Battletech Price + Large discounts

[xChaoSx]

I don't even...
You are aware that Steam takes a straight 30% cut on all sales through their platform?
This means, out of the 40$ that you pay on steam, only ~28$ go to the publisher/developer. This is standard practice, physical copies in retail stores have an even lower profit margin.

If they sold keys for that price to key sellers, making the exact same amount of money in the process, the sellers selling the game for 32$ are still making 4$ of profit on every purchase.

Edit: GoG is no different in that regard, in case that's not clear by now...

And how much do you think Fanatical/WinGameStore take/pay for keys? You think they pay the same as steam and still sell the games for 20% pre-release? All this does is hurt game revenue and the backers in the longterm. I'm curious if Paradox pushed for this. I don't remember seeing previous HBS games on such discount reseller websites at launch.

 

[Phelan62]

Just a side note..... I backed a different Battletech game 2 years back, It was rather good.
But alas , it went belly-up a few months after beta was done ( good bye 100.00 ). I am so pumped up on this game....the 60.00 played down seams like a good investment. We on the forums wish you guys at Hair Brained, a Great Run in all your hard work.

 

[xXSunSlayerXx]

And how much do you think Fanatical/WinGameStore take/pay for keys? You think they pay the same as steam and still sell the games for 20% pre-release? All this does is hurt game revenue and the backers in the longterm. I'm curious if Paradox pushed for this. I don't remember seeing previous HBS games on such discount reseller websites at launch.

Like I said, if these sellers are legitimate (I've never heard of them, so I honestly don't know), then yes, they pay that price.
HBS has no reason to sell them the keys any cheaper, those small keystores don't have enough leverage to pull that off.
The reason why they are selling the game so cheap is because if they did not, nobody would buy from them. Selling at a lower profit margin is better than not selling any copies at all.
This is the entire business concept behind (legitimate) key sellers.

 

[HonorKnight]

HBS has no reason to sell them the keys any cheaper, those small keystores don't have enough leverage to pull that off.

Like other games, and other products in general, there is often an incentive to charge different prices in different markets (see https://steamdb.info/app/637090/ as gruese mentioned). Clearly HBS doesn't get the same profit from a $12.38 (converted to US Dollars) sale in Russia as they get from a $39.99 sale in the US. So maybe these discount key sites are exploiting that, buying keys in cheaper markets and selling them to people in more expensive markets? I hope Steam has some way to protect against that.

 

[Wanderer2142]

Like other games, and other products in general, there is often an incentive to charge different prices in different markets (see https://steamdb.info/app/637090/ as gruese mentioned). Clearly HBS doesn't get the same profit from a $12.38 (converted to US Dollars) sale in Russia as they get from a $39.99 sale in the US. So maybe these discount key sites are exploiting that, buying keys in cheaper markets and selling them to people in more expensive markets? I hope Steam has some way to protect against that.

That's already implemented on Steam. They essentially block gifting of games to other regions where the price difference is too large. Which is to say, they effectively region lock the games.

Don't know about GoG, but they probably do a similar thing.

 

[xXSunSlayerXx]

Like other games, and other products in general, there is often an incentive to charge different prices in different markets (see https://steamdb.info/app/637090/ as gruese mentioned). Clearly HBS doesn't get the same profit from a $12.38 (converted to US Dollars) sale in Russia as they get from a $39.99 sale in the US. So maybe these discount key sites are exploiting that, buying keys in cheaper markets and selling them to people in more expensive markets? I hope Steam has some way to protect against that.

Yeah, buying cheaper keys in other markets is a serious problem, but I would not consider that to be the actions of a legitimate keyseller. I reserve judgment about the origin of the aforementioned keys, I just wanted to point out that it would be financially viable to sell legitimate keys at that price.

How Steam deals with keys from different regions varies from title to title, it can range from needing a vpn to activate the game, to needing a vpn every time you start the game. It is, however, not something that can ever really be prevented completely.

Don't know about GoG, but they probably do a similar thing.

It is not possible to buy keys for GoG anywhere, also any regional pricing difference is only added to your wallet as store credit. Therefore, any kind of large scale region-pricing fraud is impossible on GoG, but individuals can still get some of their games cheaper that way.

 

[HonorKnight]

That's already implemented on Steam. They essentially block gifting of games to other regions where the price difference is too large. Which is to say, they effectively region lock the games.

Don't know about GoG, but they probably do a similar thing.

Doesn't GoG pride itself on being DRM-free? The sort of thing you're describing is... well... DRM.

 

[xXSunSlayerXx]

Doesn't GoG pride itself on being DRM-free? The sort of thing you're describing is... well... DRM.

GoG does indeed not have any form of region locking in place.

 

[Wanderer2142]

It is not possible to buy keys for GoG anywhere, also any regional pricing difference is only added to your wallet as store credit. Therefore, any kind of large scale region-pricing fraud is impossible on GoG, but individuals can still get some of their games cheaper that way.

Would sort of beg the question as to which way this actually goes, because of somebody flying to Russia to buy a game, using their US credit card in the store (that is still thinking the user is from the US) would essentially get a small discount from being currently located in Russia.

That said though, if there isn't any outside keys that can get in the system, reverse-importation problems are moot. Reverse-importation being the scenario being described, just dated back to the days of Nintendo games having different prices between Japan and North America.

 

[Wanderer2142]

Addendum, per the GoG Fair Price FAQ:

Fair Price Package is a form of store credit, which we give back when you buy a regionally-priced game that is more expensive in your region, compared to most other regions.
So, if you buy a game for 40 Euro (so roughly 45 USD), but the same game costs 40 USD in the United States and most other regions, we give you back the 5 USD difference, in store credit.
Regional pricing is something that is undertaken at the request of the company for whom we are selling the game, but we do our best to go the extra mile and make it right for everyone.

That is to say, unless HBS/Paradox is extremely micromanaging the price points across the world, I doubt the clause is really going to get triggered much. More likely than not, HBS will set one base price in USD for the other regional prices to be based off of, if only because I doubt HBS has resources in every major region of the world to understand selling points of that particular region. Not to mention that there may not be a sizable enough buyer population in that particular region to warrant a drastically different price.

 

[HonorKnight]

Would sort of beg the question as to which way this actually goes, because of somebody flying to Russia to buy a game, using their US credit card in the store (that is still thinking the user is from the US) would essentially get a small discount from being currently located in Russia.

You realize that BattleTech is all digital downloads, right? Why would you need to fly somewhere for that?

 

[snoopfrogg85]

Greetings MechWarriors!

Just a gentle reminder to please stay respectful when posting and to keep posts directed at the topic being discussed at hand and not directed towards the individuals themselves. Directing posts towards individuals can cause friction within the thread and can result in Jump Drive malfunctions.

So please, when posting, keep posts on topic and not directed at the individuals making the posts and stay respectful.

Thank You,

-Mei

Random, and off topic, but miss your and everyone else's avatars from the original forums... hard to tell you guys apart now without you know 'reading' the name of the poster.

On topic though, I don't mind having paid x-amount more as a Backer, but a) I do consider it an investment as I expected a return (a well developed game) which we are getting and b) as an investor i expect something extra for the backing to begin with (again, we are getting this) so I'm pretty satisfied overall. How much another retailer sells it doesn't mean much as everything is cheaper over time.

Have to say I'm surprised at the price disparity in other reasons, surely this is more cause for concern

 

[Wanderer2142]

You realize that BattleTech is all digital downloads, right? Why would you need to fly somewhere for that?

To buy in bulk, if the concern is regional pricing being drastically different. The same way that reverse-importation happened a few decades ago.

Would question whether Customs asks you about spending $1000 on digital codes that don't take up any space in your luggage.

More to the point, at least for those of us in the tech industry, getting shipped out to China or India is a pretty regular exercise for business reasons...

 

[xXSunSlayerXx]

To buy in bulk, if the concern is regional pricing being drastically different. The same way that reverse-importation happened a few decades ago.

Would question whether Customs asks you about spending $1000 on digital codes that don't take up any space in your luggage.

More to the point, at least for those of us in the tech industry, getting shipped out to China or India is a pretty regular exercise for business reasons...

You could 'travel' to Russia more easily via VPN

 

[Mojo Amok]

Like I said, if these sellers are legitimate (I've never heard of them, so I honestly don't know), then yes, they pay that price.
HBS has no reason to sell them the keys any cheaper, those small keystores don't have enough leverage to pull that off.
The reason why they are selling the game so cheap is because if they did not, nobody would buy from them. Selling at a lower profit margin is better than not selling any copies at all.
This is the entire business concept behind (legitimate) key sellers.

I can say from personal experience that Fanatical is legit - web searches for problems with Fanatical from a few days back also turned up dry. I've never heard of region locked issues with them either, which can happen even with something reputable like GMG (at least occasionally).

It used to be called 'Bundlestars' and I have gotten a good deal of titles from them, the most recent being War of the Chosen.

I've never heard of WinGameStore.

Greetings MechWarriors!

Just a gentle reminder to please stay respectful when posting and to keep posts directed at the topic being discussed at hand and not directed towards the individuals themselves. Directing posts towards individuals can cause friction within the thread and can result in Jump Drive malfunctions.

So please, when posting, keep posts on topic and not directed at the individuals making the posts and stay respectful.

Thank You,

-Mei

YELLOW TEXT!!!!!

*backs away cautiously*

 

[Wanderer2142]

It is not possible to buy keys for GoG anywhere, also any regional pricing difference is only added to your wallet as store credit. Therefore, any kind of large scale region-pricing fraud is impossible on GoG, but individuals can still get some of their games cheaper that way.

As an aside, it looks like there are people that are trying to sell off GoG keys on websites. How reputable they are is a different matter.

https://www.kinguin.net/gog-games/

Which also provide region markers, seemingly.

 

[Jamey]

So I backed at the $50 level mainly to fund the extensive multiplayer that was promised and later mostly cut to a basic version of it. This was the only reason I increased from $25 was to get Solaris and competitive gaming. I didnt really care for playing beta, so i guess i paid $25 for a Stackpole novella. I get it, this is one of the risks of Kickstarter, but what really grinds my gears is I paid for this 3 years ago and now sells on steam for $39.99.

What makes it even worse is that they have given away codes to discount key sellers like Fanatical and WinGameStore that are selling it for $31.99/20%. Thats a total slap in the face to all backers. I dont know if this is Paradox driven, but it makes me not want to back anything HBS in the future, and i've backed every single HBS KS so far. I really hope they address this.

I’m sorry that you won’t be getting what you wanted most from backing Battletech.

I will reiterate what others have said that HBS has gone the extra mile to do right by their Shadowrun backers. Plus, in my opinion, each of their Shadowrun games was better than the last.

We can all hope for enough success for a Solaris VII expansion, more campaigns, and even a timeline expansion. I probably won’t get a lot out of a PVP based Solaris expansion, but I’d buy it and play it to be sure because I’m addicted to Battletech.

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

YELLOW TEXT!!!!!

*backs away cautiously*

Yes yellow text! We now have the technology .

It helps bring attention to a rather gentle reminder so it doesn't get lost in what is a very quick and dynamic discussion.

 

[TaurianMerc]

Yes yellow text! We now have the technology .

So when it turns orange, start to worry; if it goes read it's time to run and hide?

 

[Timaeus]

Yes yellow text! We now have the technology .

It helps bring attention to a rather gentle reminder so it doesn't get lost in what is a very quick and dynamic discussion.

Yup, just don't go replying to a yellow post around here publicly. Seriously. It's in the rules.