The fallen price of indie games

“It was obvious hours into launch that I’d messed up.”

In 2010, Terry Cavanagh released the platformer VVVVVV with a launch price of $15 but soon received complaints about it being priced too high. Kieron Gillen wrote in the RPS review of VVVVVV, “While I think it is worth the money, fifteen dollars does strike you as a lot for an indie lo-fi platformer.”

“I desperately wanted to fix it and drop the price,” says Cavanagh. “But it seemed super unfair to the people who’d already paid $15, so I held my ground. More than that, I’d done pre-orders – over a hundred people had given me money before the game had even come out to help keep me afloat. It would have been totally unfair to reduce the price of the game to less than what they’d paid for a pre-order.”

Cavanagh was one of many who discovered the hard way that the price of indie games was on the way down. Should independent developers just accept low prices as a given – or is there an argument for pushing back against market forces? … [visit site to read more]

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