| The reason factorio devs can take such a stance is that they crowd financed the game over a decade ago when doing that was viable, and since then the game has achieved cult status. Sure the game was officially released in 2020, but it had been in Early Access since 2016. Ironically I bought it and never played it. I only bought it because I played a clone of the game called "Dyson's Sphere" made by a Chinese developer and wondered what the original game was like. > The developer profits from the players FOMO when a sale happens. No, That isn't it at all. This is like super backwards. FOMO happens typically when a big game is released. No months/years afterwards. A lot of players are waiting for a game to be the right price. Triple-A titles are now £60+. Doom the Dark Ages was over £70 at launch that is without the extra micro-transaction nonsense. Some games (even indie games) come out at £25-30. I am a big Doom fan and play megawads such as Eviternity and I said to myself "No I am not paying that much" for the new Doom game. I have plenty of disposable income. If the game comes down to less than £15 that is 3-4 overpriced coffee / 3-4 pints of beer down the bar. If you are patient you know that the game is going to go on sale some time in the future so you wait until their is a sale. Steam even have mid-week deals. I hear/see these conversations all the time on Discord, in person, reddit etc. > The player thinks he has accumulated a glorious Steam library when in reality he just wasted tons of money on games he wouldn’t even ever launch. I've never heard anyone flex their Steam Library. I don't think anyone thinks of it this way. Achievements in a particular game, sure. |
FOMO around sales: I've bought a bunch of games when they were on sale even though I was not going to play them right away, simply because I didn't want to end up wanting to play them later and have to buy them full(-ish) price. And then I never played them anyway.