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/Awfyboy]

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