Erik Rutins
Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline
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I see a few people here taking one or two games and jumping to conclusions about pricing policies, attitudes towards customers and future trends. With all due respect, while we welcome constructive criticism, some of these comments are ridiculous. We hold our customers in the highest regard and we do everything we can to continue to provide you with quality wargames at the most reasonable price that makes continuing this business possible for us and our developers. Whether you choose to buy a game at a particular price is entirely up to you, but I would appreciate if there were a bit more benefit of the doubt regarding our real costs and how we look on our customers.
The assumption that we are out to screw our customers, when I know what the real decision-making process is, gets on my nerves. We went out of our way with this release to offer two games combined (plus the bonus archival versions) for less than their previous combined price, with a substantial discount for existing customers that effectively gives more than one game away for free based on their previous prices and still provide free updates to the new release level. We hear the same thing from some posters whether a game is released that costs $80, $50 or $35. Apparently, there is a world where publishers and developers can develop, maintain and sell wargames for $5-$10 to a niche market and still make a living. Those of you who know where it is, please point me there, it sounds lovely.
In this reality, we are doing everything we can do to keep prices down and offer value. Customers regularly confuse what's possible in terms of pricing and development on mainstream computer games with huge markets and economies of scale that we don't have. Niche markets work differently. When you have a game that has a limited market and is developed with limited funding and a small team (in many cases, just one programmer), it makes a big difference in terms of what you can actually do in a year or two development-wise and how much the game has to cost in order to make it possible for even a single programmer to make a living working on the game full-time.
I think this reality is lost on many customers, who base their assumptions on what they see and hear of the mainstream games market, which may as well exist on another planet as far as out business realities are concerned. Frankly, for the budgets we have, I know that we do a heck of a lot more than most mainstream game publishers and developers could do with the same money. It is ultimately your decision whether we did a good enough job or not to deserve your money and that is the fair way that the market works. However, I would appreciate if some of you would make that decision without the unnecessary and incorrect assumptions about our motives, ethics or attitudes.
With all that said, I encourage previous customers again to try the free updates once they are available and I also hope that those of you with other theories on what goes on behind the scenes here will please leave them behind. The only thing we do, which is the only rational thing a business can do, is try to provide the most value we can for the price to encourage you to choose our products.
Regards,
- Erik
< Message edited by Erik Rutins -- 11/7/2010 6:31:10 PM >
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RE: Sorry, but this is wrong - 
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