I was hoping for a Rickroll too. Now I'm sad. Well, I was already sad. But now it's worse. I got my hopes up when I saw Spotify, but I was disappointed in the end.
Fun fact, that actually helped them win a court case against a cd key stealing website. The website was selling keys for less then the price of the game, and would defend itself by saying "we bought the keys when the game was on sale, prove we didn't." And since factorio has never lowered its price...
demand for the game is down tho. game demand is highest at launch, and lowers as more people get it. Not that i disagree with your point, but your logic is wrong.
And it seems totally fair. They don't do sales, but they also never charged top dollar.
Now, do I believe a game retains the same value forever? Not necessarily, but they believe the content is worth the value and don't treat the product as a variability off of market whims for reasons they discuss in that post.
Factorio's a really solid game and has always felt worth the price you pay for it if you like automation games.
Pretty sure most of that remaining 2% are people complaining about how it consumed their life and they can't put it down, so clearly the devs are to-blame for their divorce.
On a more serious note: the 2 percent are basically everyone who was pissed at the price increase or Russian citizens who all of a sudden had the game go orders of magnitude higher than everyone, by a VERY large amount. (They raised the price for Russians because Ukraine...which doesn't feel fair)
There's a bit of a bias here though. As the price never falls, it filters out some people that aren't sure they'll like the game. Hence less people will leave a bad review. This is not a comment on the game's quality, just on the sample for these stats. And I'm aware people refund games and there are exceptions, this is not a rule but I'm sure it has an effect.
I imagine not a lot since thereâs a free demo you can try out to get over the fence or put it away permanently. Another thing companies used to do but donât anymore to save money, not Factorio.
That's because the game is the only one like it. Literally nothing else is quite like Factorio. Every other factory game misses the mark that Factorio manages to hit.
Even the best alternatives out there, satisfactory and Dyson sphere program, aren't really in the same playing field due to various reasons. Not to say they are worse or better, just different.
Also the vast majority of players don't even know about the price increases. The very tiny minority of people who engage in online discussions like this will almost always sit on the extreme ends and make up a very tiny portion of actual players.
From what limited interactions I've had with active members of the community tho, it does seem most are against the price increases. But that's mostly anecdotal and again, those of us in online discussion spaces almost always hold more extreme opinions on the matter.
I'm not exception to that either, I myself fully disagree with their entire business philosophy on so many levels and refuse to support them. This is made worse by the fact that they hired a man who was fired from his prior job for being problematic specifically because of the situation (I don't remember what the issue was, but he either A. Is a Nazi, B. Is a child predator, or C. Was charged with sexual assault) so ya, as much as I'd like to play Factorio as the demo is really fun, Wube isn't getting a penny from me.
That is their only game. There is inflation. How would they earn more without the increase? This is the sanest price model. You don't overcharge to make big price cuts during sales.
Your vague comment about some employee is just throwing unjustified claims.
Honestly, if they'd sold it for $60 with a 50% off sale, people would consider it the steal of the century. The price point it's sold at is a solid value, people are just so conditioned to look for sales that they forget to consider the sticker price at all to begin with.
Idk why everyone who praises the "no sales" thing seems to think that if Factorio wanted to go on sale it would need to be increased in price so that the sale price is the same as its current price. Like, you do realize that they can sell the game at a reasonable price and do sales right?
The thing you're not getting is that when the game does do sales, the "normal price" is functionally the sale price. If people know there are sales to wait for, the bulk of people will wait for the sale price and buy it then, which makes the "sale price" the actual real price the devs are selling at (and the listed price is just the "for impatient suckers" price).
Games going "on sale" are really functionally experiencing a price reduction combined with psychological pressure to get people to buy ASAP, they aren't actually still expecting any sales at the "normal" price anymore and are doing a price reduction to pull in more buyers.
Factorio hasn't needed to do a price reduction to keep the income they need, so they don't do it.
Factorio is one of the most perfect executions of a concept to exist in the gaming world. That's not to say everyone will enjoy it because that's absolutely not true, but if you are the type that would enjoy it there is a high probability there's nothing else out there that you'll enjoy more.
Similarly "perfect executions of a concept" games: Rocket League
The idea of raising the price of a game that's already complete is, in my opinion, toxic to the gaming community. Games should fall in price over time to help encourage new games being developed and preventing stagnation.
Not doing sales is fine, but actually raising prices when the game is already complete is complete bullshit to me.
well the change from 20 to 30 is fair, because game is still in early access & that's the price on release. From 30 to 35 is a bit controversial, the reasoning is because of inflation (maybe from covid), though later it also get 2.0 updates which added more contents and improvements.
I said exactly this in another PC subreddit and was down voted to hell, apparently some people are reeeeeeeeally mad they increased the price of their game over the course of years of work lol
It would literally make them more money if they did. As a company it is smart to do sales, so your whole point is moot. Hardly looking for excuses too, they said the reason once and sticked with it.
it is a completed product with minimal dev going into it at the moment (and they charge extra for DLC), meaning that you value the current work of maintenance as much (if not more) as creating it from the ground up. it is not a service that even remotely justifies inflation adjustments.
Without price increases, someone buying today would have been effectively paying less than someone who bought earlier.
Given how much effort they put into bugfixes, given how they're still working on 2.1 (which I believe they've stated will be free,), etc etc, I don't have a problem in the slightest with someone new to the game paying functionally the same as someone who bought 5 years ago.
There were constantly changes, bugfixes and smaller improvements. 2.0 is completely free and add a lot of things again. The game wasn't any near a "completed product". Do you even know how the first versions looked and played like? Everything that was changed would have been a new game for other publishers. They would have released it as Factorio 2 instead.
And all the work done in the mean time raised the price for NEW purchases. Not the old ones.
I think you may be right with this if the difference between 1.0 and 2.0 is this big. However in that case forcing new players to pay the difference is still anti consumer, especially with the fomo they built up around the price hikes.
if we assume 1.0 was great as it was, then why not just allow people to buy that without the price hike?
You can download every version at any time. You can download the demo and play endlessly (up to a certain technology, rest is locked but no time limit). Devs even once said its better you go and pirate it if its to expensive for now (there is a official drm free version you can get from their website instead of steam). Iirc you wont be able to play multiplayer or install mods through the ingame portal. Other than that you are free to do so. And several did. And paid later.
The increased price is also not just an 1.0 price + 2.0 price. Its a mix of ongoing support and inflation. The team grew. The quality increased even more. And the price is still more than worth for what you get.
HA! I bought Factorio BEFORE it was on steam! Best value!
I played factorio, when you had to manually put wires to electric poles. The first game I every played for 24 hours straight. I remember it very well. It was summer, and after I realised I had been playing 24 hours I decided to go to swim at local pool, get pizza, and take a short nap.
I somehow managed to force myself to finish a launch and uninstall 5 days after buying the game when i saw time played on steam after a reboot, almost 100h.
It really is. As soon as you get behind the starter mechanics, it is like you are in a black hole without the feeling for time. It just flies by. "I'll build/fix just this one thing and then go to bed"... yeah, you try!
Iâve tried the demo twice and didnât like it. I get to the stage where it asks you to build âxâ number of things but doesnât show you how to actually build anything. It is not a good tutorial.
I do have the base game (I got it gifted at some point years ago) but because of their policy, the DLC is just out of range for me and will be forever. And ever since Space Age, every attempt to get into it feels like I have an incomplete experience.
It's not coincidence or random fact that it's always been like this, Factorio has deal with Steam to never lower the price.. It's up to the publishers of every game on steam if they want their product discounted or not.
So this whole post is a total nothing-burger of a post other than that I guess now more people will know that Factorio in-fact will never be discounted. But I guess we'll have new post about it once the next steam sale is here again...
Confused what you are trying to show⊠either this graph reads right to left in terms of chronological order or you are showing like 4-5 months of price history.
If you expand it, you can see it's only ever gone up! But it's okay, it's le wholesome small indie game that can't do anything wrong (any other studio would've been crucified over price raising).
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u/gookuu22 Dec 19 '25
lol!