Developers want money....
....Of course they do. That's the whole point of what they are doing. This isnt a hobby. As much as they may enjoy this game and working on it, at the end of the day the most important thing is the paycheck. Is that wrong? HELL NO. Anyone with any kind of job will attest, that the paycheck is most likely the number one motivator to work.
You can argue that the number of cosmetics is a money grab. You wouldn't be wrong. Its the point. Cosmetics are a source of income. And if they werent a good source of income, they wouldnt devote the resources to making them. Truth of the matter is, behavior is a business not a charity. Not a hobby. A business. Amd businesses need to make money or they close.
"Well they are just greedy and don't care about the player base!" I say you are full of manure. If they didn't care about the game. If they didn't care about the players, how often would you see any dev on these forums? Would they do the developer q&a streams, the update streams? Would they be spending time reworking 2-3 year old killers? Would they be trying to change unhealthy aspects of the game to make it better? If they didn't care would there even be a game at this point?
Changes are made for many reasons. And everytime half the community calls for torches and pikes. And the game still goes on.
But going back to money. Does anyone know how much it costs to run a small business like behavior? Last i heard about 50 employees? Ever think how much it costs a year to pay those 50 employees? I don't know how much they make a year but lets just say 50k a year is average pay for all behavior employees. That's 2.5 million dollars a year in payroll alone. And at 7.99 for every dlc that comes out, that's 312,891.1 copies that have to sell the cover payroll alone.....how many people play this game?
Further more, what about power? How much does it cost to run their equipment. How much does the equipment cost? What about rent? Or taxes on property they own? Servers in different countries. Licenses. Legal fees. Am i missing anything?
Point is, behavior needs to make money to stay in business. Thats a fact of the world we live in. That is what businesses do. And as far as how much money, show me any business that strives to just break even all the time, and you most likely won't see that business in 5 years.
As far as fair? A one time 10 dollar buy in allows you to purchase the rift every single time it opens. AND if you dont make it to the end you can save your cells.
Cosmetics are just that. They have zero effect on gameplay, save for a couple of them being easier or harder to hide in.
You don't need to buy the chapters to play against the killer or on the map. And all perks end up in shrine anyway. Not to mention you can buy the chapters just by playing the game. I used shards on oni chapter because i just didnt like oni. I can already buy the next chapter with shards if i wanted to. And i really dont play that much.
Moral of the story, try to understand the business model of things before you start complaining about greed. That or just tell your employer that you are going to work for free because that's what many people here want behavior to do.
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I can completely understand they need money. Of course they need money to buy and maintain the dedicated servers and their employees. But I would buy, and support this game, more skins if they weren't so expensive. I mean, 10 dollars/euro/whatever currency you need to use, it's just straight bs if you ask me. That's a complete money grab right there (I'm not entitled that it should be free, I'm willing to pay, but not THAT much each time).
But you forget BHVR is a big company (they made the payday franchise too, I believe?), so they can afford to pay their employees. It's not that they are a very small indie company.
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Huh, couldn't have said it better myself. Thought I was gonna come in here explaining that a purpose of a company is to make a product and make money. I am pleasantly surprised.
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Nah , payday is a different company . But Bhvr is much more than dbd . Anyway I 100% agree with OP , I'm willing to call devs generous in terms of dlc prices and their paid content in general .
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I hate these kind of posts where people ask other people to understand something that they do not understand.
BHVR doesn't have 50 employees, they are almost at 600, check their own website. DBD is not the only source of income they do have available. Furthermore the devs probably do not make the prices for dlc, the game itself or even the cosmetic articles in the shop as this is not what they are paid to do. At least I would be quite surprised to have some coder make decisions about marketing and calculating their cashflow.
I would be shocked if they do not have a few people in marketing and so forth but hey in your world, DBD has to make up for everything. Sure why invest in anything with the profit made? By investing I mean other gains to obtain income stocks for example and other assets.
Beauchamp-Daniel is probably the person making the decisions (might be outdated idk) regarding deadlines and so on ofc with input from people such as Coté and the devs at least that is how it should be imo. When DBD doesn't make a profit anymore BHVR will either stop the project or switch persons who are in charge.
An example why they should aspire to other levels of quality would be ofc the infamous CDPR, they did show DLC can be free, quality over quantiy. Sure there is crunch for the people involved and so on but I doubt that this is diffrent to most companies.
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If they don't make money, if we as consumers don't pay, then it's kinda hard to manage a game with no source of income, where you have to pay the workers and for the resources.
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I doubt anyone is questioning weather a business should make money.
It's more so about how much is too much in terms of monetization on an already pay to play game. We'll never know the numbers but let's not pretend that DBD isn't an insanely popular game that's done very well for itself.
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You bring up battlepass but like i said, its a 1 time buy in that you dont HAVE to purchase. We can disagree with what we consider scummy, but to me the rift is fair.
Im not an expert at business, and all my numbers were approximates. And yes behavior is more than just DBD. But the division of behavior that is responsible for DBD is given a budget and sales goal im assuming. There job is to create a product that generates a certain income number. Like you said, its highly unlikely that @peanits and almo are sitting in management meetings deciding sales numbers and pricing, which just kind of reinforces my point. The devs are given a sales goal and are tasked with keeping the game alive long enough to meet that goal. Aa far as investing, i dont have an opinion other than behavior is investing money into DBD in hopes of increasing return on that investment. Should DBD stop being profitable they will most likely shutter the project. Same conclusion as if DBD was it's own business.
Quite well is a relative term. It has a decent following but maxes out at ~30k users a month on steam if i remember correctly. Also who decides how much money is too much money to make? Consumers do. There's no law that says 5% profit is all a company is allowed to have. Nor 10%. Nor 50%. Theres no shame in a business trying to make money. As long as consuners are willing to pay for the service. Not to mention most of the dlc offerings require zero monetary investment.
Compare that with say, call of duty? Where a dlc comes out and you get nothing from that unless you buy it.
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I don’t have a problem with them wanting to make money. I have a problem with them prioritizing money making over making the game more balanced and fixing the game. Instead, they bandage the problems by releasing new perks and hiding ranks in the future.
I would have purchased all of their dlc as well as some of their cosmetics to support them if they did a better job with the base game. As things stand, they don’t deserve any more money.
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CDPR made free DLC? You mean those reskins for Witcher 3?
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What you see as manipulative i see as logical.
1)You want people to purchase your new product (rift) so you create incentives to get them to do so. (Theres a whole industry built around this called advertising. Yes thats a manipulative industry. However in this case there is timelocked cosmetics involved.)
2) Cosmetics in rift are locked from store for 6-8 months. And? If they were never to be seen again then i may consider that manipulative. Instead they are offering a bunch of items at a significant discount. One outfit costs 10 bucks. The rift costs 10 bucks....once.
3) One time buy in. If you want to devote time in playing and completeing rift then you buy it and have enough rewarded cells to do it again the next rift. No one is forcing you to buy.
4)Again, if you play, you will complete it. No not everyone will be able to complete the whole thing. I did. The first time and am on track to do it again this time. Despite not playing everyday. And being married with kids and a full time job. If the option to buy tiers wasn't there the outcry would be the same. And no one is forcing anyone to buy the tiers
5)The dlc characters can all be purchased with shards. Yes you have to play the game to get the shards but arent we playing this game? Also the rift doesnt require the dlc to complete. It just takes a little more grinding. I will agree with you if they force us to use licensed characters to complete the challenge.
Ultimately i dont agree with you on your definition of manipulative. And that's fine.
I will say that for the health of the game they really need to fix things more than throwing bandaids on them. But it's a catch-22. They need to hit revenue goals to stay afloat which means more programming and more bugs, which means more revenue for programming to fix bugs, which means more money needed which means more bugs and so on. It would be amazing if they went to 3 dlcs a year for a little while. Just for health reasons
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Yes so your whole point of devs want money, is not true. You do not know what they want, it is the company that demands the money. So as far as I am concerned I do believe that the devs do care about the product and have to walk a difficult path on meeting the needs of the community and the demands of the company. Do not take this as a bash of evil corporate greed, no, that is just the way business works since the employees do want to have a raise from time to time, bonus payments for vacation, christmas and so forth.
Approaching that can be done in diffrent ways, CDPR, showed a way how to do this, something i wish more devs/publishers would take an example from. I know crunch is involved and their might be stuff that I do not see because luckily, I am just on the consumer side of things.
Reskins? Yeah other publishers usually ask you to pay 10/15 bucks extra for the super special edition with the skin of x, which totally wasn't cut out and all. Not only skins, animations and quests. Want to argue on this level? Fine, check the cosmetics for dbd asking 50% for the baseprice of the game.
The actual big content dlc were so good that they got game of the year but hey, please understand I do not want to paint a bad image of greed, I just wanted to show with CDPR that one can approach income in diffrent ways. No DRM etc.. not saying DBD is not consumer friendly but that season pass is not something to brag about imo.
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Companies do want to make money.
You just simply can’t sugarcoat it. No matter how much a company wants to hide it, they do, indeed want money. The company needs money for a variety of things— keeping rent or paying taxes in regards to the property they own, paying for worker health insurance, paying livable wages, budget in the IT department for replacement if necessary, likely an exorbitant power bill due to most business activities taking place on computer, covering license fees, and a variety of other things a company (especially BHVR), has to cover. These can be a bit difficult to cover alone, so of course the company wants to continue generating more revenue as well fund other projects and DBD itself. I personally can get the frustration about microtransactions, they can take away from a game’s experience, but sometimes they’re necessary.
My personal thoughts and opinions.
Not to mention, new content keeps the game fresh. Siege has differentiating characters and styles of play, DBD doesn’t. It could be difficult to keep players engaged, but it also should be said with the nature of perks as of late, they don’t exactly do anything different, especially in survivor gameplay. The highlight of two chapters so far has been TWO perks, Head On and Inner Strength. I just feel like that new perks can only add so much to the game- the rift pass is one of the few reasons I’m playing as of now. I want to see new features, new items... it’s feeling stale. I understand that core gameplay refinement is extremely necessary, but having the same core gameplay for four years now can only be so fun for so long. I want to see a push in different playstyles, new objectives, features, and counterplay. The maps always feel so big sometimes, as well, and I think with times changing, the larger maps make it hard to control where gens are popped, which just... snowballs.
I feel as if game health is now a major priority, but I don’t think the whole Operation Health System everyone keeps mentioning just wouldn’t work. Let it be said that just happened with Siege, and the Operation could either be majorly successful, or a major flop. It does make sense that BHVR may not have a whole lot of staff on DBD itself, after all, DBD only grossed 30 million dollars out of 110 million dollars BHVR made from last year alone. These numbers may however change.
Closing thoughts, reflections, and feedback.
The game needs a major quality of life overhaul, in my opinion. To see to issues both sides are facing is difficult since the current agenda of the devs is currently unclear, so it’s hard to make an accurate guess of what the games direction is headed in as of now. Some more communication in regards to as whatever else is going on needs to be addressed; such as QoL issues in gameplay.
Additionally, I think patch notes need to be a little more, understandable. I see a lot of misconception happen when the patch notes are released vs the actual gameplay. A few touch ups to make the writing a bit more cohesive and understandable would be great to really help (especially newer consumers) understand and invest themselves in the game a little more.
I think the Dev Blogs should be a little more frequent, and more push for smaller patch releases (such as hotfixes and reworks) should be put into effect to make the game feel a little more dynamic, and improve how the game feels and is played.
Acknowledging fallacy, and bias.
I also wanted to clarify, most of my info is just an inference based off of the information provided on their (BHVR) website. I have a bit of business knowledge, but no certifiable education basis to give an accurate and comprehensive answer, as I just took a few classes on it, and frequently keep up with Stock Papers and analysis. If I did by chance glance over anything or something I said didn’t make quite sense, be sure to ask. I’ll take any feedback I can get. I am by no means afflicted with BHVR, I’m just providing my thoughts on the ordeal.
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I was just asking, I did not mean to be rude.
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You make good points. And i do see what you are saying however
1) You do not have to purchase before the grind. You have the option to finish the rift before you spend a dime. And to be fair in my opinion the best cosmetic in the rift is on the free track anyway. If i finish the rift, then i will buy the pass. If not, i dont feel forced to buy it. Unscrupulous means having no moral principle not honest or fair. Barring the statement that you could complete the rift by playing an hour a day, a statement which they walked back and corrected themselves with, there is nothing immoral in the set up of the rift. Play the game earn rewards. Pretty straightforward.
2) Correct. The rift requires you to play the game. If you are someone that likes to play alot then you will be more encouraged to complete the rift. If you don't play alot then the rift isn't for you and you will have to wait on obtaining cosmetics you want. Time is a valuable resource. It's up to the individual to determine how they want to spend that resource. The rift is there for people who want to play and use their time. Buying tiers is there for those who value time over money. No one is putting a gun to anyones head and saying you HAVE to grind this out.
3)The whole updating the progress everytime you switch a screen is obnoxious and i will absolutely agree with you on this one.
4)As someone with a life outside this game i fully understand that i will never be able to complete every single rift. And i am ok with that. There are 0 items in the rift that have any bearing on gameplay. Nothing there to change anything about how i play. If i miss out i miss out and i am absolutely fine with that. I get some people aren't. But ultimately, in any buyer/seller system, it is the job of the consumer to know what you are getting. Its up to the consumer to decide what to buy and when to buy. If they said you could complete the rift in 70 hours and you had to buy the premium track before you could progress along then yes that would be competely screwed up. Its like buying a used car and the seller says, transmissions bad and you buy it and then have to take it to the shop. Thats on you. Not the seller.
5)Again it's consumers job to know what they are getting. Behavior isnt hiding anything. As far as rift goes. The challenges don't dictate whether you complete the rift. They are seperate things. Yes the challenges make it easier but still doable without. You can still complete the tome levels without completing the dlc challenges. Which is another good move on behaviors part. If they locked challenges behind dlc only challenges then that would be unscrupulous in my opinion.
This is too long. People see things different. We obviously have different opinions on the game and company. We may have to agree to disagree. But i really think the rift and challenges are there to try to keep people playing. Give them something to work towards. I think the challenges would be great even without the rift. Hell they may be better.
Really though, what you see as unadulterated greed i see as mostly fair business practices.
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Sry my bad
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In which way is the battle pass a scummy business tactic? You are not forced to buy it to have a more optimal game experience, thats just a bad example.
You could have used Mettle of Man as an example, which was an utterly powerful perk that forced survivors to keep up with the meta by buying Ash, just to get nerfed the patch after.
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Developers have bills and salaries to pay. This game provides them with income. I may not agree with everything about this game but I find it very entertaining in spite of all the crying. I get it and I'll keep playing
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So basically we are all mindless sheep? Seems about right
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Its ok. We are discussing contrary view points. Please lets be civil about it.
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This is what I picture them doing after new cosmetics drop...
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Very familiar with the term whale. Never knew where it came from though. Will watch the video when i get home and have a chance to sit down with it.
Thank you for posting it.
Spoilers? Does it seem like behavior learned anything from this video?
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Literally nothing new, watched a video made by extra credits about 6 or 4 years ago on the topic, every game with monetization has this kind of heavy spenders.
focusing too hard on catering to them is unhealthy for the game, but its definitely not the case of DBD, no important game mechanic is currently locked behind a paywall, the payments that exist are optional and don't affect gameplay experience.
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"I just wanted to show with CDPR that one can approach income in diffrent ways"
Yes like extensive government funding, heavily priced singleplayer games and milking a hyped franchise in every way possible.
How dare BHVR charge money for the DLCs of their lower priced, more expensive to sustain and work intensive to maintain multiplayer game.
And I don't want to stop your Witcher masturbation, but Game of the Year means nothing these days. It is the Emmy of the Gaming Industry. It is not about quality it is about hype and influence.
And they were pretty fast to put together an overpriced GOTY Edition. Which is pretty much the first thing companies do with GOTY.
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Why is government funding a problem? Are you okay? Why wouldn't they apply for government funding if it is available? Everybody does this when it is available as did other polish studios and they also received funds. It is a normal business decision every sane and smart person in charge of business will do.
Heavily priced, literally the default price for each AAA game (just without the usual denuvo crap for example) while they also delivered quality as to other publishers and devs. FIFA should be what we want to see more of in the industry, damn CDPR for not releasing a game every year with little updates and charging full aaa pricetag for it.
Might want to check the price of DBD ( all DLC, all cosmetics) and compare that to witcher 3? Yeah thought so, the so called "overpriced goty edition" goes for 50€ on steam, without a sale including both expansions and all the dlcs. Check dbd again even without cosmetics.
The game they received funding for will have seamless multiplayer, also gog 2.0 but it is okay you just love all these diffrent launchers from each and every publisher.
My masturbation? What the hell are you even talking about? Also when it is so meaningless to get Game of the year, what does that say about games that didn't get it? CDPR defined AAA+.
I never said it is bad that bhvr charges money for the dlc they do produce. I just like CDPR's approach more which makes you want to play the game, instead of delivering a feeling of guilt for not playing while the season pass is up so you do not miss out on certain skins. Quite fascinating isn't it? Witcher 3 wild hunt has right now more average players than dbd, a singleplayer game that is 5 years old.
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I don't give a crap what anyone says, I have played plenty of killer and survivor games and I can't tell you how many times I've played games were I get completely destroyed by SWF teams or by a killer destroying all survivors in a matter of a couple minutes so it goes both ways and the whole entitled survivor argument is BS because killers do it too. Both are really quick to get on the forums and complain the minute things go really bad for them really quick and I for one am glad the Devs don't adjust the game the moment someone starts complaining because killers are just as toxic as survivors. Everyone needs to learn to take the good with the bad stop crying. I play solo survivor and I'm guilty of both too...
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Well I don't know about the feeling of guilt while not playing. Skins are very optional to me. But yes I'm also not a big fan of season passes.
I'm not saying government funding is a problem, but it is a bit unfair to compare CDPR with BHVR in many terms. I don't think Cyberpunk will have seamless Multiplayer as they already announced that they will focus on Singleplayer first and put in Multiplayer later after delaying it to September, which usually means never. I experienced government fundings also from within companies. Usually they let interns or students work on it to produce minimum results and grab all the cash from it and end up spending the money for their normal development processes.
You can't really compare the pricing philosophy with DbD skins, as they are a pure bonus and strictly a funding strategy.
Yes the Game of the Year Edition goes for 50€ for a Game that is, as you are saying 5 years old.
Yes skyrim is a singleplayer game too, much older and has more players than DbD and Wild Hunt. I don't see much point in comparing them though because their numbers are roughly the same. Also why should a singleplayer game have less players than multiplayer? It often also depends if the style and concept of the Game appeals to what number of people and how "compatible" they are.
Game of the Year was still a nice thing in the beginning, but these days they call it GotY as soon as anybody in the industry calls it that. It is not protected in any way.
It does not say anything about the Games who didn't "receive" it. Not only The Game Awards but anybody with some weight in the industry can literally "give" this status to games. You will not know at first if it is The Game Awards GotY, PC Games GotY, Gamestar GotY, BAOG GotY, Czech Game of the Year Awards, EG Awards GotY, etc., etc.
In case of the Witcher it was The Game Awards. They use a pretty randomly selected Jury of around 70 Bloggers or Games Magazine Envoys from all over the world which changes every year. There is not any further standards or any quality with their judgement process. You could compare it to Metacritic.com.
These days GotY is just a label.
Im not saying that Wild Hunt is a bad game or even that DbD is particularly good. But you are comparing apples with oranges and just throw in things im not sure you understand the background of.
AAA+? They defined software as a service in games? Because that is literally what it means and is around much longer than CDPR even exists. It literally is describing Battle Passes or DLCs etc. CDPR are not unique with this neither did they define it.
Im not saying Wild Hunt isn't a great game.
But I think you are over exaggerating a bit.
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I wouldn't expect anything to be free, but $10 for a cosmetic is excessive/expensive. I've said before that they shouldn't be more than $3 each. I can buy real clothes for less that amount.
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Wow you really convinced me dude. They need money like everyone else in the world...
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My goal wasn't to provide a detailed analysis of what was or wasn't expensive. 10 dollars to a 12 year old is much different then 10 dollars to a 30 year old most of the time. (Not calling you 12 years old)
My point of this thread is that people here seem to think making money is a bad thing for the company. Calling then greedy. And while i understand that there are definitley things that need prioritizing before more dlc in my opinion, that doesn't automatically make them evil for releasing more things to make revenue to stay in business.
Theres a line between art for arts sake and art for business sake. While the developers I have no doubt love this game at the end of the day, they are a business. And for a business profit is the objective.
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I just think the reason why we have to have this conversation in the first place is because of their prices. Everyone knows that businesses need to be able to turn a profit, but at the same time things need to be reasonably priced.
One outfit in the game is, virtually, $10. And with all there is to be able to buy with both Killer and Survivor, it's a rip-off.
I feel like the Rift Pass is worth the $10, but not single individual outfits.
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Paying for dlc shows support.
For a game that hasn't ditched the original product in favor of making a sequel I'd saying they're doing a great job. Especially with the whole engine switch making everything spaghetti. But it has improved in recent months. It's like Warframe. Game is built on old foundations but kept aloft with constant content updates and bug fixes galore.
The DLC is always on sale. And people are making a stink about the battlepass needing characters you can get with irredescents. If you've been playing long enough, you should already have them.
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They can afford to buy Apple stuff for everyone of their 500 workers (look at their Instagram). I don't think they worry about bills.
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Underrated post. There have numerous far worse business practices a la Fallout 76's Fallout First.
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500 people at behavior, roughly 50 for DBD. As far as apple products, although I have a strong distaste for them, they are arguably the best. Not to mention businesses, can and will get some kind of deal when purchasing bulk.
I wont argue i think those prices are high. I myself have only purchased 4 complete outfits with 3 of them coming from gift money. I mean i just couldn't resist santa clown and dwelf.
But heres the thing. Its up to a seller to set prices for their product. Its up to the consumer to decide if the prices are fair. There is obviously enough people purchasing cosmetics to tell the developers that they are charging a fair market value. You may not like it but enough people do. Just as an experimental example. Behavior says we need x amount of profit. Cote and rest of team running dbd say ok we need x amount of profit of which y amount of that profit must come from cosmetics.
Lets say y equals 1000 dollars. Full outfits are roughly 10 bucks. That means they have to sell 100 outfits to make their goal. Now lets say they want to get more people buying so they cut back to 9 dollars an outfit. That's a 10% cut. Now those 100 outfits they sell only makes them 900 dollars. They need to see another 11.1 outfits to make up the difference. So in this example they cut prices by 10% but need 11% more sales to make up for the loss
I'm rambling but the 10 dollar prics
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Personally I dont see the issue with price of skins as they are or the battlepass as its the market which drives these prices. If no one bought it then they would not be a viable product or they would be reduced in price.
I feel a lot of people forget skins are never needed in the game. They are and always will be an optional extra and its down to an individual wether they consider them worth it and make the choice to part with money.
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Could that be why they've been going on sale a lot lately? Hmmm.
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Sales tend to always happen near event times. Since we had halloween, Christmas/New year and then lunar so at this time of year it can seem to be happening more than usual.
Numerous times a year the game and everything to do with it does go on a sale.
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Was about to say just that.
Although if we end up with like Canadian boxer day sales, then i would say they were having problems selling skins lol
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@MandyTalk says a lot of things I agree with when it comes to these types of discussions.
To summarize, the developers don't see the community as a money tree, they care about us and make sure everyone is happy! 😁
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If the skins were truly selling that well, they wouldn't put them on sale; there would be no need to. That was my overall point, regarding that.
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Because you have been manipluated into thinking that.
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Do you know how to not get money?
Piss of the playerbase that actually spends money. :)
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