Are indie developers charging too little for their games?
Earlier this week, the founder of SteamSpy Sergey Galyonkin published some research into the pricing of indie games on Steam.
He found that the average indie game sold for $8.72, with that figure dropping to $4.63 during the aggressive price cuts of Steam Sales.
His conclusion: that indie developers – whose games, he says, shift on average 21,000 units – are selling themselves short, and should be charging more.
Pricing for anything is always a concern; charge too much and you could hamper sales, charge too little and you may sell more but make less.
So are indie games being sold for too low a price on Steam?
“While I agree the price of indie games is skewing more often in the ‘too low’ category, this is also a reality of the market in which they exist, and they cannot ignore the fact that the price will be seen in the context, with other games' prices compared by the players,” Ico Partners’ Thomas Bidaux says.
“As much as I would like to see games set a higher price, I know most indie studios feel like they only have one shot at launching their game, and they tend to prefer to be a bit too low than a bit too high.”
Positech's Cliff Harris adds: “In general no. There are some outliers though. Factorio is underpriced, in my opinion, some similar games are overpriced, but they are unusual. Most indie games are being sold at a price that is unsustainable in terms of earning a living for the developer.”
One of the concerns of selling games on Steam is that platform’s infamous sales, which see the price of games massively reduced. Galyonkin's research shows that games roughly halve in value during these price cut events: something that developers surely must take into consideration when pricing their game originally.
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