price increase

[bronze kelp]

something something can return if not enjoyed laws

[royal furnace]

I’m not here to argue that, just stick to the ToS please

[warm basalt]

it's in the rules for the server

[winter iris]

consumer protection laws

[royal furnace]

That too 😛

[winter iris]

and its not if you dont enjoy it

[north cargo]

https://discord.com/guidelines

Slight correction: it's a community guideline

[winter iris]

consumer protection laws are very very, very good.

[winter iris]

so mentioning piracy is not against the TOS?

[strange saddle]

Which is still a part of the TOS, technically

[bronze kelp]

in the EU, not so much anywhere else

[winter iris]

EU based

[north cargo]

I have reached the limit of my lawyer skills

[strange saddle]

The TOS specifies following the community guidelines

[round fulcrum]

this is different to "encouraging piracy" interestingly. "you should pirate the game" vs "here is a link to pirate the game." at least thats my reading

[orchid dagger]

That depends on how much you want to encourage new innovation in business.

[round fulcrum]

regardless, I think the rule on this discord not to encourage piracy is fair

[winter iris]

"innovation"

[orchid dagger]

🔥

[marble moss]

the steam page for factorio getting review bombed, which is pretty funny since a lot of those people already own the game, so idk how it will affect them lol

[strange saddle]

What, is this the fourth review bomb?

[winter iris]

because 5$ is half of a mcdonalds meal

[turbid wyvern]

from what I can see, talking about piracy is ok with both discord TOS and this server n°3 rule

[orchid dagger]

Well tbf, as noted above, this will affect them if they buy the expansion for $35

[marble moss]

true

[winter iris]

qeustion for the americans: price of a chicken wrap?

[karmic ocean]

high enough that I dont even know the price because I would never consider spending that much money on it

not a joke.

[strange saddle]

5 bucks, I think? I don't buy them

[turbid wyvern]

it's only 2€ here

[winter iris]

its like 6€ here

the

wtf

[round fulcrum]

perhaps they rated the game given that it cost at $30 and now they are updating the rating given the new price and a new price vs cost assessment. (i dont agree with their ratings, merely pointing out that it could make sense to update a review)

[winter iris]

spain?

[bronze kelp]

meh, offtopic periods exist for a reason

[jagged helm]

how good, is the question; $10 for a good one in a city

[strange saddle]

9 bucks for a five guys cheeseburger :P

[turbid wyvern]

wait which chicken wrap are we talking?

[warm basalt]

does McDonalds even still sell the chickenwrap in the US

[winter iris]

mcdonalds one

[winter iris]

the special one

cant remember what ya call it

mcdonalds chicken wrap

has the lettuce and shits

[silver slate]

The most common argument I see for supporting piracy is that developers don't lose money on a unit thats consumed because digital copies don't require money to actively produce and sell. I disagree with this bc its trying to apply concepts from the real world into the digital world. Making a game still requires a lot of money, time, and effort to produce the game in the first place, and if a developer is wanting you to pay for a copy then you should pay for it. Even if it doesn't cost anything for the developers when you "steal" a digital product, you're still enjoying and consuming content that they were expecting money for. Sure, most pirates weren't gonna pay for the game anyway but it's still an insult to the work that the devs put into a game. Regardless I think most pirates just don't wanna admit that they're doing a bad thing so they make up rationalizations to justify what they were already gonna do

[warm basalt]

it's like $4.50

[hoary tiger]

gone from economic discussion to american food prices
as Jod intendied

[warm basalt]

I think

[silver slate]

Probably a little late text wall 😬 sorry

[marble moss]

true true

[turbid wyvern]

ah so the one that is not tiny and has more than just the chicken and a spec of salad?

[winter iris]

any arguement against piracy is also against buying a product with the intention of returning it.

[warm basalt]

if the prices I'm finding are right since I don't have the app

[winter iris]

ya

[silver slate]

I don't think you should do that either

[north cargo]

I mean, only one is actually illegal

[winter iris]

depends on the country

[bronze kelp]

i don't think anyone was arguing about the legality of piracy

[silver slate]

Ehh when has legality ever mattered in ethics

[winter iris]

and the definition of piracy

[winter iris]

country dependant

[turbid wyvern]

nvm then, 5.50€

[winter iris]

ya

thats the price here

[royal furnace]

Let’s not have this channel devolve into a political/ethical discussion regarding piracy

[warm basalt]

I don't think they have the wrap in the US anymore

[round fulcrum]

there have been studies that show that piracy does not affect game sales, however i believe that it makes a lot of sense to not promote piracy of the game when the devs are here in the discord and we like them a lot :)

[winter iris]

u guys have way bigger meals

[warm basalt]

it's not on the site

[winter iris]

than us

all your meals are so much larger lol

[royal furnace]

#more-offtopic is always there for moral/ethical/political discussions

[north cargo]

This is just the general outrage thread it will shift eventually

[winter iris]

I AM EXTREMELY UPSET MCDONALDS CHARGES SO MUCH FOR A WRAP

[strange saddle]

Rename to "The channel where you yell about stuff"?

[royal furnace]

And I’d like to not be moderating it like I moderate #more-offtopic lol

[strange saddle]

... I was joking lmao

[silver slate]

Ye I understand that piracy doesn't actually matter for sales but it's more of a moral issue regarding whether you should be able to enjoy content that the devs intended. My stance is no since its an insult to the effort devs put into the game since they're expecting you to pay for their work. Anyway this is gonna be my last message regarding piracy

[north cargo]

||I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE ARE YELLING ABOUT||

[jagged helm]

true, we produce so much food (and waste so much of it, too)

[winter iris]

i dont really think this channel has a purpose to exist

[warm basalt]

I think it's been relatively tame in here really
It was a good idea to make a thread instead of just killing the topic entirely

[winter iris]

i eat 4 chicken nuggets and call it a meal

[round fulcrum]

the purpose is to complain about the price increase

[turbid wyvern]

just don't buy it then, have you ever seen how much they charge salad?
or even worse, water? you can't even buy sprite anymore, you only have their overly expensive shitty tap water

[winter iris]

or defend the price increase

[round fulcrum]

weird thing to defend tbh

[silver slate]

I think most people here don't mind the price increase

[bronze kelp]

f sprite

[winter iris]

we have beer in mcdonalds

[turbid wyvern]

unclutter #vanilla-chat
which coincidentally is also the purpose of #offtopic

[jagged helm]

fun fact, you can make sprite by fermenting pine needles

[bronze kelp]

wait what

[royal furnace]

Shhhhhhh

[jagged helm]

it approximates the taste, at least, apparently

[bronze kelp]

brb i live next to a pine forest

[winter iris]

why are u "freshly spawned"

[royal furnace]

Honest answer: I think it makes people feel less unsure about picking that option if the head moderator has it

[turbid wyvern]

I thought it was cuz moderating all that shit takes so much free time that their factory can't grow 😅

[winter iris]

how experienced is 230 hours

honest question

[turbid wyvern]

long

[silver slate]

Idk

[turbid wyvern]

you are long experienced

[round fulcrum]

its not about the length of time, but the quality. (seems experienced!)

[winter iris]

i was thinking like semi-intermediate

[bronze kelp]

long int experienced

[royal furnace]

As experienced as you think! I have >1000 hours.

[silver slate]

I think your progress and knowledge in the game matters more than pure hours

But it's all subjective

[winter iris]

rate da base

[silver slate]

Have you launched a rocket yet

[jagged helm]

for best results, you'll want white pine (https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Make-Sprite-With-Pine-Needles-Uses-White-Pi/)

[winter iris]

many, many times

3 different saves

[strange saddle]

Also, She's a TOTAL NOOB! AYOOOOO

[silver slate]

Then yes I'd consider you experienced

[turbid wyvern]

not only you learn all the time but you also can't know what you don't know yet, so who knows, maybe we are all very inexperienced

[bronze kelp]

insert "math will always be incomplete" video

[winter iris]

i own a mint plant to make mojitos

[turbid wyvern]

look at tetris, they are still improving their score and techniques as of today, 40 years after the game's release

[winter iris]

i am very upset, as its currently dying

[royal furnace]

Noooooo, my secret revealed!

[winter iris]

is nilaus in here

[north cargo]

Someday you will conquer SE, Olivia

[royal furnace]

Absolutely never. I have a life outside of Factorio lol. And this discord takes up most of my Factorio time already

[north cargo]

Understandable

Time for a vacation

[royal furnace]

I’m waiting for the expansion for my next big Factorio play through

[royal furnace]

I’m still on medical leave next week and I’ve been on medical leave for 9 weeks. But sadly recovering from surgery means limited brain power for gaming

[orchid dagger]

bug Factorio play through
Expansion theme confirmed?!?!

[royal furnace]

Bugs in my Factorio? Not on my watch!

[north cargo]

Oof

[strange saddle]

If he is I've never seen him around

[turbid wyvern]

a speedrunner has no time to waste

[olive shale]

Steam reviews are raging though 😔

[north cargo]

The troll reviews will probably get removed eventually

[olive shale]

😄

[royal furnace]

The reviews will probably end up getting marked as review bombing

Good to see Steam finally addressed the issue of like months of reviews all being marked as review bombing at least.

[orchid dagger]

Looks like the russian price increase ones weren't though

[royal furnace]

Ah then this probably will not either.

[orchid dagger]

I guess they are arguably on-topic

[royal furnace]

Yeah

[orchid dagger]

Pricing is a pretty normal thing to consider in a review 🙂

[north cargo]

I don't understand how it is

[grand wave]

Excuse me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the channel where I am supposed to get emotional over my half formed opinions and attempt to force everyone to confirm to my beliefs concerning the price change for the game Factorio? I do apologize if I am in the incorrect area, because I have extremely loud thoughts to distribute.

[north cargo]

You are in the right place

[royal furnace]

I'm not sure if you are trying to be facetious towards others or not but as long as you stick to the rules this is the place to talk about the price increase.

[grand wave]

Thank you for the clarification. The game should be 100 dollars USD, I want to feel like I wasn't totally ripping off the devs when I bought it.

[north cargo]

That was not what I was expecting 😂

[grand wave]

There's no way these big ticket games can cost 60 dollars each and this rabbit hole is just now increasing the price by 20%

[north cargo]

If the metric is value of play time to price, Factorio is gold

[karmic dove]

Why do Factorio owners become so greedy? I was just about to get in the game and buy it

[north cargo]

Lol

[mystic zephyr]

the fuck you on about? lol

[grand wave]

Like you're telling me I forked over 30 dollars for this gold mine while I got 10x less playtime and 2x the price for any other big studio game released in the last decade

[karmic dove]

It's easy for you to speak, you already own the game and played it, for new players is not so certain that they'll get those numbers, freaking sake

[mystic zephyr]

you got a week to keep from spending another 5 bucks

either way. this game is worth $60, 35 is still cheap

[north cargo]

I suppose it depends on how "about to get the game" is defined

[mystic zephyr]

we had the same argueing when price went from 20 to 30, people throwing a tantrum even though that increase was known months in advance, people still didnt buy it at 20, and complained

[karmic dove]

Dude, you are assuming all people live in rich countries, with 35$ bucks in my country I can live at least 3 days

[north cargo]

Steam has regional pricing

[karmic dove]

Oh, yea? Factorio is not on sale

[north cargo]

It's never on sale

[karmic dove]

Same price everywhere

[mystic zephyr]

they dont go on sale
steam has regional pricing. as he said

[north cargo]

It costs what it's worth, which is far below its actual value

[north cargo]

Incorrect 🙂

[orchid dagger]

^^^

[north cargo]

Poor Argentina

[karmic dove]

<@&147248001025310720> @north cargo is doing poor shaming

[north cargo]

Uh no? I'm expressing sympathy lmao

[errant sable]

i read it as feeling bad for them, not calling them poor

[royal furnace]

Calling in the moderators be like 👀 👀 👀 👀

[north cargo]

What's wrong with my confused cat emoji? 😂

[hearty abyss]

it can be remarkably difficult to distinguish between genuine comments and sarcasm, seriousness and sarcasm or mockery, depending...and in this case that message as a one off reads as mockery, but knowing the author it reads as serious

[royal furnace]

I can understand how it could be interpreted poorly by someone who is frustrated by the price increase and is already sensitive to the topic of cost/pricing.

[karmic dove]

How is your statement supposed to help me in any way? It only adds to my frustration since I am feeling judged and also people make mistakes that are magically forgiven since but knowing the author

[royal furnace]

The author clarified that they didn't mean it in the way you interpreted it so there isn't anything to do.

We've known that user long enough to know they're not a troll as well so we think we can trust they're telling the truth.

And, nobody is judging you here that I know of. We all understand seeing the price increase of something you want to buy is frustrating

[karmic dove]

Anyhow, good luck with your sales

[north cargo]

I'll buy you a copy, Smith, as long as you promise to enjoy the game

[karmic dove]

I don't think I'll appreciate it since it will always remember me that I fought with someone for it

Maybe it's not meant for me to play the game

[north cargo]

Interesting approach

[karmic dove]

Thank you for your offer tho

[north cargo]

I scrolled back, I can at least say that I did not take any sort of aggressive stance, all I did was state facts

I apologize if there was anything lost in translation

[old nova]

Leave it

[karmic dove]

Yea, I am sorry for it, English is not my first language so many words happen to be translated poorly, directly, and have different meaning

[old nova]

Trying to reduce something to “all I did was state facts” will never make someone feel better about the situation

[north cargo]

It's a good thing I included an apology after that then

[old nova]

Right

[karmic dove]

Unfortunately, my country has not been added to the list of regional pricing countries and I don't think it will happen any time soon, there are some requests about it that are very old since the regional pricing thing started(Romania)

[round fulcrum]

sorry to hear that. thats really unfortunate

i wonder if theres a reason or of it was just an oversight?

[karmic dove]

I don't know either, I read that Valve is adding only one or 2 countries every 1 or 2 years

[north cargo]

Weird

[round fulcrum]

romania doesnt use the euro right?

[karmic dove]

No

1€=5 ron(our currency)
The average salary per month is 400€ but in ron

[round fulcrum]

how much does factorio cost in ron?

or in euro or however it is priced?

[karmic dove]

It is marked in euros and at buy time they do the conversion, around 150 ron

[north cargo]

That's rough

Offer stands if you change your mind

[round fulcrum]

do you have the ability to buy the game before the price increase?

[karmic dove]

I can't afford it at the moment

[north cargo]

Considering I offered to buy it, yes

[orchid dagger]

Not helping...

[round fulcrum]

im sorry to hear that

[round fulcrum]

its not. i think Neo's upset them with some of the things he said and they've said they dont want charity and that type of humor isnt making it better

[north cargo]

You can take it as humor, but it's also accurate

[thorny saffron]

Just... drop it, would you?

[orchid dagger]

Many accurate things could be said, it doesn't mean it is always wise to

[round fulcrum]

i think it was kind to make the offer but its clear they dont want it as of right now

[merry herald]

Someone bought me factorio once then eventually I bought it for someone else

It happens a lot actually

[karmic dove]

That is very kind

[old torrent]

Thanks, this is appriciated. Big part of it is, that our (or at least mine) approach to money is, that once you have enough to live comfortably, and enough to financially support the ongoing (and future) projects you want to do, you don't really need more. There is no reason to squeeze the extra $ just to get yacht bigger then the next millionare, or to buy the overprised expensive stuff when you buy it just to show off. And this has some deep implications, because once you feel that you have enough, you can safely ignore all these people trying to buy % of your company for big cash. I actually reply to these kind of offers with the sentence "Thanks, but I have no use for the extra money". This feels very different to the culture I sense to be prevelant, where big amount of startups is created with the goal of "big exit" in mind.

So the implication of my approach is that we have no investors and shareholders pressuring us into the "service for investors to exploit", which would be very understandable demand once they invested big.

So in the end, we can feel smug about it, and you can't put a pricetag on that 🙂

Guess who said that months ago

[orchid dagger]

Increasing the price of the game by $5 is not at all related to what he is talking about there

[round fulcrum]

its related a little bit

[orchid dagger]

Ok it is a bit

[pallid granite]

This price increase is total bs, I'm canceling my sub and my friends are too

[bronze kelp]

apparently factorio is twitch now

[night forge]

Those of us who only paid $20 for it got it for a really low price given the price will go up by $5 every couple of years until it reaches $100

[pallid granite]

I bought minecraft when it was $10 or something so I'm already ahead when you think about it

[night forge]

I assume the expansion will be at least $35 now as all.

More likely $40 after the game increases to $40 in two years

[pallid granite]

I forget, did they say it would have as much extra content as the original game

[peak socket]

same

[bronze kelp]

think they said smth like "at least"

[peak socket]

that would be an L

[orchid dagger]

but we can start by giving you some general idea about the scale of the project. The general goal is to make the expansion feel like as big an addition as the whole vanilla game. This is why we plan to price it at $30.00, and put in enough content to make it well worth the price.

So the price of $35 seems like a reasonable assumption

[mystic zephyr]

I mean I'll buy it regardless. And it's been a hot minute since I actually played

[peak socket]

35$ is starting to be too much

[night forge]

I’ve received $500 in value from the game, easily. And I think the game could easily be priced $60 for new folks

[meager walrus]

maybe i'm overestimating the cost of a cup of coffee in a developed country, but 5$ sounds like the cost of a cup of coffee you can grab from starbucks or something.

[night forge]

Indeed

[orchid dagger]

You haven't seen the expansion 😛

[night forge]

I just hope they achieve enough sales between now and the expansion release so they don’t need outside investment

[peak socket]

neither have you

[orchid dagger]

I'm not the one making statements about how much it is worth

[peak socket]

it better be good

[meager walrus]

i'm impressed enough with the base game to trust it will be.

[orchid dagger]

Also worth noting that the expansion won't be for everybody.

Plenty of people find the base game enough, and that is fine

They don't need something on the scale of a massive overhaul

[night forge]

Many of us enjoyed the base game enough that we will likely buy the expansion regardless if we think we will play it.

[orchid dagger]

Plenty of people on this server, sure. I don't think that kind of buyer will register very much in the grand scheme of things.

[merry herald]

I haven’t

[pallid granite]

Aren't they kinda promising that though? At least that amount of content, which I'm sorta guessing will be more extension than overhaul though I could be wrong

I don't have a horse in the race of what the price should be, my only thing is that I was probably going to get the switch version eventually, and now it'll cost more

But I was also waffling on whether I really wanted it due to the various limitations and unfamiliar interface

[olive shale]

I understand both: the devs and those saying 35 is too expensive. Rough times for everyone after pandemy messed up the economy. Personally I can afford it easily, and I got hundreds of hours out if it by now. But I could've not told from the start that it would be.

About the expansion, I hope the higher price allows the devs to realize lots of the ideas they had to leave out for the 1.0 release. From my own experience, when developing a game ideas initially fill books. And by the time you finished the game engine programming and the first content, you had to cut back your plans to maybe only 10-25% of the original ideas.

[low tree]

Idm the price increase

in a week I have played more factorio than games i have spend 60-70 on

[orchid dagger]

No I’m saying not everyone wants wants a big extension/overhaul, not that we’re not getting one 😛

[chrome glacier]

I kind of understand the reasoning for the increase but at the same time I don't. What did the sales look like after the last increase? Was it a influx of new purchases because they were afraid it was going to end up ever increasing or was it a lower sales period. What's expected? If anything is expected.

[orchid dagger]

^^^

[chrome glacier]

So it does cause an influx of new purchases because of an announced price change, rightfully so since people want to get it as cheap as possible and increasing the price doesn't help. I'll stand by the change, only because I love the game and I think I got my money's worth, admittedly a lot cheaper than what it is now and will ever be, but I still think it's a bit of a bizarre choice. Wasn't there some post or comment not that long ago that more or less said it wasn't being increased unless there was something "unforeseen"? Inflation isn't really a surprise, it happens constantly..

[orchid dagger]

The exact wording is in point 1 of the pins

I don’t think it it clear cut whether Kovarex is ‘breaking his word’

You could certainly argue that

[chrome glacier]

Oh yeah I'm never going to say he's done that.

I'm just wondering if there's something Wube hasn't announced that is the "unforeseen" part. That isn't inflation since that's arguably not unforeseen

[orchid dagger]

I think it’s fair to say that inflation has been higher than expected though

[orchid dagger]

Could be

[chrome glacier]

Yeah but I definitely wouldn't call it a surprise.

[olive shale]

I can not assume it's any form of greed, I looked at the company numbers (It's Ltd from England, even though they are from Czech, you will find published company numbers online). From my rough estimation it looks all fine to me, they just want to keep afloat the next years. It's not like they churn out DLCs like Cities Skylines every 6 months.

[orchid dagger]

4. The company needs to have big reserves, if we want to try anything new ever. Imagine paying 30+ people for several years, and imagine, that the company needs to survive even if the new thing doesn't go that well, as you can't expect only success in this business.

• Kovarex

I think it is a reasonably safe bet that the expansion will sell well (although still far from guaranteed). But maybe after that they work on a different game for 4 years and it goes nowhere? They then need enough money to last another 4 years for a 3rd game to hopefully succeed.

[candid locust]

The "Inflation" reason is just a meme right?

Right...?

[merry laurel]

see points 2 and 3 of the pinned message?

[round fulcrum]

when you buy a chair or a table, the price includes the cost of the materials that went into the chair. when there is inflation, the cost of the materials increases. hence, the unit cost of the chair has increased due to inflation

developers are no longer significantly working on the base game, and most of their dev time is on the expansion

therefore, the unit cost of factorio has decreased

[north cargo]

That would make sense if annual sales decreased

If a product keeps selling consistently, why make it cheaper?

[strange saddle]

Some are working on the expansion, but many are still working on the base game in terms of bug fixes. Also, do we know if 100% of the expansion's content will be locked by the premium (or opposedly, do we know if there will be some free content included)?

[round fulcrum]

the game engine itself will have some significant improvements and technical backing to make many of the new gameplay features possible. These engine capabilities will be available with the expansion build/executable, and we will add a mod info flag like 'uses_expansion_features', that will mean the mod will only try to load in the expansion

[strange saddle]

That doesn't exclude the possibility of free content though, hm...

[round fulcrum]

free content, if it materializes, wasnt the justification for the price increase though

[strange saddle]

Technically it is, through continuing to pay their developers

[brittle ledge]

From FFF 367:
Lots of the quality of life (and other) improvements we prepared for the expansion will just appear for everyone, so the expansion will be more strictly about the new content and mechanics.

[round fulcrum]

you'll pay for that when you buy the expansion

(which btw is also going to cost more than previously planned)

[strange saddle]

Oh, so there is some freebies

[north cargo]

Nice

[strange saddle]

You can't invest with no money, which is what the price increase is supposed to aid with

[round fulcrum]

are they low on money?

[strange saddle]

Should they be low on money?

Why wait until you're broke to do something about draining funds?

[brittle ledge]

None of us have any way of knowing Wube's financial situation. However, I have had extensive interaction with the developers, and I do not believe them to be greedy in any way whatsoever. I choose to trust that there is a good reason for the price change, and I am inclined to believe their simple explanation of inflation, since it lines up with data you can find on google.

I will admit that it's not a fantastic precedent to set. I would be irritated if they raised the price when the game was completely 100% done and no work was being done. However, that is demonstrably not the case here.

[north cargo]

Outrage would make sense if they doubled the price or something else equally drastic

[jagged helm]

of course the devs can use inflation as a reason for the price increase; the question I have is, should they? We've seen plenty of companies justify price increases on the basis of inflation (which, of course, feeds back into inflation). Ultimately only Wube can judge their financial situation, but I do wonder whether it was actually necessary (rather than convenient).

[brittle ledge]

Yeah, doubling would cross the line for me. $5 is less than a meal at McDonald's.

[north cargo]

*without a corresponding increase of some kind of content or whatever

Doubling the price of your products (which corporations in the US have been doing) then blaming it on "inflation" is simply not the tactic being employed here

[brittle ledge]

If the USD inflation rate suddenly went to 100%, we would have far larger issues than buying video games...

[jagged helm]

sure, but price increases attributed to inflation are contagious

[north cargo]

Who are they going to infect, satisfactory?

[jagged helm]

it's a collective effect

[north cargo]

This seems pretty darn isolated, compared to what a lot of other industries have been doing

And again, the price increase, given the reason, matches the data available

If inflation was 5%, and they increased the price by 25%, and tried to say that inflation is the only reason: outrage justified

[jagged helm]

right, but using inflation to justify a price increase is itself circular, as the cumulative effect of everyone doing this continually pushes up the measurement point

most economists would probably agree that Wube is justified in their reasoning; but is it the morally-correct decision? I'm not sure

[north cargo]

Yeah I get what you are saying, but that's just how things work? They are a business making a business decision, it's not their fault the system is doing what it is doing

I think it's morally fine, based on the facts given

[jagged helm]

again, to an economist, at least

supposing that the cashflow was positive and there were funds in the bank, I'd have made a different decision

[north cargo]

I don't really expect morality from companies, to be honest - as long as they provide the product I expect at the price I am happy with, they have my patronage

If they do something outrageous, yeah I'll vote with my wallet - but I don't see anything scandalous here

[jagged helm]

(drifting into more-offtopic, I guess) I disagree that we shouldn't expect moral behavior from companies, though; they are human enterprises, after all, and ultimately we allow them to exist because they benefit society

[north cargo]

Yep, and we should boycott the fuck out of them if government regulations fail

[north cargo]

Which is why monopolies are so bad, can't boycott something if there's no competition

[jagged helm]

well, except where monopolies are actually efficient when explicitly run for the benefit of society

[north cargo]

I'll need an example I suppose

[jagged helm]

how many entities do you want working on your city's electrical grid?

or water system

[north cargo]

I am a participant in a couple co-ops which are managed by government regulations

[jagged helm]

(internet is a little bit different because it's a lot easier to install the hardware)

[north cargo]

I don't see that as a free-market monopoly though

[jagged helm]

many water and power utilities in the US are granted monopolies (and profit-making ability, too, ugh) in exchange for being closely regulated by the state they operate in

[jagged helm]

your local utility companies are co-ops?

[north cargo]

Our power grid system is mildly fucked, or at least has a LOT of room for improvement

yep, co-ops

[jagged helm]

nice, so you actually get a say in their operations, then?

[north cargo]

Probably, if I bothered to participate

[jagged helm]

you might want to, especially if you feel like the co-op isn't prioritizing grid improvements like it should

[north cargo]

My credit union is similar

Yes however counterpoint: I have a limited emotional battery

[jagged helm]

that's fair

need to make friends with people with larger emotional batteries and sway them to your side 🙂

then send them to the meetings!

[north cargo]

Someday I'll be able to dedicate energy to that sort of thing, but the energy is very finite and can take away from things I have actual control over

Yeah sure, let me just work on that particular skill which I am naturally terrible at!

I pay my union dues at least

[jagged helm]

well, in any case, you're luckier than most just to have the co-ops

[north cargo]

I can't give any more detail because it's too easy to dox myself, but yes my power related situation is more fortunate than most

[peak socket]

is factorio made by an indie team

[strange saddle]

Depends how you define "indie"

Factorio was made by a start-up studio with only a couple people on-hand, which the explosive sales led to the expansion of the team and further support and development of the game

It didn't have any external publishers, investors, or team aids to bring the game to life. Simply from this I would consider it an indie game despite being one of the only titles having ~30 members worked on it

[peak socket]

not really indie imo

[grand wave]

Weren't you also complaining about how greedy the devs were, or was that a different guy

[peak socket]

no

[grand wave]

Different guy sorry

Apologies

[peak socket]

i do not agree with the devs decision but i don’t think you can call them greedy

[grand wave]

Some people are pretty vocal on the matter

[peak socket]

i already have the game so it doesn’t matter to me

if you don’t like the price increase buy it quickly before it increases

[dense hull]

even if you dont have to buy it again yourself, I think its about the ethics of the decision

[north cargo]

I have yet to see any good argument, supported by logic, as to why this price increase is unethical

[peak socket]

i would have liked to spend around 20 dollars on it

[grand wave]

a price increase of 5 dollars isnt going to be a clear cut argument, it is very much up to personal interpretation

[north cargo]

I suppose I should clarify that "I have yet to see" is my personal opinion?

I think it is a very clear cut argument, given the data

I sympathize with the small subset who literally can't afford the $5 price increase (it honestly saddens me), but to be frank - that isn't Wube's problem to solve 🤷‍♂️

[round fulcrum]

Here's an argument

• Wube is a large developer, who has made millions of dollars in sales and are not financially at risk and by their own admission "have no use for extra money [from outside investment]"
• Its customers are regular people who do not have millions of dollars
• Transferring money from regular people to businesses who do not need it is unethical
• Raising the price transfers money from regular people to a business who doesn't need it
• Therefore raising the price is unethical

[north cargo]

Counters

-100mil in *gross revenue isn't really a "large developer", they have exactly one product, correct? Not relying on outside investment is a good thing, because it means they retain control of their product. For an examples of games being affected negatively by this: see case study Fallout series. The ability to utilize revenue from their product to maintain the game and produce the expansion without outside influence is a GOOD thing.

-they don't need millions of dollars, they need $35, or even less thanks to Steam regional pricing. It's a one time purchase for a product that can provide potentially THOUSANDS of hours of content. The game could be $60 and still have tremendous value

• your argument of "they don't need it" is countered by the above. It's a business. This is a game and a product, nobody has to buy it if they don't want to - it's not a necessity in the slightest

For value computation: see average play time vs price of game

[round fulcrum]

Has Wube really made $101.2m? That's way more than I would have expected

[north cargo]

Gross

[round fulcrum]

Still

[orchid dagger]

• Transferring money from regular people to businesses who do not need it is unethical
  This makes no sense to me

[north cargo]

500k copies a year at $30 is $15mil per year, seems pretty reasonable

Not exactly a fortune 500 company

Yep I covered that, this isn't a necessary commodity 🤷‍♂️

[round fulcrum]

its less

• steam takes 30%
• some are sold in other regions with reduced pricing

[orchid dagger]

taxes

[round fulcrum]

(taxes are in gross)

[orchid dagger]

server hosting costs (mod portal is 1TB/day)

oh

[north cargo]

I mean, that only supports my argument, not sure if you intended otherwise

[orchid dagger]

I have no idea 🤷🏻‍♂️ 😄

[north cargo]

J5 I mean

[round fulcrum]

I just want to be accurate 🙂

[north cargo]

I only ever mentioned gross, everything else is implied 🙂

[round fulcrum]

Regardless, we know they are not in a bad financial decision and dont need the money

[north cargo]

Define "need"

[orchid dagger]

^^^

[north cargo]

Why do they need to be destitute? That's how businesses FAIL

[round fulcrum]

idk posting on reddit that they "have no use for the extra money"

[north cargo]

Yes....

Your arguments are deteriorating lol, and it started so well 😛

[round fulcrum]

hm?

is that defn of "need" not sufficient for you?

[north cargo]

How do you know it's "extra"?

No, it's not, because it's based on nothing but unsupported conjecture

[round fulcrum]

what do you mean? its a definition, there's no conjecture in it

you can say you dont agree with the defn or you can say the defn doesnt apply

[north cargo]

Yeah there's nothing further to be gained here, you haven't even acknowledged my valid counterpoints backed by history and data

[round fulcrum]

you want me to?

100mil in *gross revenue isn't really a "large developer"
it is, its probably top 1% of developers

[north cargo]

That's a weird way to define it, maybe we can look at market share instead?

[round fulcrum]

Not relying on outside investment is a good thing, because it means they retain control of their product. For an examples of games being affected negatively by this: see case study Fallout series. The ability to utilize revenue from their product to maintain the game and produce the expansion without outside influence is a GOOD thing.
agreed but this is not relevant to my argument

[orchid dagger]

Wasn't he saying that they aren't in such need of more money that they are forced to do dodgy anti-consumer practices to obtain said money? If you take that definition, then you're left saying that a $5 price increase due to inflation is a dodgy anti-consumer practice. Which you could argue, but I wouldn't.

Businesses always benefit from more money.

[north cargo]

https://www.statista.com/topics/868/video-games/#topicHeader__wrapper

Monthly revenue: 1.5billion

[round fulcrum]

they don't need millions of dollars, they need $35,
if they dont need millions why are they raising the price? here, by your own admission, you are saying they dont "need" millions

[north cargo]

Let's split 15 mil into 12 months

1.25mil

What percentage of 1.5billion is 1.25 million?

[peak socket]

if i made that type of money id be going crazy

[north cargo]

Again, this is gross

[thorny saffron]

You don't have to pay a team of 30 skilled people :P

[round fulcrum]

they are forced to do dodgy anti-consumer practices
is raising the price anti-consumer or pro-consumer?

[orchid dagger]

neither

[round fulcrum]

interesting definition

[peak socket]

my cats

[north cargo]

You can't make that statement stand in a vacuum without context

[orchid dagger]

But sustaining a pro-consumer development studio for many years into the future is pretty pro-consumer

Anti-consumer stuff is like releasing unfinished products, selling content as add-ons, or even as lootboxes, etc. Pro-consumer is not doing that. Selling a fair product for a price isn't anti-consumer.

[round fulcrum]

what? i said top 1% of developers. 99% of games make less than a million, even fewer studios claim $100M

[north cargo]

This is the market share percentage Wube has of the total gaming industry

Yes, and I'm saying your metric of measuring what a "large gaming developer" is is nonsensical

[round fulcrum]

I think it makes sense

[north cargo]

Damn that's like.....less than a thousandth of a percent?

@idle pawn sales are slacking man

[round fulcrum]

why are you dividing by the monthly hardware revenue?

[north cargo]

That's the market share of annual sales, estimated, that wube has of the gaming industry

Based on the arithmetic I just did, given the data above

[round fulcrum]

your data doesnt make sense. you are dividing by harware sales, you are ignoring sofware sales, which is even bigger

[north cargo]

Ok let's find the software sales

[round fulcrum]

in the us its $60 billion

[north cargo]

Ok so 15mil divided by 60bil

[round fulcrum]

now you are accurate

[north cargo]

0.25% of annual sales

Still not a "big" developer

[round fulcrum]

of the entire video game industry

[north cargo]

Ok you are just being difficult now lol

[round fulcrum]

top 1% community on reddit etc

[grand wave]

weird to think that, in those terms, 1/7th of the world buys 1 new retail game every year

[peak socket]

what is the point of this argument lol

[north cargo]

I'm not going to aid you if you don't understand well written arguments Super Cow 😉

[round fulcrum]

neo believes that if wube is top 1% of developers by revenue they are not large

[north cargo]

But yeah, sorry you have trouble understanding my position J5 ✌️

[round fulcrum]

i hope one day you are able to understand mine :)

[peak socket]

its not gonna change anything

[north cargo]

Then I don't care?

You aren't my target audience, Super Cow

[round fulcrum]

i see you reacted with 'no.' shame, but maybe if you keep trying you'll get it!

[north cargo]

Yeahhh you aren't worth talking to anymore lol

[round fulcrum]

mhmmm

[strange saddle]

Play nice guys

[idle pawn]

is it a sequel to fall guys or something?

[north cargo]

New standalone: Frost Guys

[jagged helm]

I mean, being big because top 1% and not being as big as the biggest game studios is something that's true simultaneously

taking a quick whack at expense estimation (12 months of server colocation at 10k/month, 30 salaries of 200k/year, 10000 sqft of office space at $100/sqft, and 30 new computers at 3k apiece/year, steam's 30% cut, and 20% in taxes/fees/etc), $15M/year is reduced to ~$300k/year to go into the bank, so to speak

the $5 increase might yield optimistically another $1M/year (after steam cut and taxes/fees)

@idle pawn am I at all close? 😛

[orchid dagger]

I think your costs are a bit high

Remember that most of the team (and the office) are in Prague, not San Francisco

[grand wave]

I mean, they're basically the same city

[jagged helm]

fair enough, I did use NYC data for that; so drop the office space cost by a factor of 4, then, which leaves ~$1M/year instead

[orchid dagger]

A random search I did suggested it might be more like 1.4$/sqft...

And another random search suggested that 100 sqft per employee is reasonable

[jagged helm]

I found $288/m^2 for Prague

[orchid dagger]

My random search may have been a bit too random

[olive shale]

the 101m on steam does not reflect a lot. I suggest looking at official data about the "Wube Software Ltd." You can even see their "Operating Profit" there. (Source https://pomanda.com/company/09201188/wube-software-ltd) - Their operating profit is not huge. But they will need the profits to keep going in future. From the 101m gross (you need to divide by about 7 years) you will have to deduct lots of things: Steam fees and taxes and lots of other things I have no clue about. @jagged helm 's estimations summed it up well in my opinion.

You can even see the increase in turnover in 2021, but their profits stayed the same. That could mean they hired more developers (or invested the money differently into the company).

[turbid wyvern]

I'm so proud of this community
I called it, we're finally there, trying to compute the most efficient price for the game

[meager walrus]

[thorny saffron]

The team has been expanded significantly since the expansion was announced.

[idle pawn]

We went from 15 people at the start of 2021 to 30 people at the start of 2023

[turbid wyvern]

the company must grow

[round fulcrum]

the website lists 31 people

[mystic zephyr]

Obviously he didn't count himself. Duh

[turbid wyvern]

that or they recruited someone between january 1st and today

[north cargo]

Gotta have someone get the coffee while everyone else works on the expansion

[jagged helm]

really, they should be bringing that in on trains 😛 (oop, sorry for the ping)

[north cargo]

I don't mind pings when I'm not around lol

It's when they happen 5 seconds after I was just sending messages

Also: no trains, use bots so you can have a wide variety of coffee on demand

[dense hull]

just mix the trains

[north cargo]

Sushi coffee

[dense hull]

mmm!

[jagged helm]

maybe that's actually what's in science bottles

Wube HQ is the prototype for the science lab 😛

[left lintel]

it's wild the amount of mental gymnastics people are doing to get bothered about a 5$ price increase

I feel like people play factorio for way longer than they do some of these new AAA titles going for like 80 bucks

[jagged helm]

that's not really the point, at the end of the day

[low tree]

What is the point

[pallid granite]

It's pretty unusual practice tbf, whether or not it's 'unfair' or w/e

[north cargo]

quadruple the usual rate of inflation is also unusual

[low tree]

oh is this why factorio has dropped in the best reviewed games category

ppl negatively review bombing the game after finding out about the price increase

[strange saddle]

It's also unusual practice in the modern age to not have sales :P

[mystic zephyr]

"price raise bad."
ah yes, a well thought out and accurate review. thank you kind sir. lol

[low tree]

I mean minecraft, a game I think is similar to factorio hasn't gone on sale like ever, apart from their 10th anniversary

[strange saddle]

Perhaps it's more of a Steam thing

[low tree]

probably

steam has mad discounts

they tryna get me to spend me monies

[left lintel]

even if something is unusual that still doesn't answer why it's bad

[round fulcrum]

price increase bad
"what a simpleton view. you see, with my advanced analysis, I have determined the correct view, and this may be too hard for you to understand .... price increase good"

[merry laurel]

as satisfying as this may be to say, is it constructive right now?

[left lintel]

I understand that people will get mad about it but it just seems so silly that they'd try to explain why they're mad

[merry laurel]

the human mind is by far more rationalizing than rational 🤷

[round fulcrum]

probably because people try to explain to them why they are wrong to not like it

[low tree]

I kinda understand this

so basically they would hate r/patientgamers

[strange saddle]

The reverse. r/patientgamers hate them

If you are really eyeing a game, how long would it be worth it to wait? A day? A month? 10 years? For what, to save 5 or 10 bucks?

[bleak meteor]

I mean, doesn‘t that subreddit exist because everyone does sales and the people there don‘t want to be screwed over? If everyone did what Factorio does, no need for that sub.

[left lintel]

ngl I think it's smart that this channel exists

not because I think there's some amazing argument that's going to convince wube to lower the price

but because it'd be pretty annoying if they just said it everywhere else

[strange saddle]

And you found the exact reason for this thread

[left lintel]

that doesn't answer my question

no one explains themselves preemptively unless you're in some debate club

[merry laurel]

on the other side of it and by way of example (not for short-term sales, exactly), is it reasonable for newcomers to the competitive scene to pay inflation-adjusted release price for Starcraft or Age of Empires II?

[low tree]

is it just price though

Like I would not have bought cyberpunk on release even if I liked it

Because of how buggy it was

I don’t know if factorio has these issues

Since I haven’t been around that long

[strange saddle]

My message wasn't about the argument of inflation-adjustment release prices, it was about sales

[strange saddle]

This essentially says that you don't like it enough

(And no, Factorio devs generally fix even the most obscure bugs :P)

[low tree]

Nice

I mean I watched a lot of cyberpunk streams in a guys server and there were a lot of issues

I probably would have gotten it since I was into that stuff back then

[strange saddle]

Yeah, apparently Cyberpunk had a very bad release, and apparently isn't as bad but still is bad

Regardless, the price can often be "the gate" of what determines a user's willingness to buy. I played literally 10 minutes of the demo before I said "Yeah, it's worth it to buy this game", and here I am with .006 USD cost per playtime hours :P

If the game was 40 or 60 dollars at the time, I might have given it more than 10 minutes of demo time

And this was also back then when the quality was fairly rough, back when Multiplayer support was fresh and having more than 3 users could crash the game for each user

[north cargo]

It's totally worth it to pirate the demo, avoid that price of free

[merry laurel]

as satisfying as this may be to say, is it constructive right now?

[low tree]

Same

[north cargo]

Not everything needs to be constructive to be said

[low tree]

I got up to the 5th tutorial and wasn’t bothered so I got the game

100 hours later

[round fulcrum]

fwiw i really like the lack of sales thing. always roll my eyes when you buy something and it goes on sale later. it feels like the devs who do that. are just tricking the people who arent paying attention. "you didnt know about the quarterly sale at 70% off?"

[strange saddle]

Over 3000 here :3
20 bucks back then

[thorny saffron]

Steamdb is an invaluable tool nowadays...

[north cargo]

Not much point of something being full price if it's going to go on sale, people will just wait for the sale

[strange saddle]

Agreed. I bought a game, played like 3 hours, then two weeks later the game went on sale for 75% off...

[low tree]

Damn

[low tree]

That’s a kick in the balls

[thorny saffron]

-75% seems to be pretty much the default for any game over 1.5 years old nowadays...

[low tree]

Games should only go on sale after the game stops getting updates

[strange saddle]

Gotta scoop up them "late subscribers"

[north cargo]

Or slows down in sales

[low tree]

Otherwise the early buyers pay more for less features early on

Yeah

[thorny saffron]

patiently stares at Terraria

[mystic zephyr]

lol

[low tree]

Oof

[strange saddle]

I don't think games should go on sale after they stop getting updates. I think they should just flat out drop in base price and that's it

And then after 10 years they should be free

[low tree]

Nintendo be like: heheheheHAHAHHA

[strange saddle]

Looking at you, EA and Ubisoft, selling the same 12 year old games for ~70% of original price

[low tree]

Hy rule warriors

Is like still 70

And it’s been out for 5 years and it’s a garbage game

[left lintel]

nintendo shutting down tourneys because they aren't using the correct version of a 30 year old game

[strange saddle]

Assassin's Creed: Black Flag was released literally 10 years ago and is still 40 dollars

[merry laurel]

what about older games that require servers but don't allow users to run them?

[strange saddle]

That is a different story, but not one I'd go into. A lot of MMOs are notorious of this lmao

[left lintel]

who's buying an unplayable game

[merry herald]

I prefer when games go on sale because I don’t have a lot of money and it allows me to play expensive games

[thorny saffron]

No, it allows you to play games that feel expensive

The real price is the sale price

[merry herald]

Witcher 3 was 60 but I got it years later for 10

[thorny saffron]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/304924468764213258/850792882976981002/unknown.png

Guess I'll need to update that soon

[low tree]

wait what

[north cargo]

It's a joke

[thorny saffron]

Factorio is always on sale, they just aren't allowed to advertise that

[low tree]

oh 💀

damn i thought it was real

[brittle ledge]

Actually doing that would be very illegal.

[north cargo]

I recommend perhaps some personal identity theft insurance

[thorny saffron]

It's not exactly subtle

[low tree]

true

[royal furnace]

It should be "100% - $35" Then in small text below "100% of the game is included in your purchase"

[strange saddle]

Factorio is always on sale. If it's not on sale then it's off sale which means you can't buy it

[errant mesa]

it's on $5 sale for a few more days

[low tree]

🤯

[turbid wyvern]

damn the hyperinflation is hitting hard 😔

[royal furnace]

The demo already costs a lot of time, what more will they take!

[north cargo]

Our freedom

[dark willow]

price increease?

[thorny saffron]

#announcements

[dark willow]

interesting

im not complaining because i already have the game

but i can see why people would be annoyed

[mystic zephyr]

dont worry, plenty others are

[dark willow]

me when the world economy

[merry herald]

I have the game and am complaining it may not affect me but that doesn’t matter

[round fulcrum]

it'll affect you because likely the expansion is gonna be $35 now

[merry herald]

true

which does suck as im poor

[low tree]

what are they even gonna add that mods do not

and if they do, are they gonna remove mods that emulate the expansion pack

[orchid dagger]

Ofc not

Any emulation of major expansion pack features will require the new expansion-only engine additions to achieve a similar level of polish/performance/functionality.

[low tree]

thats true

they aint dumb

[errant mesa]

ngl I would be a bit pissed if most mods started requiring DLC

[jagged helm]

that's what's going to be so interesting about it, presumably

[round fulcrum]

we dont know but they have said there will be engine changes to enable some of the expansion

[thorny saffron]

Some most likely will, if they want to use the engine features the DLC adds

[dense hull]

Bethesda games work the same way and I think it's fine

[orchid dagger]

It will mostly be mods that otherwise wouldn’t be able to exist

[errant mesa]

that'd be the best case scenario, but I can sorta imagine mods just depending on the DLC for a tiny feature because the author just expects most people interested in modding their game to own it

[round fulcrum]

or just requiring on the expansion because they copy pasted the info.json from an online tutorial and that tutorial includes require_expansion=true

[lethal furnace]

mods that just have a dependency on the expansion without actually needing it can easily be edited in the info.json file to make them not require it, which everybody can do as long as the license permits it (which it very very most likely would). Then even if the author doesn't change it when asked you're still able to use them, plus (again if the license permits it) people could upload a fork, though that should always be last resort.
Mods where only a small, optional part of them requires the expansion can have an optional dependency and check for the existence of the expansion in code, the difficulty of which depends on the mod but I don't think it'll be too hard in most cases.
So unless people want to intentionally start drama and make themselves a target, I don't foresee this being a big issue considering the majority of mods on the portal are licensed under MIT

[round fulcrum]

that seems reasonable. it'll still be the case for a few mods i think, and is just a funny situation to me

[jagged helm]

I mean, technically, there's no way to stop you from editing the info.json file to remove the dependency and using the modified mod locally regardless of the license the mod author chooses

(obviously you should respect the mod author's license if you want to distribute that change, of course)

[north cargo]

If there's a second expansion in the future, does the fork become a trident?

[karmic ocean]

I don't think there will be only two, they'll probably automate expansions/DLCs after the first

[north cargo]

I won't even try to speculate

[dark willow]

Wait so the expansion will be separately sold?

[orchid dagger]

+faq expansion

oh that doesn't work in threads

[orchid dagger]

yes

[dark willow]

Okay

[orchid dagger]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-365

[dark willow]

So I do have something to complain about

Yipee

I have never said yipee before

[thorny saffron]

[merry laurel]

oh no, I have the opportunity to give my favorite game devs more money for something that benefits me

[dark willow]

True

[orchid dagger]

We still don't want to be specific about many things, not even the expansion name, but we can start by giving you some general idea about the scale of the project. The general goal is to make the expansion feel like as big an addition as the whole vanilla game. This is why we plan to price it at $30.00, and put in enough content to make it well worth the price.

Honestly, making the price (and thus the expected scope) a little bit more concrete in this way, motivates us not only to make enough, but also to not overshoot, so we wouldn't spend another 9 years doing it. Generally the fact that the team size has increased, and there are a lot of things in the engine that we already solved, should hopefully imply that the expansion takes way less time than the base game.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-367

[thorny saffron]

To be clear, we have received no word on the pricing of the expansion beyond that estimate when it was announced for the very first time.

[orchid dagger]

Well the estimate is from the update a year later, but yes

[thorny saffron]

Whoops, yes

Mixed up the posts

[low tree]

so when's this expansion pack gonna release

[orchid dagger]

Not before September 2023

Could be 2024, 2025, 2026

No one knows 🙂

FFFs 365, 357, and 370 have all the info we know

[low tree]

😱

[strange saddle]

That's because Bethesdas DLC are generally microscopic

[old torrent]

wube must work faster release the DLC before it goes bankrupt

[merry herald]

Wube is rolling in cash

[royal furnace]

I didn't realise Wube were cylindrical.

[old torrent]

Wube should sell deluxe edition on DLC release

[merry herald]

I can’t afford to buy a deluxe version

Idk if I’ll even be able to get the dlc at the time

[meager walrus]

what would be in this deluxe ed?

[bleak meteor]

30 free prod 3 modules at spawn

Or even better, prod 4 modules that you can‘t craft otherwise

[low tree]

ayo

Then you add micro transactions for exclusive items

Then you implement a loot box system

Mwuhahahaha

[meager walrus]

we already have uranium processing /s

[low tree]

we do

however, kovarex nullifies that

[strange saddle]

The "trick": Finding the most useful place to put those prod mods (Spoiler alert: Rocket)

[olive shale]

Isn't NFTs state of the art?

Like buy Prod 4 modules in a shop or something 😉

The reports going to be awesome "Omg, biters destroyed my base, and I had $1000 worth of items in that chest!".... not

[orchid dagger]

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-369

[olive shale]

Ah yes! I remember that post now 🙂

[normal oyster]

1000$/hour Vs. 0.005$/hour

[meager walrus]

[round fulcrum]

new business model just dropped

[royal furnace]

$2000 better come with IP ownership rights hahaha

[royal furnace]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, How about $1000 to me, and I'll allow you to use punctuation?

[round fulcrum]

im good but if you find 1,000 people willing to do that you can retire

[idle pawn]

I have a genius business model for when I make my own game,
1 copy of the game will for $1,
A bundle of 2 copies will also cost $1

Then I will get all the people saying "This guy is an IDIOT! I will buy the 2 copy bundle!"

And then I can do like a 20% sale on the 1 copy price, and people will see "Wait... $0.80 for 1 copy, or I can get 2 copies for $1? This guy is an IDIOT!"

[normal oyster]

@idle pawn I'd buy both bundles to see what's the difference

[low tree]

damn

the dude will probably make at least a sale or two

from youtubers who buy it and make a video on it

[normal oyster]

Welcome to super-luxury gaming era

[low tree]

bro imagine if this

modern art and nft bullshit spreads to video games

[normal oyster]

The game can easily be a screen with a text "ya, you're rich!" and be compliant with the expectations

[low tree]

selling games for thousands

[low tree]

theres an app like that on iphone im pretty sure

[round fulcrum]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich

[normal oyster]

Funny that he's named "Heinrich"

[royal furnace]

I was thinking of exactly that app and was going to mention it but I couldn't be bothered looking it up to link it haha

[round fulcrum]

glad to be of service

[meager walrus]

I will happily distribute your game for you, Klonan. I will buy those two copies, and sell a copy each to two more people for $1.20. But, I will also give them a 20% discount down to 1.00 if they buy two copies first. They can then sell the extra to two more people each or something.

and then those four can then sell to eight people... and eight turns to sixteen...

[normal oyster]

My friends used to sell vouchers for drinks... Their motto was:

Buy 1 for 2$
Or
Buy 2 for 4$
Aaaaaaand
Buy 3 for 6$!

The format seemed to have its little success, IDK if it was for the cheap alcohol or the meme format, maybe both

[carmine dust]

If you really think about it, buying the game just before its price increase was essentially the "sale"

[merry herald]

no

[grand wave]

Damn. @carmine dustI think you just got roasted.

[mystic zephyr]

damn bro thats wild

[upper rivet]

how much did inflation increase?

[north cargo]

Check the pins, it was a lot

4x the normal inflation rate in the US , which I have no doubt affects the rest of the world in various ways

[upper rivet]

for some reason factorios price increased from 300 NOK to 400 NOK in my country

[meager walrus]

regional pricing seems to vary it a bunch from what i hear

someone earlier mention a 2.5x price increase for them

[upper rivet]

wow

[meager walrus]

my region got a little bit over a 50% hike

[north cargo]

Ouch

[meager walrus]

on the other hand the review bombers seem to have mostly forgotten factorio and moved on the next game to rage at

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[orchid dagger]

UK went from £25 to £30 (after going from £21 to £25 only last year)

[north cargo]

Predictable

[upper rivet]

lol

[orchid dagger]

But £28.25 on factorio.com (which uses a regularly-updating currency conversion)

[north cargo]

Gamer outrage is a fluid thing 😂

[meager walrus]

[orchid dagger]

They're still going wild on steam discussion forums

[meager walrus]

oh i didn't venture there

probably got revived since the increase just went live

[upper rivet]

its cheaper here on the site for me

"Redeem a free Steam key once your account is upgraded"
once your account is upgraded?

[meager walrus]

huh, mine is almost 50% cheaper on steam than on the official site

[orchid dagger]

upgraded from free to paid

[orchid dagger]

Regional price discounts on steam?

[north cargo]

Right, since you get the demo for free, and an account gives you access to the forums

[meager walrus]

it doesn't say it's on sale or anything.

[orchid dagger]

forums are separate

[north cargo]

Cool

[orchid dagger]

No, but steam doesn't just do currency conversions. Some countries are permanently cheaper relative to USD

Whereas the humble widget on factorio.com is just $35 converted using whatever exchange rate is current

[meager walrus]

makes sense

[orchid dagger]

So atm, it is cheaper in GBP on factorio.com than steam. But if GBP were to quickly devalue, I presume that that would reverse until steam updates its pricing, which might take several months (and might require factorio devs to manually trigger)

[orchid dagger]

https://steamdb.info/app/427520/

[upper rivet]

Yay, my country is second

https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/944970647006748732.webp?size=48

[meager walrus]

[orchid dagger]

So presumably everywhere except Switzerland, Norway, Israel, UK, Poland and Australia is cheaper on steam currently

[upper rivet]

I think they have always been cheaper

but they increased now

8$ in ukraine

[plush spoke]

AU is $5 more than yesterday.

[plush spoke]

Also - what in the heck is that number format.

[orchid dagger]

Comparison from last week

[plush spoke]

xxx,xx... my brain.

[turbid wyvern]

wait, it's only 2€ more expensive? that's not much

usually the price always goes up by 5

20, 25, 30

[upper rivet]

I feel like i should have know that

. > ,

[turbid wyvern]

what's so weird about it tho?

it's nearly the same character

2.2 or 2,2

[plush spoke]

nearly yes, but when used in numbers, the , is used to distiguish 40,000.00 from 400,00

[north cargo]

Ducky is probably looking at it upside down

[turbid wyvern]

who tf would use multiple decimal places in the same number???

[plush spoke]

no one, exactly my point.

[upper rivet]

tell that to the norwegain websites that use ,

[turbid wyvern]

ah, nvm, I get it now

1,000.00 inch
2 540,00 cm

[upper rivet]

at that point just use meters

[turbid wyvern]

how many miles is a thousand inches tho?

[meager walrus]

decimal comma is used in a lot of countries though

[turbid wyvern]

I use both, they look so similar anyway 🤷

actually, I use the dot when typing on a keyboard and the comma when writing by hand

[north cargo]

I'm gonna need that in bald eagle wing spans

[upper rivet]

laughs in metric

[plush spoke]

How would you write one million australian dollars and 1 cent in numbers?

[turbid wyvern]

those muricans using a thermometer instead of a thermofeet 🤦

[north cargo]

Thermoyard

[turbid wyvern]

1 000 000.01 AUD

wait

[bronze kelp]

there's a map on wikipedia for specifically this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#Conventions_worldwide

[turbid wyvern]

oh yeah indeed, excel doesn't want me to use the dot

smh microsoft

[thorny saffron]

You can change that
Somewhere in locale settings I think

[meager walrus]

i would do 1,000,000.01 AUD as my default

[bronze kelp]

i18n be like

[upper rivet]

spaces are better as a thousand seperator

[plush spoke]

while you forgot the 1 cent I will forgive that 😄

[thorny saffron]

Since we're on the topic... Is a value ending with zero cents normally written as $xx.-- or $xx.00?

[turbid wyvern]

F4240.028F5C28F5C28F5C28F6 AUD

[plush spoke]

$xx.00

[plush spoke]

what in the hecken

[upper rivet]

what in the hex

[bronze kelp]

nobody uses apostrophes as the 100s separators?

[thorny saffron]

Hmmm, seems the .-- really is an Euro only thing, lol

[upper rivet]

people use 'for that??

[meager walrus]

i performed a rounding-off scam

[turbid wyvern]

yup, I see that from time to time, but a space is just easier

[meager walrus]

i do

[bronze kelp]

there needs to be an iso-8601 equivalent for typesetting numbers

[meager walrus]

actually wait. 100s or 1000s?

[turbid wyvern]

1'000

because 1'000 * 1,000 = 1[000@000

[meager walrus]

1000000.01

[thorny saffron]

1000"000

[turbid wyvern]

1OOO000OOO

[thorny saffron]

python accepts 1_000_000

[meager walrus]

1.0x10^6

[turbid wyvern]

1e6

I love javascript

[meager walrus]

e^13.81551056796427405410794906144

this one gives you an extra 0.0000000000000000000000005 back

[turbid wyvern]

not exactly :p

[errant mesa]

idk how people can complain about $5 increase on Factorio price specifically because other companies don't increase prices and do sales
when average gaming company releases an unfinished game for $60, then fixes a few bugs over the next year and then forgets the game exists

[meager walrus]

probably because they base it on a surface level comparison

[turbid wyvern]

because those companies have 30 times more employees but factorio is still more expensive than 2€

[thorny saffron]

Guess the sale FAQ needs an update now... Do I embrace $70 as the new AAA price, or do I go with a 42% discount percentage? :P

[turbid wyvern]

AAA games has been priced at 70 bucks for quite some time now, hasn't it?

[errant mesa]

but also triple A's tend to sell more easily

[turbid wyvern]

true

the entertaining market is really weird

[errant mesa]

since you often get free marketing just from the fact that it's usually a sequel to an established series

[dense hull]

I think specifically the gaming industry is kinda fucked

[errant mesa]

+they tend to get real marketing on top

[meager walrus]

and loads and loads of dlc

[dense hull]

we're so used to big corps releasing unfinished products

[turbid wyvern]

what's so impressive is that the costs are not propotional to the sales, at all

[meager walrus]

and not free dlc either.

[errant mesa]

I saw this today this is like the most defeated-consumer thing I've read in a while

[turbid wyvern]

I don't think so, we still have wube

[dense hull]

lol

if only wube made all the games

[errant mesa]

movie industry is getting fricked by three companies buying up nearly everything

[turbid wyvern]

even the tera raid events are not free lmao

[meager walrus]

for some reason that now makes me wonder if anyone has ever done a factorio version of mr bone's wild ride

not that i would see it here, for obvious reasons

[thorny saffron]

lol

[idle pawn]

Without taxation Factorio would be 20% cheaper in your country

So if you want a real sale...

[meager walrus]

that is very nicely open-ended

[hearty abyss]

Taxes are the price we pay for civilization itself and nature abhors a vacuum. There will always be a governing body and if it's not above-board (taxation with representation) it will find other ways of existing through economy of scale and the capability of a hierarchy to consolidate power if the network falls apart.

That implication is too open-ended and leaves open to interpretation the wildest destructive imaginings of the completely unhinged or naive who fail to see the collective effects of so-called individual action.

[strange saddle]

#SlipperySlope

[meager walrus]

so do you buy it for yourself, or for one of those three friends...

[strange saddle]

I already own it

Is a gift to a friend worth it, though?

[meager walrus]

so, how does one send a child through mastercard

[plush spoke]

only if you force them to play with you

[tall sleet]

You don’t have a conscious AI you consider your child?

[meager walrus]

I am an AI in my spare time

[hearty abyss]

Dear lord my mind goes to "don't say that, that's human trafficking" even though you're so clearly joking and not in a position to compel a business to engage in-- ... I'm gonna stop taxing y'all with this rambling 😅

[meager walrus]

[thorny saffron]

What do you mean, Iron? We have the most extraordinary individuals in here, surely there's one that's capable of sending a child through mastercard

So anyway, I think it's about time we close this thread

[plush spoke]

I have several... I just need the technology...

[hearty abyss]

Could make it a Then (60/30) vs. Now (70/35) multidimensional thing but then it would reignite this thread every time it's brought up

[orchid dagger]

🤔 it has gone from 400 to 2500 Argentine Pesos

RIP

[meager walrus]

when was the price increased to 30$?

2017?

[north cargo]

There was already a random person wanting to complain about the price just today

It ain't over yet fam

[meager walrus]

ah 2018

https://www.worlddata.info/america/argentina/inflation-rates.php
¯_(ツ)_/¯

[turbid wyvern]

have a look at isthereanydeal.com, it lists all the price history for all games on all platforms

[meager walrus]

i just grabbed it off the pins in this thread XD

[turbid wyvern]

I'm glad I bought it back in 2016 :D

tho I paid 40€ since I also bought it for a friend

[hearty abyss]

I bought it for so many friends...it's a little ridiculous

[idle pawn]

All of my friends have the game! They both really enjoy it

[mystic zephyr]

Lookit you. Mr "I have friend'S"
Plural and shit

[strange saddle]

I'll be your friend!

[grand wave]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number so youre telling me that klonan has 1/75th of his brain devoted to friendship and 74/75 devoted to organizing the wube office happy hour?

I respect it.

[idle pawn]

I have a humongous neocortex, the biggest you've ever seen

[north cargo]

Neowhatnow

[grand wave]

Deduction: Klonan is the primary playtester and is only on payroll because hes blackmailing that Kovarex guy

[turbid wyvern]

wtf is this?
"the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar."
from this definition I know some people who would have their "dunbar's number" to be in the billions

[jagged helm]

note that even if you bumped into one person per second for 16 hours a day for 50 years, you'd only just get to 1 billion people

[turbid wyvern]

oh, well I guess they live long

and never sleep

[pallid granite]

oh hey I forgot to ask

for people who already purchased the game, where do we send the additional $5

[round fulcrum]

my paypal works

for serious though, consider supporting smaller mod authors

[turbid wyvern]

what, you guys are getting paid?

[pallid granite]

i would, but i have to pay wube and im not made of money

[left lintel]

scientific notation gaming

man imagine if all denominations of money were in scientific notation

[round fulcrum]

we'd lsang it out fast

five twos => 500 (5 * 10^2)

six point one ones = $61

(or six ones and one zero)

or sixty one zeros

or sixty one

[mystic zephyr]

oh is THIS why i prefer to drink at home? neat it has a name

[thorny saffron]

The merch shop :P

[mystic zephyr]

WTB biter plushies

[hearty abyss]

it is somewhat shocking that hasn't happened, but I guess it is an entire production chain to vet and much more involved than t-shirts, etc.

judging by how LTT handles things you end up needing a product team for it

[mystic zephyr]

yeah i know, i cant blame them. but it'd be fun to have

[meager walrus]

They should follow the footsteps of Elvis' manager and sell "I hate Factorio price increases" mugs or something

[gilded stag]

angerey (maybe lot of ppl took that seriously)

[night forge]

Biter merch. Can’t wait. Want my plushy worm plz.

[old nova]

Fish would almost certainly be first I would think

[meager walrus]

can i get a daki?

[mystic zephyr]

Review 1/5 star. Doesn't heal my wounds. Sent it up in bottle rocket. No achievement. Refund plz

[night forge]

Why fish? Just a random decorative item never used. Silly.
Biters are the hero of the game. Logical first plushy.

[round fulcrum]

inserter plushie
construction bot plushie

[plush spoke]

Real life programmable combinators!

[meager walrus]

i think that's called a computer

[west jay]

Computers in computers computing computers to compute more computers to make a single pixel turn blue

[strange saddle]

Funny way to say "Emulation"

[thorny saffron]

Apparently the fish was based on a plushie...

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/gom295/comment/frgl1go/

[left lintel]

imagine if it started moving

spidertron plushie!???!?

[old nova]

Exactly

[jagged helm]

I feel like a Lego collaboration would work well

[gilded stag]

ngl i would love a train daki, with two doublesided cases for loco, cargo, fluid and arty

trains my beloved

[grand wave]

Cargo wagon backpack?

[gilded stag]

cargo wagon duffel bag

:D

[left lintel]

factorio logistic robots plushie

factorio nuclear power plant

but it's actually a nuclear power plant

factorio branded concrete flooring

[vagrant heath]

"One of steam's most popular game has increased it's price due to inflation after seven years since release.[...]"

Well it didn't take that long to hit Mexico.

[vagrant heath]

3d printers + raspberry pi!

[hearty abyss]

article doesn't distinguish between release to early access and release at 1.0 let alone when the price went from 20 USD to 30 USD in between those two times.. lol

[vagrant heath]

Mm, they actually did.

"(Translated from spanish) You have to remember that factorio was 20 euros during early access and would pass to 30 euros on the 1.0 release"

[hearty abyss]

The title over-simplified, then :P

[vagrant heath]

Ah yeah, it only talks about the current increase, not the one from early access to 1.0.

[hearty abyss]

or if it's going to talk about the 1.0 release that's far less than 7 years

[winter iris]

Na rather pay 80 quid for a game with a battle pass that comes out every year and is out of support after 2 years

Seems legit

[vagrant heath]

gotta get those click claks some way 😉

[merry herald]

a huge problem a lot of people has is just looking at the title and never reading the artical

[mystic zephyr]

Wait you mean I don't take my entire set of facts from a skimmed title? Sheesh

[strange saddle]

But that's how my imagination runs wild!

[mystic zephyr]

How else do I get worked up with minimal effort?!?

[errant mesa]

interesting that Factorio was more expensive in Europe before this..

never realized it costed both 30€ and $30 before

and Euro has even gotten weaker compared to dollar since then

[carmine dust]

stares in utter contempt

[round fulcrum]

gotta buffer that heat

[carmine dust]

not to mention none of those reactors are having their old fuel removed

[vagrant heath]

oh ouch

[gilded stag]

new update: reactors consume u:238 but explode on their own past 750 heat

[north cargo]

It's still here

@gilded stag

[gilded stag]

whyd it disappear on my list

odd

now when i go back to other channels it stays visible like before

discord having a stroke

[mellow rock]

I also heard about price increased but how does it affect to people who already own the game?

[north cargo]

Same happened to me lol

[north cargo]

It doesn't, it's pointless outrage based on flawed logic

[gilded stag]

i mean all it would affect is people who haven't bought it yet being less willing to spend $5 more

[north cargo]

The only actual effect is the assumed equal price increase on the expansion

[gilded stag]

yea we'll see what the expansion holds, content and price

[north cargo]

I feel like it will be fantastic

[eager sail]

why wouldn't it be?

[north cargo]

Exactly

Great dev team, amazing game, no DLCs, nothing but solid work and consistent messaging

[eager sail]

well, consistent messaging, i still miss the fff's

[north cargo]

Too busy working on the expansion

[eager sail]

true

[gilded stag]

i wonder if they'll add late-game biter variants

[eager sail]

behemoth biter not strong enough for ya?

[gilded stag]

when we have uranium ammo, multi-layered walls, late research stages of damage bonuses, and flamers just kind of killing everything, no not really

[mellow rock]

Those are strong but with enough arsenal those are jokes

[eager sail]

true

well at least there's a mod that adds a tougher crab-like tier

[gilded stag]

there's mods for everything

watch there be a late game variant that's very good at nuking walls

[mellow rock]

Yes but there are people like me who wants to stick with vanilla

[gilded stag]

there's so many examples of enemy variants in similar games exclusively made for breaching walls - i wonder if the expansion will adapt that

[eager sail]

biters with deconstruction planners

[mellow rock]

exploding biters

[near nymph]

The recent reviews speak for itself

[north cargo]

Lol yes, review bombs are totally the gospel 😂

[near nymph]

I paid £15 for this game

And I bought 2 of my friends copies

If I were to do that now, it'd be 2x the cost

£45 VS £90

[north cargo]

Congratulations

The pinned message here contains all the information necessary to develop a rational, educated opinion, rather than reactionary emotion

[near nymph]

Inflation?

[north cargo]

Yep, 4x normal, because reasons

[orchid dagger]

Inflation, currency devaluation, and more content each contribute to it being worth £30 today rather than £15 many years gao

[vagrant heath]

I am gonna spit my coffee out

the username does not help at all

[north cargo]

This is Wubes only product, they don't do DLCs, and they have 30+ people to pay

[vagrant heath]

Wube isn't even greedy. The game costs around 400 pesos now, but I'm not complaining, i have gotten so much joy out of playing this game to a point were I've said i would genuinely pay more

[north cargo]

The average playtime speaks for itself

[near nymph]

I've played for just under 1000 hours

[north cargo]

So you got your moneys worth

[vagrant heath]

the statement comes again
"I've gotten 0.x¢/hr of gameplay from this game alone"

[north cargo]

Yep

[near nymph]

My friend was going to buy the game at £21