Valve creates micro-transaction steam support

    Quote from Defrag

    (for example, there's a hat that offers a +25 health bonus and it cannot be obtained through trading or crafting)

    That's not true, the +25 health bonus comes from having the whole scout set, not only the hat (so the bonus comes with drawbacks of it's own, since you must use the milk/fish/pistol). Also, the tags not tradeable/not craftable apply only to purchased items, you cannot use purchased items to craft other items and you cannot trade them, but you can still craft those items from drops and they can still be obtained on the random drops.

    That's why I'm trying not to kneejerk -- it's hard to get everything right when something has just been announced.

    On the other hand, if I can't look at the shop UI and easily discern that information (I got two things wrong from reading one UI screen), then I'd argue that the presentation is flawed

    These prices are just delusional. Please tell me they accidently added one or two zeros too much.

    Quote from Jetsetlemming

    Also holy crap shame on Valve for having $ = € in their own goddamn store.

    Yea one of the reasons i don't buy games on Steam anymore. Their games are often way more expensive then retail.

    It's only worth it for their special offers but since i don't have a credit card i don't care for that either.

    Not turning this into a general debatte on Steam but: You can pay with Click and Buy (EC Card possible), Prepaid Cards (Dunno the exact name of these) and with Paypal. That's three ways you don't need a credit card for steam.

    I think it makes sense from a business pov, tho 17 euro for a hat is a bit steep. People like to show off though, especially in competitive multiplayer games. I am sure some people will pay that much to be "special", in the same way some do so in real life too. What Defrag says is also true, if you ask too little people will regard the items as worthless and they won't buy it.

    Problem I have is that it can unbalance a MP game, after a while it may become an unwritten requirement to first go buy these and these items worth 50 Euro in total before you can even think of trying to compete with the other players. A MP game should be accessible and fair towards new players, otherwise they'll quit playing and your game eventually bleeds to death.

    And $ = Euro is much less weird than you may think. There is up to 25% sales tax in Europe, and none in the US on Steam. That money has to come from somewhere. Digital <> Retail is also a much more complicated problem than "omg they charge more for the digital product than the physical one, the lamers!". As the retail sector feels the heat of the digital distribution networks like Steam they will try to win over and retain customers by lowering their price. If Steam would lower their price in return you'd get a price war that would eventually devaluate our products and no one wins from that in the long run. Also a lot of smaller developers, like us, nowadays focus on digital distribution. You start out by saying "Ok we will release it online for lets say 10 Euro", however as time goes by you get in touch with retail publishers who wish to get your game out in the shops. Naturally they will want to compete with what the game costs online, so they will charge exactly the same for the physical copy. You can't really ask them "Can you perhaps make your copy 5 Euro more expensive than the ones we sell?". They are investing money into it, they will want to be sure they'll have a fair chance at getting a return for that investment.

    What i wonder is that if one buys a hat and few minutes later gets the same hat via random pickup, does one go insane?

    They should make sure that this DON'T happen or we'll see suicide rate going rapidly up

    Quote from Steppenwolf

    These prices are just delusional. Please tell me they accidently added one or two zeros too much.

    You'll soon see if they're delusional -- they'll come down rather sharpish if they're too pricey. My guess is that a lot of people have more money than time and you'll see quite a few purchases. It probably takes valve very little effort to add a new hat, and any purchases are basically pure profit. If you're charging $10 for a hat (steep, yes!) and you get 500 purchases a week, that's still $5k in sales that you had to do very little for. They'll probably start with the price being overly steep and then bring it down, watching the effect it has on purchase count and revenue as they do so.

    If you check out some of the payment models in freemium games, it's not a surprising move to charge so much; look at this from Nimblebit's Pocket Frogs, for example. The 8% of very expensive transactions ($29.99) account for nearly half of their revenue for that game. Those numbers shocked me a bit, too, but it proves that a small proportion of gamers are willing to spend what you and I would consider a ridiculous amount of money.

    Yeah I have seen similar numbers with other freemium games and the general trend is that the revenue generating items are priced much higher than you would expect. I also remember a similar article from an MMO with item prices from 50 cent to 120$ and they got most revenue with the 20$ items.

    I think it depends on how easy it is to purchase items, and when I'm first gonna overcome the barrier that bying items are, then I'm gonna go all in and not purchase some wimpy 0.99$ item.

    /fanboy hat on

    Once again Valve puts on its size 56 army boots, kicks the industry's ass with a brilliant move that benefits everyone, and reaps the results.

    God! I was scared because the forum software shrank your URL like this:

    Code
    http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3110 ... ayoffs.php

    I was like: wtf Layoffs??????

    On topic: It's the usual Valve cycle now: Announce/Release something, get rage across the internet, soon later everyone is pleased and can't live without their products.

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