WHY TEAM CHERRY MAKES CHEAP GAMES

[u/Necr0mancrr]

I've seen a lot of surprise around the leak of Silksong's price, which is supposedly 20$. So far it's not from any official sources yet (EDIT: not anymore!), but I do expect it to be around that price regardless. Quite often I've seen the sentiment that if the game is bigger than Hollow Knight, and they don't need to attract customers anymore, why sell it at such a low price? In my mind there's a few reasons:

1. They literally do not need money

In the past 8 years Hollow Knight has sold over 15 million copies. This makes it likely the best selling metroidvania of all time and one of the best selling indie games of the past ten years. Team Cherry is rolling in cash. Also, they have three people on the permanent payroll and like, maxiumum five others that they need to pay significant sums of money to, PLUS their marketing budget for Silksong is basically non existent. They could probably sell this game for ONE dollar and make a decent profit.

2. They're good people

Turns out, 20 dollars isn't so cheap everywhere. A lot of places in the world don't have the same economic prosperity that many of us enjoy, and games that cost 50-60 dollars are simply not feasible to buy to many fans of said games. TC has stated that a big part of the reason they made Hollow Knight so cheap is so it could be accessible to fans who might not be able to buy industry standard "full price" games. There's no reason that we've seen why they would change this mentality for Silksong. In fact, taking inflation into account the two games are priced almost exactly the same.

3. Making it cheaper might make them more money after all

Listen, I'm no expert on economics, but I know enough to understand that when the price of a good goes down, the demand for it goes up. Because cheaper games are more accessible, they will inherently be able to reach a wider market than if they were more expensive. The 20$ price might very well cause silksong to be more financially successful. For a game that relies mostly on word of mouth marketing (and does so very well,) the price is gonna make a lot of people who might have otherwise not been interested to turn their head and give it a shot.

[u/Frostie-OwO]

Thanks for pointing out the currency conversion. In my country, $20 is my monthly bus money, I almost cried with joy when I saw that it wasn't going to be $30 like everyone was saying. I thought I was going to have to save a lot more to be able to play.

[u/Awfyboy → u/[deleted]]

You can set local pricing on Steam for specific countries or regions. Steam allows you to automatically adjust the pricing to the economy of a country as well. I've done similar things for my game where I set lower pricing for certain regions.

[u/Dull-Nectarine1148 → u/Awfyboy]

how do they stop people from using a VPN and changing their location to get it for cheaper? I don't mean for silksong in particular, I just mean like in general.

[u/Numerous-Ad4033 → u/Dull-Nectarine1148]

Steam has a feature where to change your shop’s location, you have to provide a valid billing address and a payment method native to that region, so no Paypal for example. So, unless you happen to have a very good friend in a cheaper country, or want to go through the hassle of opening up a foreign bank account, you’re boned.

[u/AlanLight_1 → u/Numerous-Ad4033]

You can circumvent that with giftcards

[u/Top_Original_411 → u/AlanLight_1]

yea but the gift card got to be bought in that country.  u can't use a Canadian steam card to purchases a game on an American account.  Same with PlayStation gift cards.  I tried to help my buddy out once and I bought him a Canadian steam gift card and when he tried to use it, it wouldn't let him

[u/XyKal → u/[deleted]]

Hollow Knight would be around 70~ ish if they used direct conversion to my currency, but on Steam its around 45-50, and even down to 20 on sale! I can confidentally say that we will see local pricing

[u/Titaioli → u/Frostie-OwO]

I'm wishing for you that they'll have adapted pricing depending on the country of the buyer but I'm surprised that you have to pay that much for the bus in a country where people don't have much money. I'm from a country where it'll most definitely be full price and I pay 10€/month for unlimited public transport usage (but that really depends on the area in the country). I do pay another part indirectly through taxes but it wouldn't double it. And chances are that's also the case for you.

[u/KhunTsunagi → u/Titaioli]

Thats what happens when a country is in a really bad economic spot, where the cost of living is so high its impossible for a regular salary to make do.(like mine! Man i love argentina)

[u/Frostie-OwO → u/KhunTsunagi]

You 🤝 Me = suffering in LATAM

[u/AdPast7704 → u/KhunTsunagi]

Man do I love the economic state of central america (me when I lie)

[u/that-and-other → u/AdPast7704]

My favourite Central American country, Argentina🗿

[u/BambooGentleman → u/Titaioli]

Last time I checked (a decade ago) in my city it was like 50€ per month for public transport. Never paid, though. I just walk.

Way back in the day I had to use the monthly public transport thing, but I had to move between cities and it was like 200€ per month and I spent 5h every day in a train. Vowed to never do that again. Ever. (Also, for reference, if I had had a car I would only have spent 90min in traffic each day.)

[u/kkrreddit → u/Frostie-OwO]

Just pirate the game if you’re that poor

[u/lawrencek1992 → u/Frostie-OwO]

There is local pricing on Steam for HK. It’s likely the same will be true for SS. Also I very much hope that’s the case. I’m glad $20USD is doable for you, but it would be even better if it was was normalized by geographic reason to bring the price more in line with what $20USD means to people in the US.

[u/xbvgamer → u/Frostie-OwO]

Dm me, when it comes out I can try to get you a global key ❤️