them softens the impact of the change. It also would have given everyone a chance to pick up games at the old price.

3. Price change effects on other platforms

Artifex Mundi games are available on PC, console and mobile, and have been available at a deep discount via Humble Bundle in the past. It’s not clear whether all gamers are paying a similar increase, or if certain platforms are expected to pay more. All of the reasons given for the price increase should affect iOS and Android as well, so I think it should be made clear whether they are seeing similar changes, and if not then why.

4. Some regions hit significantly harder than 50%

You’ve already commented on this, but it’s clearly something that people are upset about, and it violates the claim that prices went up by 50%.

5. Bundles went up in price 100-131%

Looking at storeparser.com and price history, the bundles were raised in price by significantly more than 50%, and now their non-sale price represents no discount over buying the games individually. This violates the claim that prices went up by 50%, and it’s not clear why there has been a change of strategy for bundles.

6. Putting games on sale immediately after raising prices

This raises a lot of questions about the strategy. If the games are worth $15, why are they immediately discounted. The sale undercuts the argument about needing to have a price increase, and the really large price increase on the bundles that now have a modest discount could be seen as trying to trick customers into thinking that they are getting a better deal now than they would last week, but in reality they are paying significantly more. As noted by some, this practice is illegal in some areas, but more importantly it calls the motivation of the price increase into question. In the future, I would wait a month between a price increase and a sale.

-DarwinX

TheAnonymity said:You weren't around when Rockstar hiked the 'budget' prices of GTA:IV, Max Payne 3, Red Dead Redemption when they became backwards compatible?

Forrestal said:This is a really flimsy excuse.

I can assure you nobody would be confused to see 3 consecutive games in a series at different price points. Media depreciates in price over time, barring a scenario where you have a rare collector's edition or a physical release with a low print count. You can pretty much pull any game series out of a hat and check their digital prices and see that the older games are cheaper than the newer games. This is common sense.

I'm going to use Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart as an example for my next argument.

The initial release date for this title was April 19 2012, as shown by a quick Google search. The XB1 port was released September 4 2015. Are you going to tell me with a straight face that a 2.5 year old port of a 6 year old game now suddenly surged in "quality" and demands a 50% price hike? I said this in a previous post, but your games do not require on going maintenance like service orientated games. You might release a patch or 2 for minor bug fixes, but after the initial release window I can't imagine there's any further work to be done on that release except for porting it to other platforms years later.

Why should people pay 50% more today on a game that was worked on and completed 6 years ago? What work is being done on this and your other older titles that justify this increase?

DarwinX said:The games have never been as expensive on PC as on Xbox. The old xbox sales price was the same as the regular windows store price. Windows store prices are still the same as they've always been. (Which, by the way, kind of invalidates the argument of MS fees playing a role in the price increase as I'd imagine those apply for the windows store, too.)


Forrestal said:That's quite understandable but I don't think turning down regular customers for it, is a good strategy.
I bought almost all of your games through the windows store. I really liked when they came to xbox and was a bit upset I had to buy them again. Because of the above mentioned price difference I only bought them on sale so at least I wouldn't have to pay more than I already did on windows.
This in turn means that the bundles are absolutely useless to me, since I usually already own at least one of the games. That also goes for people who bought a game on release, though. You are kind of encouraging people to hold off buying your games until the whole series is released so they can get the bundle.

To make it short, I really like your games but I don't see me paying twice for them anymore.

I just wana say a BIIIIIIG big thank you to artifex mundi because puttin the games up to £11.99 means you won't be getting ANY more of my money ill spend it elsewhere.

I get why they need to bring in more money, but raising the prices isn't going to do it. If anything, you'll see even less sales at full price and more people waiting for discounts than you currently do. Oh well. they'll learn during the next release when the numbers are worse...

Nothing to add but since there is developer interest in this thread I will add my voice to the discontent with this move. I do play these but just as idle time fillers, and won't pay more than about half of the old pricing scheme for them ($5-$7). They aren't worth a higher price point.

For me they scratch the same itch as crossword puzzles or jigsaw puzzles, which are much cheaper now by comparison. I'll gladly do that instead.

Piece goes up, demand goes down. Are they really going to make more money? I would have purchased some this week on sale, until I realized they hiked prices. Unfortunately, they outpriced me. There's not enough game there to justify the new price, even on sale.

MetalGearMark said:Looking at price history on StoreParser.com, GTA:IV was made available on the store for $19.99 and Red Dead Redemption for $29.99. They've both had frequent deep sales, but the purchase price hasn't increased.

Granted Red Dead Redemption was probably $19.99 in stores when they added it for $29.99, but they never made the digital version more expensive than it was previously sold for.

IXI FalcoN said:This...exactly this.

Raising prices on games going forward is completely defendable, but raising prices on games already released is not.

Even during big sales I was always like... meh still a bit too much, maybe if they were one or two € cheaper. Now I won't even need to think about them lol.

I hope they don't go bankrupt. Some people do enjoy this style of game and it would be a shame if they couldn't get them anymore. For us that don't care for that style game that much, why does this news bother you?

Maybe the price hike will prompt more studios to enter the market looking to snag those $5 - $10 consumers.

Forrestal,

Please don't let the people on TA affect any decisions you and the rest of Artifex Mundi makes. The opinions of the people here are not even close to a good indication of how the general public feels, especially since the only people who tend to comment on things like this are the ones upset about it. If people like your games and want to play them, they will buy them. Just let the sales numbers do the talking.

DarwinX said:I cant answer every post but I will take DarwinX post as he really good split those topics.

1. This change in price affects mostly our new customers - even in this topic can be seen that some of you can live with new titles costing $15. But we made this decision to somehow check if people are will to pay this amount for our titles and believe me or not people are find our games through store recommendations, friends and not always looking at the new releases or on release date at all. I can give example that we haven't recouped the cost of porting Grim Legends to Xbox One and it debuted in 2016... I can get a lot of examples where prices didn't drop after few years after release. Mostly indies - Costume Quest 2, Thomas Was Alone, Outlast, etc. In the AA/AAA market we see that after time prices are lowered by publishers but you're starting from $50/$60...

2. Yes, you can blame us, but it was hard do predict if this will soften the impact, personally I doubt it. Happened, we need to live with this.

3. Yes, mobile stores have seen price increase from $5 to $7. Here its more complicated because on some titles are not released by us but by external publisher and we don't have complete control over prices. On steam also but not on every title - you need to know that on other platforms we're releasing 10+ titles a year when on consoles we're taking the best 5-6.

4. As I said we've changed some regional pricing to reflect local price point I need to re-check if others games sold for US15 are sold for CAD15 or CAD20, but we will definitely make some change in coming weeks.

5 and 6 together:

Lest do some math because the numbers on storeparser.com are correct but misleading.

Game was 9.99, buying two games was 19.98.
Bundle of two games was 14.99 - 25% discount
Now game is 14.99, buying two games cost you 29.98
Now bundle of two game is 23.99 - 20% discount
Price increased from 14.99 to 23.99 thats 62% more than previously and only to be on par with PS4 where we cant select some tier that we can on Xbox. So in reality you dont see 100% increase in price.

Storeparser is showing a 125% for bundles with 3 games because the base price is now 44.99. _BUT_ what are you seeing right now on store is a permanent change. This bundles aren't part of any deal (DWG, Spotlight). They are again showing on storeparser.com because the change was made in the last days.

Here we're taking advantage of how the store is working (strikethrough and yellow text showing how much you save) - previously we just configured the price as normal price and not everyone noticed that you can save by buying bundle.

We're definitely want to be a part of some sales in the future and open to discounting our "old titles" more than they were discounted previously.

Hope this helped even a little bit by i know that we will not make everyone happy :(