Not wanting to discount your game I can get the notion of why, but this is certainly making me raise an eyebrow... or two. Factorio is about to increase from $30 to $35 on Jan 26.

To raise the price of your base game like that I haven't heard of or seen before - the likes of Interplay being greedy assholes is a completely different matter. Especially for a game that's been out for a while now (even after Early Access). If at all I would figure that should go into the cost of their upcoming expansion rather than the former.

Moving all those 1s and 0s around when producing extra copies to sell must be really costly. Yeaaaah...

"Everything is more expensive now, so we want more money."

I hate the precedent this could set.

They say the game is good (I don't think so personally) and there were hardly any discounts. So it's not only greed but a bit of common sense here. I disagree with their approach but hardly I can blame them.

As for the precedent I'm not sure, whatever the price it's not the main reason for demand.

It would be *nice* if every publisher increase the prices for their games because it would so much fun to watch the public reaction and the whole industry collapse as a result.

Yeah, double digit inflation sucks. I would also raise my income if i could, so good for them. Either it works, or not, supply and demand 101, and gaming, has alot of supply.

This reasoning sucks because if/when prices and rates go back to what they werw, will anyone remember this?

There's no incentive to change prices or de-shrinkflate shit if no one calls people out on them. At least here in Japan they use that excuse, but don't ever lower prices back. We just eat it up.

I think I read somewhere the developer was real stingy with discounts in the first place. Is also a real piece of work apparently, but that's really only a vague memory I don't feel like scrounging anything up for.

Big companies have been doing this for years.
Companies do it with regional pricing (exchange rates).
Dont see the difference and why this dev in particular is an issue or making a "precedent" with that in mind.

Price of beer keeps going up, so does food.

Just as well, one of the key developers is a total JK Rowling type.

An apologist for a transphobe, tried to Chewbacca their way out of an argument by invoking Stalin, and said McCarthy was right.

Documented, sourced, and cited.


And it wasn't the first time, either.

It's almost as if the corpoindustralist hellgame about killing all the indigenous creatures and trees might have been made by a real piece of work.

Satisfactory just has a better mouthfeel and taste in my mind. Plus it's in 3D, so you don't have to worry about Belt Hell, and costs just the same* for a very expansive world. I haven't kept track of Factiorio's development, but a lot of it hasn't really felt like it's added up to much of anything, whereas each milestone of Satisfactory has been radically different and additive.

*Until this price hike, anyway.

Yawn, more internet drama for which nobody should care about.

Whether they'll remember or not is irrelevant, because prices aren't going to go down. Prices are always slowly rising, we've just noticed because the high rate of inflation has caused them to rise quickly. When things get back to "normal", that will just mean a return to the lower rates of inflation - in other words prices will continue to rise, but more gradually like they did before. Prices aren't going to go down, and it's not because they think no one will notice. He's awful, but the game is good. I got it a long time ago for a lot less than they're charging, not sure I'd say it's worth it now, especially considering the behaviour of the dev. Even ignoring his views, someone who tells their customers to shove it is not someone I'd want to fund.

To be fair, this was an announced policy from before launch that discounts were not going to be provided and the price would only increase. Honestly, the long tail is such that you do or you don't buy this by now.

The only time they talked about a price increase was when they upped it to the current $30, years before the "final" release. That's it.

Because people are going to go "Oh, hey, my budget is already being squeezed. Let's spend even more money on this highly unnecessary discretionary expenditure!" Video games is one of the top category of things to go when money gets tight. That's not a way to entice new customers. And the whole "Buy now for a lower price or you'll regret it!" FOMO tactic is pretty bullshit no matter the circumstances.

I could understand the price increase if it involved absolutely any game that you can purchase now even though they are still in development. Factorio has been around for seven years, which is plenty of time for anyone to have bought it if it was something that they really wanted.

Also this isn't like the egg shortage that we're having. Besides costing more, some stores around here are limiting how many eggs you can purchase to prevent egg hoarding and so that they will actually have eggs for sale. There's technically an infinite number of copies of Factorio on every storefront that sells it. Even if the publisher pulled the game off every storefront except one, there would still be an infinite number of copies for sale. This isn't even a supply (as in copies of the game for sale) vs demand issue.

I don't think the type of person who'd shell out $30 for this thing will balk at an additional $5. Factorio is a very niche game and it's probably a sound business decision to fleece the target demographic rather than make the pricing accessible to those who wouldn't be interested or would refund the game.

Same with that German spiritual bloke from the 80's. Nice music but one you hear about that rape charge you'll also turn from nice music to nah, let's not. The money is better spend elsewhere.
The I AM GOD developer stance belongs to another timeframe.