Post by Vin69 in Halfway House EP1-EP10 comments

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September 1

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Hey everyone.

Got some stuff to talk about. Namely the monetization aspect of this project.

MAIN GAME:

For the previous 5 years of so, everything I've made came out for free eventually. For the main game, it was available on the $10 tier on day one of each update. While the $5 tier gets it 2 weeks later and the $1 tier, another 2 weeks after that... and finally it would be available completely for free sometime after.

This is changing. Now, new episodes will stay at the 10$ Tier indefinitely (this will retroactively affect EP11, which I will move back up to the $10 tier as soon as I post this.

EP1-EP10 will remain available for free. I won't removed the download.

BONUS EPISODES:

For the bonus episodes. Previously, each new episode that comes out was locked at the $20 tier until a new one is developed. At which point, previously released bonuses will migrate down the tier, all the way to the $1 Tier before being available for free later.

This is also changing. The lowest limit for down tier migration for bonus episodes are now at $5. They will not go lower than that as each new bonus episodes are released.

A newly released bonus will still be locked at $20 until the next one is made as this is the entire reason behind the bonuses, as a top tier reward.

This will not affect the bonuses that are already available for free. Namely Bonus 1-3. They will remain free forever. Bonus 4 and above will never go below the $5 tier going forward.

REASONING:

First and foremost I'm doing this for the money. Not gonna beat around the bush about it. Putting an asking price on what I think (hope) my work is worth both in terms of money and self worth. Secondly, this is to make things more in line with what other devs of similar games are doing with their monetization. And finally, it's to make things align better as I attempt to make my work available on the various store fronts on the interwebs.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Sorry to the $1 tier folks. You guys are the biggest group amongst my patrons. And I appreciate you all for all these years. I've been putting off this decision for a long time now even though it's been eating away at me with each new release. But things are changing and the decision has been made.

Thanks for reading,

Az.

Zombieshyguy85 days ago

If i pay $10 for each new episode here will i get access as they come out?

wwdragon84 days ago

No. that's not how itch works.
If you pay for it 3 times, at 10 dollars each, you just paid 30$ for it.

It will still only be the free, chapter 1 to 10. :-(

MrSandwichCookies576469 days ago(+4)

I've never understood the whole "force the Patreon model on Itch users" approach, regardless of whether developers do it by doing stupid things like creating new products for each version and charging each time or just do it by abandoning Itch releases as this developer appears to be doing.

IMO, all that is likely to do is make a lot of former users mad and guarantee that they never pay you anything. After all, if we wanted to support something with continuous payments, we'd already be supporting you on Patreon.

If, instead, you just charged some reasonable percentage of the expected final Steam price to buy the next version and all future versions, from a financial perspective, even if every single person who is no longer getting it for free buys it on Steam, you'd still probably come out ahead by selling it for 2/3rds of that price now and investing the money, because it would grow to more than the final Steam price by the time you release it, and if necessary, you'd have that money now.

That's not even factoring in how many of the users will have entirely forgotten about it by the time it makes it to Steam, if it even does. (Remember how high Steam's rejection rate is for AVNs.)

And speaking as a professional software developer myself who has an absolute "just say no" policy towards any software that even starts to smell like a subscription (including serialized content) because of the perverse incentive that it creates to dribble out fixes just quickly enough to make money without actually delivering something that is complete/usable, I'm forced to agree with the folks who say that this is as good as dead, at least as far as most Itch users are concerned.

If it doesn't take too long, maybe some of us will still remember it by the time it appears on Steam and buy it there, but I wouldn't count on it unless that happens a lot sooner than this last version's 15-month release cycle suggests.

I wish you the best of luck, but I don't think this will have the effect that you think it will.

Vin6978 days ago(+2)(-4)

you won’t no one on this platform will have access to new episodes moving forward for free, either wait for the steam release or support him on Patreon.

itch.io

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