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[Durante]

I don't see any repercussions other than many people will have to give up their dream of making games on their own. It is a bit sad, but ultimately if there's only a tiny audience for most indie games there's no point in making that many. So it comes down to the survival of the fittest.

That said, pure sales numbers with any context can be misleading. Blackwell Legacy (first game in a p'n'c adventure series) has 130k owners on Steam, while Blackwell Epiphany (fifth, final game in the series) has only 19k owners. The developer has stated though that Epiphany is their most commercially successful release.

I also agree with Robert @ Zeboyd Games, I often play indie games for their novelty and am interested in sequels only for very selected few that really, really resonated with me. Otherwise I'm going to skip the sequel(s) and look for games that provide that novelty factor.

Why should we be worried? This means that in order to get the attention en masse, the devs will try everything to come up with a hook, or better, go create games that will satisfy their target demographics who will buy their games anyway.

Yeah, all good points.

And really, what's the alternative? Putting games behind an arbitrary and ultimately random "curation" process?

Just read this. Nope nope nope. Whoever does the curation on GOG is a group of idiots, proven by the several times they refused to sell Cook, Serve, Delicious because "it looked too casual". Their curation is horseshit.

All curation will at some point make a decision you disagree with. And there's nothing you can do about it. That's why curation sucks. it sucked on Steam, and now it sucks on GoG.

Though, dr_rus has a good point. I agree, there was no promotion for this game. But still – how about Steam Curators, community, etc. So I wonder, does this work at all?

It does, that's why the game sold ~18k copies. Given that, as far as I know, it was made by one person, that number of sales at full price already seems completely sustainable (before even considering that it's a late port). And it's not like it will stop there.

Nah. I always wait for sales. Most PC gamers I know have also adopted this policy. Doesn't feel like a game has released unless it's listed at $5 or less.

I am a PC gamer, and I routinely "buy" games at ~150 USD tiers. Clearly, the statistics indicate that PC gamers generally spend over USD 100 per game

In all seriousness, SteamSpy has released actual numbers on this, and plenty of people buy games outside sales.

 

[Taruranto]

Man, I really Ys 6 bombing won't make Falcom backtrack their statement about Steam.

 

[Nzyme32]

I think the example being used in the OP are not very helpful for discussion, particularly when several of them have significant issues compared to their previous games. Trine 3 in particular with today's statements seem to show significant issues that people have not liked.

 

[derExperte]

It does, that's why the game sold ~18k copies. Given that, as far as I know, it was made by one person, that number of sales at full price already seems completely sustainable (before even considering that it's a late port). And it's not like it will stop there.

The Swindle has sold about 7500 units on Steam. Doesn't sound like a lot but it already "made its development budget back with PC sales alone". http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-08-27-pulling-off-the-swindle Some talk about marketing in there too, good read.

 

[Brashnir]

The Swindle has sold about 7500 units on Steam. Doesn't sound like a lot but it already "made its development budget back with PC sales alone". http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-08-27-pulling-off-the-swindle Some talk about marketing in there too, good read.

I don't know how many people worked on the Swindle, but if it's a single developer, I'd believe it. $15 x 7500 is $112,500, or $78,750 after Valve's (presumed) 30% cut. Depending on how long it took to develop, that's enough to live on for a while. It's not an extravagant amount of money, and it's certainly not much if it was developed by a team of even 3 people, but for a single dude, sure.

 

[Knurek]

What the chart shows is that there are a lot more games being released, and that there is not a corresponding jump in total sales due to a larger pool of available games. Medians are useful for limiting the effects of statistical outliers on the sample, and this industry is very much driven by statistical outliers.

Well, the fact that Rocket League and ARK sold both 1M units, doesn't really help the developers of other games, which sell 10k if not less.

 

[Brashnir]

Well, the fact that Rocket League and ARK sold both 1M units, doesn't really help the developers of other games, which sell 10k if not less.

I never said it did, but that's the reality of the business - It's a hard market to crack, and there's only so many dollars to go around. I guess the opportune question for those near the bottom of the scale is, "Is it better to get onto an oversaturated Steam marketplace and sell 2000 copies than it is to forego that market and sell X amount of copies elsewhere."

I think in most cases, X is lower than the number you'd get from being listed on Steam, especially when it's usually a case of X vs. X + Steam.

 

[BennyBlanco]

The data doesn't look so good for games released recently:

Stealth Bastard (2012.11.28): 229,171 ± 12,470
Stealth 2 (2015.04.30): 1,245 ± 919

Avernum 1 remake (2012.04.11): 89,073 ± 7,776
Avernum 2 remake (2015.01.14): 8,001 ± 2,330

Trine 2 (2013.07.06): 2,290,646 ± 39,264
Trine 3 (2015.04.21): 45,159 ± 5,537

Legend of Grimrock (2012.08.11): 927,175 ± 25,047
Legend of Grimrock 2 (2014.10.15): 146,143 ± 9,959

Hotline Miami (2012.10.23): 1,676,204 ± 33,628
Hotline Miami 2 (2015.03.10): 318,244 ± 14,692

Ys 3 (2012.03.19): 136,009 ± 9,608
Ys 6 (2015.04.28): 13,690 ± 3,049

Yes, the older titles have few years of sales, some at very high discounts going on for them, but I'm positive there's actual decrease in average sales per title.

Axiom Verge (2015.05.14): 17,423 ± 3,439
Elliot Quest (2014.10.10): 2,311 ± 1,252
Telepath Tactics (2015.04.16): 3,734 ± 1,592

All three games above would sell a lot more were they released in 2012-13, before Greenlight started.
(Provided they'd be released at all)

Rocket League 997,510 ± 25,71

If your game is fun and unique people will buy it. I haven't bought a single game on that list because none of them look interesting (besides grimrock 2 which i'll pick up on sale) and I have 600 other steam games to not play.

 

[BumblebeeCody]

• Indie bundles
• Monthly PSN+ games
• Monthly Games for Gold Games
• EA Access
• Many sales through GOG/Origin/Nuuvem/Steam/GMG/Amazon etc

Why would i buy your game at full price, let alone at all when i have hundreds of other games in my library from the above? The industry bought this upon themselves.

Depends on the user too. I bought Hotline Miami 2 because I did wanna play it. But I'm far from an active Steam user despite having a PC to run high end games. I don't even buy Steam sale games.

It is better to wait though unless it's something special.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I don't think many of those sales comparisons are useful.

Stealth Bastard: 229k sales. Bundled 4 times, base price $9.99, price has been $2.49 or less 11 times, price as low as $0.99. Metacritic 80.
Stealth 2: 1k sales. Launched exclusive to Wii U, later ported to Steam with no fanfare. Been on sale twice, both times for $7.49. Metacritic NA

Avernum 1: 89k sales. Bundled 3 times.Original base price $9.99, current base price $1.99, has been $4.99 5 times and $2.49 7 times. Has been $0.99 before. Metacritic 76.
Avernum 2: 8k sales. Base price: $19.99. Lowest price ever $9.99 (one sale), two sales for $13.49. Metacritic 78.

Trine 2: 2.2 million sales. Bundled 3 times (~1 million+ sales from bundles). Original base price $19.99, Has been below $10 13 times. Has been below $5 8 or 9 times. Metacritic 84. Steam review reception 97%
Trine 3: 45k sales. Base price $19.99. Lowest sale $14.99. No Metacritic, but divided Steam review reception (71%)

Legend of Grimrock: 925k sales. Bundled 3 times (700k+ bundle sales . Base price $14.99, has been below $10 7 times and below $5 4 times. Metacritic 82.
Legend of Grimrock 2: 150k sales. Base price $23.99. Has been below $10 twice. Metacritic NA
I have to run, but it looks to me like Legend of Grimrock 2 actually sold more, by dollar volume (which you consider that >2/3rds of Grimrock 1's sales appear to come from bundles), than the first game despite being out for less time and costing more.

 

[Nabs]

Man, I really Ys 6 bombing won't make Falcom backtrack their statement about Steam.

They know that Ys 6 is still Ys 6. Xseed put a lot of love into that port, but the game is no Origins or Oath.

 

[Winterblink]

I just can't be buying like five games a week. Not because I don't have the cash, I'm just already facing an impenetrable backlog as it is.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Don't forget that most indie titles get released on Steam and GoG these days. I bought Hotline Miami 2 on GoG for example so the copy is not included in steamspy data.

Eeeeh... I think "most" is a BIG stretch, even if you're just looking at prominent indie games... GOG has a much smaller catalogue. I also doubt they make up a large portion of sales.

 

[Crankshaft]

The games from this year have not gone on major sales yet. Lets wait a couple years and then look back to how these games sold after a couple summer\winter sales.

 

[Kssio_Aug]

I dont think we can take much in consideration without comparing the same period of time, out of a Steam sale.

 

[Gaz_RB]

I don't think it's anyone's fault. More games, bugger market, not everyone gets paid. Same in every industry, and it encourages greatness in order to stand out. Good thing for the most part.

Indie companies are just going to have to be more conscious of what the market can support, and then decide how much they should invest into the current product to make it worth it.

 

[randomengine]

The problem is VOLUME. When you increase the volume of released games, awesome games will still be a minority of the games available, therefore spreading mediocrity as the norm, and not increasing the frequency of awesome games.

Let's say Steam has 100 games total.

10 of those games will be terrible.
80 of those games will be OK, mediocre, are too short, fall into niche genres or certain playstyles.
10 of those games will be awesome, that everyone can enjoy.

Let's say Steam has 1000 games total.

100 of those games will be terrible.
850 of those games will be OK, mediocre, are too short, fall into niche genres or certain playstyles or are just plain too old.
50 of those games will be awesome, that everyone can enjoy.

Let's say Steam has 6000 games total.

1000 of those games will be terrible.
4900 of those games will be OK, mediocre, are too short, fall into niche genres or certain playstyles or are just plain too old.
100 of those games will be awesome, that everyone can enjoy.

As the number of awesome games rises to fulfill every playstyle and niche, the desire for gamers to try new games in that pile of mediocrity falls sharply. This at the same time the DEMO has almost disappeared, coupled with the rise in Free-To-Play. Games are just being shoveled (released) into a bin of mediocrity that gamers don't want to spend time sifting through.

 

[mnannola]

Lets see some statistics on how comparing those games at full price. My guess would be the sequel would be the same or more than the original.

Can't compare until a steam sales at 75 percent has gone by.

 

[NoPiece]

In addition to Steam opening up as a marketplace, there are also the effects of the increased availability of easy to use and free development tools in Unity and Unreal. That's generating way more games, good and bad, from more people.

 

[Joseph Merrick]

Is this a Steam issue or does it happen more often on Steam simply because there are so many more games? Most of those games had really quiet releases and a few of them were much worse than their predecessors. N++ recently launched on PS4 as part of a showcase and it's bombed horribly because the devs thought it'd sell itself, which sadly doesn't work in 2015 when there are a few interesting games coming out every single week.

it definitely would have sold itself if it wasn't so ridiculously priced. also, does anything sell at all if it's released as download only on ps4? feels like everything is way overpriced, and people will just wait for it to land on ps+.

 

[SonyToo!™]

Before Greenlight I was in the habit of keeping tabs on all the new releases on the Steam store every time I logged in.

Valve forced devs/pubs to do their own PR but I've almost totally stopped visiting game sites so unless I see it on GAF / YT I don't know about it. Besides I have little need of search for new games nowadays because of my backlog.

My usual Steam Store experience is now this.

Looks at an interesting new release - it's Early Access - no buy, will wait for full release (forgets about it or by the time it does launch my interest in playing that type of game has faded)

Dirt cheap sales that get lots of PR - "I really need to cut down my backlog and I wanna give the dev more money than the price of a coffee, will buy later at a decent price" rarely does.


TLDR - Low viability and backlog are why I don't buy games as much as before.

 

[Nemmy]

The saturation is real. I stopped paying any attention to Steam's store front page as I either have no idea what most of those games are, or I know I don't care about them. I basically treat the whole page as a big ad now.

I shook my head when after playing Terraria recently I was recommended like 3 or 4 very similar games by Steam. I watched their trailers and all of them looked basically like Terrarias with a twist. Now why would I want to spend time and money on a Terraria with a twist after sinking dozens of hours into the actual Terraria, instead of looking for something different? Same thing with indie puzzle platformers and roguelikes - play one, Steam recommends you plenty. Which is not a bad thing, but with a competition like that, individual game sales are bound to suffer.

Edit - and yup, indie games seem overpriced these days. 15-20 euros is way above what I'm willing to pay for an indie title. I don't even care about 50% sales now, as those get the price down to a much more reasonable looking 10 euros, but if I'm not sure if I really care about the game I'll wait for 5 euros pricetag anyway. So there's that.

 

[charlequin]

Just read this. Nope nope nope. Whoever does the curation on GOG is a group of idiots, proven by the several times they refused to sell Cook, Serve, Delicious because "it looked too casual". Their curation is horseshit.

Calm down there, hoss.

What the chart shows is that there are a lot more games being released, and that there is not a corresponding jump in total sales due to a larger pool of available games. Medians are useful for limiting the effects of statistical outliers on the sample, and this industry is very much driven by statistical outliers.

Yeah, I'd be interested in seeing percentiles -- how many copies do 95% of all releases sell in any given month? 75%? 50%? etc., alongside the total volume of releases and of sales in each month.

Well, the fact that Rocket League and ARK sold both 1M units, doesn't really help the developers of other games, which sell 10k if not less.

It also didn't help them before Steam existed, when approximately zero indie developers could support themselves on sales of PC games, or in 2011, when the vast majority of indie developers couldn't get their game listed on Steam and therefore sold 0k. The fact is that most indie titles are not going to be wildly successful, and that fact hasn't changed at any point in the last decade.

I shook my head when after playing Terraria recently I was recommended like 3 or 4 very similar games by Steam. I watched their trailers and all of them looked basically like Terrarias with a twist. Now why would I want to spend time and money on a Terraria with a twist after sinking dozens of hours into the actual Terraria, instead of looking for something different?

I think Valve has the same dopes working on their recommendations engine that power the Amazon marketing emails that are like "I see you just bought a new $800 TV. Would you be interested in seeing twenty-seven other $800 TVs?"

A smart engine on this kind of thing would look at a player who's logged 100 hours in Terraria, but sees that they were all a few years ago, and then suggest "hey remember how much fun you had with Terraria? This game has some similarities and it's been a while since you've played one like it."

 

[hooijdonk17]

Doom 2 sold plenty, your argument is invalid

That could have much to do with two things:

1. 1/3 of Doom 1 being available for FREE.
2. People are more willing to pay for more of a GREAT game, but less willing to pay for more of a GOOD game, and save the money for the next GREAT thing instead.

 

[x3sphere]

For me, the backlog got too big so I stopped impulse buying. I only buy games that I feel I'll play to completion now.

I'm not sure Steam's storefront is that much of an issue. Discovery could be better but if anything is truly good, it's going to get visibility on forums like these and word of mouth will follow.

 

[spekkeh]

Discovery could be better but if anything is truly good, it's going to get visibility on forums like these and word of mouth will follow.

I think the main problem (if there is in fact a problem) is that this doesn't happen as much anymore. There may be hundreds of people championing hundreds of different games, but none reach a critical mass to the point that you feel the need to be in on this in-thing. Rocket League seems to be a good example of this. Of course we don't know how the alternative reality would have played out, but it is likely that the main reason it became a success, was that millions of ps4 users had downloaded the game and were talking about it. So outside of huge marketing budgets, a curation like process seems necessary to create some success.

 

[szaromir]

What the chart shows is that there are a lot more games being released, and that there is not a corresponding jump in total sales due to a larger pool of available games.

I think the reason for that is that people got bored of indie bundles (indie royale, indie gala, groupees etc.) while they used to buy them en masse. After purchasing 10 bundles of 6-7 games and ultimately only trying 2-3 of those you don't bother anymore. At least that's the case for me and some of my friends, anecdotal evidence and all that.

I think the main problem (if there is in fact a problem) is that this doesn't happen as much anymore. There may be hundreds of people championing hundreds of different games, but none reach a critical mass to the point that you feel the need to be in on this in-thing. Rocket League seems to be a good example of this. Of course we don't know how the alternative reality would have played out, but it is likely that the main reason it became a success, was that millions of ps4 users had downloaded the game and were talking about it. So outside of huge marketing budgets, a curation like process seems necessary to create some success.

Rocket League is not the only game that got big this year. ARK, Cities Skylines and H1Z1 also posted very big numbers.

 

[Brashnir]

I think the reason for that is that people got bored of indie bundles (indie royale, indie gala, groupees etc.) while they used to buy them en masse. After purchasing 10 bundles of 6-7 games and ultimately only trying 2-3 of those you don't bother anymore. At least that's the case for me and some of my friends, anecdotal evidence and all that.



Rocket League is not the only game that got big this year. ARK, Cities Skylines and H1Z1 also posted very big numbers.

I think the reason for it is a lot simpler. People are buying the same amount of total games, but there are more games on the market to choose from. The chart doesn't indicate a significant drop in overall sales. And due to the way medians work, it gives an even more skewed look because the position of the median is going to be far lower on the overall sales chart with more releases due to the way median averages work.

 

[Bookoo]

EA was wrong. When people really wants a game, they dont wait for a sale. The sales you get from humble bundles or heavy discounts are from people who lay never have bought your game in the first place.

Well sort of...but I get their point. I may want the game, but now I know it will be on sale within a few months so it makes it easier to wait. That goes for even retail AAA games because retailers discount the crap out games a month or so after release.

Also with sequels for smaller scope games I get a bigger sense "more of the same" so I am more even more inclined to wait for a sale.

 

[ashecitism]

Venturebeat's take on this: http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/04/t...-an-indie-apocalypse-as-mobile-goes-triple-a/