Ferry Pack pricing Steam versus ShipSim store...

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[fxmodels]

Hi ..
How can there be THAT much of a difference between pricing? On Steam the price is $3.99... On the shipsim store its $19.99... This is a major difference to the point that I have no intention of buying it. I bought the game online here and downloaded it but the ferry pack will cost $20 here. From steam its only 3.99 but I cannot buy that one as i understand it...
What are options?

[sydmichel]

I am not a Steam user so I'm not sure but do Steam users get 'pushed advertising' when running Steam?  That's the only reason I can think that there would be such a price discrepancy.  Or, perhaps Steam have got a sale on.

[Mad_Fred]

Steam does do a lot of sales, they are on the whole quick to lower prices of products that have aged a little, and they do have the freedom to resell what they buy off of publishers and/or developers at lower prices, of course.

But, given that this is of course a really big difference and penalizes Vstep customers compared to Steam customers, I do agree, this is simply not quite fair.

I'll raise that point with Vstep, to see if they might look into it and maybe offer a better price to their own customers.

No guarantees of course.


Regards,
Fred

[Jake_Savage]

Steam users don't have any advertising or anything. However you must pay more for the game as it is not possible to buy second hand. Now a lot of the games around are second hand but steam can't be so they are making more from sales.

I'm not 100% sure but I think that is he reason. Steam users can't buy second hand games because of the licence key so that might be a reason to the lower prices.

[danny]

Steam users don't have any advertising or anything. However you must pay more for the game as it is not possible to buy second hand. Now a lot of the games around are second hand but steam can't be so they are making more from sales.

I'm not 100% sure but I think that is he reason. Steam users can't buy second hand games because of the licence key so that might be a reason to the lower prices.

Wait.. What?! 

Steam simply does what every other large retailer does - take advantage of economies of scale. Because steam "bulk buy" keys from publishers, they get discounted prices - which they then pass on to customers in the form of sales and generally lower prices all round. Its the same reason why a loaf of bread costs less at the supermarket than at your nearest corner shop.

That being said, I don't think Vstep can use "economies of scale" as a excuse to charge large amounts of money for their product... at least, not wholly. It would be hard for Vstep to offer a large discount on DVD copies of their games, purely because they have to order the DVD's in via a supplier etc etc. They should however be able to compete with steam's prices on their digital downloads - assuming Vstep control the digital distribution chain. If they don't control the download version of their products, then competing with steam (or any other large, well known retailer) will be difficult.

[Mad_Fred]

Indeed, it has nothing to do with second hand games, it's all about bulk buying and reselling at very low prices.

And they even might take a small loss every now and then by selling keys under the cost price, to avoid making an even bigger loss when they don't sell (many/any) keys at all.

Vstep of course can't sell physical copies that cheap, they have to actually be made and distributed. And if they lower the price on the download versions of their products then there's an unfair different between that and the box versions. Not as straight forward as it might seem.

But 20 euros for a few ships and some missions, in the day and age where entire games sell for a few euros via steam and the likes, that's maybe a little steep in comparison to the other prices elsewhere, for certain.

Let's hope there might be a little adjustment there, to make it a little more realistic, and most of all, attractive for people to buy.

Fred.


Oh and p.s., Steam doesn't have advertising? They're basically a shop. Everything they do and show is basically advertising. Of course not during the playing of games, but everything else in their application and on their website is one big advert for thousands of games, for many many many developers and publishers. 

[Kevinmcg_ships]

Steam users don't have any advertising or anything.

Every time I start Steam, I am greeted with various adverts for games, and when I quit Steam, a pop-up advert comes up on my screen........

[Mako Shark]

Would it not be possible to do what some games (like Euro Truck Simulator 2) do and allow you to use your product key to get a copy on Steam? This would allow non-steam customers to add their game to steam and access the cheaper dlcs and the convenience of having it on steam.

Yes I know some people hate steam and will disagree with that last point. Personally though, I like having all my games on steam to have them all easily accessible in one place. I don't have SSE on Steam as I found it cheaper elsewhere but would certainly add it if I could.

[Mad_Fred]

Well the two different versions don't actually mix. So you can't install a dlc for the one, onto the other.

So they'd have to make the whole game available that way, which they most liekely won't because steam is it's own entity, it's not like it is a spare distribution channel for developers. They're a shop, a business.

And you usually don't tell a shop to give out games for free, just because the person owns the same game from elsewhere. 

Vstep has on occasion given a Vstep version to Steam customers after Steam would/could not fix a problem and the shipsimmers-to-be were stuck with a non-functioning product. But I doubt Valve would do the same in return. They don't even give refunds if a game is blatently misrepresented in their advertising and fails to even run, despite the problem being on their end. So, I don't think that will work.

[Mako Shark]

I'm not sure how it works but there certainly are games that do it. I suppose they must have special agreements with Valve to allow Valve to still profit from activations on Steam when the game is purchased elsewhere.

As I said, Euro Truck Simulator 2 allows you to. I bought it on disk from Amazon and then activated it on Steam. Games bought from the Humble Bundle also allow activation on Steam or individual download.

[Mad_Fred]

Well there is a difference between buying a game from steam, or buying a steam driven game from a store, buying a humble bundle, buying a key on a website that only sells gamekeys and then activating it on steam.. etc.

In theory, anything is possible of course. If they arrange it like that, they can do whatever they like.

But from the little I know about how Shipsim is bought and sold by Valve/Steam, they'd have to make some special arrangement there at least. And given that we're only speculating about this price different anyway, there's no way to tell if Vstep and Valve would even consider changing anything at all. Probably a little far fetched. It's more likely that Vstep would lower their own price a little to reflect the aging of said product. Maybe not as much as Valve does though.

[Captain Cadet]

So wished I went for steam version now!
Cheaper and yet I would have downloaded it, unlike waiting 1 month because it got lost in the post 

[sydmichel]

So wished I went for steam version now!
Cheaper and yet I would have downloaded it, unlike waiting 1 month because it got lost in the post 

The boxed version from Vstep does have its advantages though.  I live in a fairly rural and mountainous region of Spain and when I first moved here in 2008 there was NO broadband to my house.  Therefore, when SSE came along I was happy to pre-order the boxed version (at any cost).

Unfortunately, there was an immediate downloadable update and a downloadable free fishing vessel that I could not get, so I had to resort to having a friend in the UK download them and post them to me on a CD.  Where there's a will there's a way.