[levocardia]

Seems like basic price discrimination. Occasional sales let you capture some of the people for whom your game (or the option to play your game, maybe never exercised...) is worth $10 instead of $20 (or whatever). I don't really see who is harmed here, other than players who say "well maybe the game will go on sale..." -- but did they really value the game at its sticker price to begin with?

[dvdkon]

Yes, and the devs' refusal to ever put the game on sale has led to me still not buying Factorio, despite hearing how good it is. I'm just not sure of the value when I buy most my games at 10 EUR or (much) lower.

[fasterik]

Factorio has deep gameplay. You can spend thousands of hours on it and still have more to learn and experience.

If it's your kind of thing, spending $70 for the base game plus the Space Age expansion is really good value; orders of magnitude more than most games. But if you want something that will give you a few hours of entertainment and then move on from it, it's probably not for you.

There's a free demo which has more than enough gameplay for players to decide whether they want to invest in the game.

[SirHumphrey]

For games like Factorio and Minecraft sales work a bit differently. These games are evergreen and very easily and commonly pirated, so people who are buying already have tens or hundreds of hours in the game. The marketing and capturing price sensitive markets through sales makes less sense - you are only losing margin to people who would buy regardless.

[izacus]

> but did they really value the game at its sticker price to begin with? reply

Factorio is a game that's sold at 35$ price point - half of the usual new game price. Does that mean that the developer doesn't value his game when it's so cheap?

What a silly notion.

[raincole]

I guess you're being rhetorical or sarcastic, but for people who're not familiar with today's gaming market: $35 is a very high price for 2D games like Factorio. Most 2D games are $10~$20. If you take sales into account, it would be much closer to $10 than to $20.

[fasterik]

Thinking about games along a single axis (2D vs. 3D) is a weird way to measure value.

You should compare Factorio with other sandbox/simulation games with procedural generation, deep systems, complex logistics, and large modding communities. Examples that come to mind are Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, which have similar price tags.