...$4.99 for the extras...Heh then how much for a game? because even few times more right? :D Imo at least now we should forget about mods/extras.
Pay-what-you-want basically means the buyer chooses the price, and the seller chooses the minimum price(usually $0 in this method...... so as I suspected.
...Pay-what-you-want is very consumer-friendly, I'm not sure what you're talking about. :P...vs what?
...We have "troll-testers" on one side, and on the other, we have people that will be asked to pay for a free game. :look:...People on steam "have demands" as I personally can understand this from people which paid something, but Imo people which doesn't pay shouldn't have any right for "demands" ... but do you think this fact will stop them? :O
...please people who are buying a game that is free elsewhere...That's the point, they are not forced to buy, if they choosed to buy then they did this just because they love steam + they choosed to support development, otherwise they can download game from "not steam" free and this has to be mentioned in the description to "not trick people"
A free to play market is the best if we can gain upkeep. If we rely on donations, we need to incentivize the players by showing faith in improving the game. For example, improving graphics...So if game is available free then devs have more work to do? :O "Nice deal" and great example how "demands" works on steam :P
...Having been a Steam member for many years, and played a lot of the free games offered, I think the idea that free games are covered in trolls is generally not true...
...From my experience negative comments are very dangerous on the very beginning when game is free and later situation is slowly getting better...Very basic example. I bet that on the very beginning there will be maaaany bad reviews from trolls because e.g.:
First about Steam & me: I am a newbie on steam and I always will be because I am trying to avoid it as I can :DYour loss man.
... and situation in the number of servers will never change much (at least in the positive direction) if it will be still as it is now when Team have to take ~ 3 years of donations to pay for (current, relatively weak) server for 1 year :-X
If you rely on donations, you have to incentivize people to donate. You have to earn people's money by giving them something they want. There's no way around this Filux. You do less work, you get less in donations. :P...But you don't have a guarantee. You can work 3x more and get 0.5x donations next month :P.
...If you sell the game, this only becomes more important. Now people have invested their money in what you're offering, and it's important to keep customers happy, else they're more likely to leave negative reviews and deflect future customers...... and this is how it should work.
...Considering you can buy games, leave bad reviews and then refund them...Why don't ALL games have tons of bad reviews?...Why not all? because not ALL are free :P and people know that you need to find a good reason for refund and laziness wins :O
...That's not to say of course that there are ZERO trolls, and ZERO people who have some sort of bias against free games. Those people exist, but obviously not in the hordes of numbers that you suggest...And this is a point when I understand your point. You are talking about people like recently TVs are talking about terrorist attacks around the world (especially in Germany). "He wasn't a terrorist ... he was just insane ... he had a bad day". Who cares. Behavior like a terrorist mean He is a terrorist.
I believe what's more dangerous are negative comments on Steam on how we rip them off. We need to provide Steam Users with exclusive items.I echo the concerns others have already raised about this, but I do think there could be a viable alternative. What about instead of having exclusive content, they just get access to new content earlier? This would necessitate new content being created, and being completely divorced from copyleft assets so that it can be kept behind a paywall, but would give paying customers something for their money, would still give free players new content (albeit delayed), and would generate revenue for new content and for server upkeep, etc. Free players may even be inticed to spend money when they see screenshots and IRC chatter of paying customers talking about the new mods they get to play. The main hurdle of this approach is that somebody would have to make a lot of new content, and it would have to be made basically from scratch, and on a continuing basis. This is by no means an insurmountable problem, but it does require somebody with free time and motivation to do it (and I'm not volunteering by myself :P). If it makes more than enough money for upkeep, then some of the profit could go to these content creators, but I wouldn't expect it to be significant.