[gyomu]

Development teams are expensive to fund, and people who have bought a game will pay full price for a sequel, but won’t pay full price for updates/DLC.

And releasing a sequel gets you hype and press coverage - potentially expanding your customer base - in a way that releasing updates won’t.

There are some exceptions (No Man’s Sky?) but they are very few and far between.

[voidUpdate]

Well ok, I know "value to shareholders" is a good enough reason for some people... I guess I'm not thinking capitalistically enough about stuff

[shadowfiend]

The point above wasn’t about value to shareholders but rather about being able to pay the people doing the actual work.

[stetrain]

Even before you get to "value to shareholders" you have to actually pay your developer salaries to update the game. Where does that money come from when you're updating a game that's been on the market for 10 years and sales of new copies have tapered off?

Free major updates make your existing customers happy but don't pay salaries. This is why so many games have moved to some kind of ongoing revenue model with Battle Passes, cosmetics, item marketplaces, etc.

[ndriscoll]

This is one reason why we should either cut back copyright to more like 10-15 years and require source escrow (so public domain materials can come with source) to obtain copyright, or just require all computer programs come with source code as part of consumer protection laws. Then people can fix the engine themselves, or find a way to fund someone to do it.

Or just eliminate copyright entirely and focus on economic models that are based on funding creation. You raise money to build the thing, and once it's built, it's there for all.

[Forgeties79]

In most cases I would agree with you but ultimately games get older and can’t be sustained forever without people being compensated. People don’t pay for DLC like they pay for sequels, as the other person said.

It’s not about shareholders necessarily. It’s also about sustainability and people paying bills - they live in a capitalist society and can’t choose not to participate at the end of the day. You can’t ask a dozen or more developers to keep working on a game for free for a decade or more. They have to eat too.

The only other option is keep playing the exact same game with little to no changes. Which you can! The original is still available. But if you want it to improve and change over time or receive substantial DLC’s, somebody has to get paid at some point.

[scrollaway]

I don’t want to harp on as you had a couple answers on this already but if you need to pay your devs, what is your suggested alternative to “having money in the bank”? The latter only happens with more sales, and that only happens if you have something to sell.

[jjk166]

People will pay for DLC what the DLC is worth, which should in theory be directly proportional to how much effort it makes to produce the DLC. 4 small $20 expansions could be much more lucrative than an $80 new game which needs to not only include those changes but also make the rest of a functional (and presumably higher quality than the original) game.

[Zardoz84]

> Development teams are expensive to fund, and people who have bought a game will pay full price for a sequel, but won’t pay full price for updates/DLC.

So, you never fall in the trap of Paradox Games and the eternal launch of DLCs for Stellaris/Victoria/Hearths Of Iron/etc?

[hypeatei]

> will pay full price for a sequel, but won’t pay full price for updates/DLC.

I'm not sure this is true, see Factorio as an example. They released Space Age as a "DLC" but for full price and with clear messaging that it's version 2.0 of the game.

[master-lincoln]

To claim Factorio Space Age as counter example would require to show that it was as successful as DLC as it would have been as a new game. Probably not easy to show...

[hypeatei]

I think that's impossible to prove and I don't see how it's relevant. The OP claimed that people aren't willing to pay full price unless it's a clear, separate sequel with hype around it. The devs of Factorio proved otherwise with 400k copies being sold in the first week of Space Age's release[0].

0: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-434

[arbll]

Rust (not the language) is another good exception that is mostly powered by DLCs and skins today. Continuous updates with balance changes keep the game fresh, ensuring you maintain your playerbase that will in turn buy DLCs.