Valve creates micro-transaction steam support

[Buddy]

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

[Defrag]

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.

[Zacker]

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.

[Skjalg]

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.

[-HP-]

I haven't played TF2 for like 2 years now, but someone told me that the game is now about hats, i loled.

[Hourences]

Bump

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

[Furyo]

/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.

[arhurt]

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

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.

[deceiver]

Wow. Didn't think it would reach those amounts!

[zaphod]

So are they starting to teach economics classes at game development school programs yet?

[Zacker]

Damn! As lame as I find the TF2->hat game transformation, there is just no way around to take my hat off when seeing those amazing numbers. Highly impressive.

[Erratic]

So now a money fire has to be lit under peoples asses to make worthwhile content. Nice.

Always brings out the best in people, surely.

[e-freak]

So are they starting to teach economics classes at game development school programs yet?

actually i had a few at my school. but these were quite shitty and more about management rather than peer-2-peer selling and micro transactions.

[Zeta]

Wow!

[Mazy]

This is sooo just the beginning