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Yes excellent point Mivo. Depending on your bank/card situation you can get some pretty noticeable fees from repeated charges for small items. Personally I pay a buck every time I use my card - so the Steam wallet is a godsend for me.

But of course an alternative for those who don't like tying money to Steam is always nice.
 
Hopefully I can shed some light on this from our Paradox standpoint.

The in game store gives us greater control of what we can put out and it make us way more flexible. Since we control the content fro our end we could decide today to make a new item and put it out there directly without having to go through Steam. Our hope is that this will benefit you, the gamers, in the end since it allows us to react faster. Since the DLC packs so far has be relatively small, we felt that this was much more efficient that the regular way.

City Builder: for me as a customer, I have been a bit reluctant to the whole wallet thing as well. But the fact that I can use that money to by regular games convinced me.
 
Illanair said:
Yes excellent point Mivo. Depending on your bank/card situation you can get some pretty noticeable fees from repeated charges for small items. Personally I pay a buck every time I use my card - so the Steam wallet is a godsend for me.

But of course an alternative for those who don't like tying money to Steam is always nice.
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Wow, I didn't think of that! I too get charged just over $1 every time I make a purchase... my bank calls it an "International Transaction Fee". It would be nice to avoid that, knowing how much I spend on Steam...
 
@JorgenB
Maybe put out a DLC Collection out later on? One that can be purchased via the regular store? It should not make a difference in revenue I guess, since Steam get's their share through the ingame purchase as well..
But maybe some customers prefer that.
And maybe be really vocal about the free DLC's. Since they are not on the store page, potential customers can't see it. And for me, that's a selling point if a game provides free dlc additional to paid DLC.
Something I always missed with Magicka....
 
Scorcher24 said:
And maybe be really vocal about the free DLC's. Since they are not on the store page, potential customers can't see it. And for me, that's a selling point if a game provides free dlc additional to paid DLC.
Something I always missed with Magicka....
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This is something I don't understand - I know there is time and money involved - but there never seems to be enough out there in the public about things that (if I saw them) it would bring me in as a customer.
 
First off, thank you Jorgen for the explanation on why Paradox is doing what they are doing.

Second though.. Wouldn't it be possible that you put it out like you are doing now and then also put it out in the steam store? Granted those like me that won't use the wallet (at least not until the total comes up to at least $5.00) would just have to wait a bit longer to get it what with the time that it takes for Steam to approve and put the item up on the store. Is there a reason that could not be done?

In that way you are getting both customers, those that will buy using a wallet and those that will buy using the more traditional way of paying through steam store.

By the way for those that have brought it up, I don't pay any fees using paypal to make payments, nor by using my debit or credit cards (well, obviously other than the annual % associated with my CC if I were not to pay them off every month which is what I do anyway), Paypal only charges me when I receive money into my Paypal account, something like 2.5 to 4.5%. I have a strong feeling that Steam is paying very little on each transaction else they wouldn't be able to offer the $0.99 DLC that they offer all the time. Since Steam would be a very good customer of Paypal, they are likely not paying more than pennies on the dollar but this is just my thoughts and I have nothing to back it up with since that info is privy to the customer and Paypal only.
 
As an economist I can't recommend putting in-game micro-transactions over to Steam. The most sensible scenario if wanting to give the customers that choice would be to release store bundles (i.e. "2012 Store Bundle Pack" etc.) as individual micro-transactions could end up spamming the Steam store page terribly and more likely scare customers away. However, I'm highly skeptical about store bundles too because you'd be surprised how easily customers get confused. And before any such store bundle get considered you might gotten your $5 selection anyway.

You can't always please everyone, and attempting to do so would only get you into a situation where the costumer can'recognizese whether the business model is based on being too greedy (trying to milk as much and many as possible) or something else (like wanting to give customers a choice) - Zeal got a good reputation so far it seems, don't gamble it away.

So IMO, keep the micro-transactions exclusive to the in-game shop, and release only larger DLC's and expansions for Steam.
 
ShadowTani said:
As an economist I can't recommend putting in-game micro-transactions over to Steam. The most sensible scenario if wanting to give the customers that choice would be to release store bundles (i.e. "2012 Store Bundle Pack" etc.) as individual micro-transactions could end up spamming the Steam store page terribly and more likely scare customers away. However, I'm highly skeptical about store bundles too because you'd be surprised how easily customers get confused. And before any such store bundle get considered you might gotten your $5 selection anyway.

You can't always please everyone, and attempting to do so would only get you into a situation where the costumer can'recognizese whether the business model is based on being too greedy (trying to milk as much and many as possible) or something else (like wanting to give customers a choice) - Zeal got a good reputation so far it seems, don't gamble it away.

So IMO, keep the micro-transactions exclusive to the in-game shop, and release only larger DLC's and expansions for Steam.
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I guess it really depends on their plans. If they truly plan on releasing a ton of $0.99 DLC then yeah it would spam the steam store page, on the other hand if they plan on only releasing one or two DLC's a month then it would be a non factor and wouldn't spam the steam pages at all unless it happens to be a very slow 6 month period on Steam where very very few games are being released so that the DLC doesn't get jumbled into the mix where it's hardly even noticed. And if they really do have plans of spamming out DLC this $9.99 game would slowly become a $40.00 or $60.00 title which is what it would have to be if it were to really put out enough DLC to bother the steam users that are bothered by seeing DLC in the new game list on the steam front page IMHO.

I am however under the impression now that Steam did something about that and one can turn off DLC from showing in the new game list on the Steam front page if they are highly annoyed by the amount of DLC being mixed into the new game title list. Personally when Railworks was really hot and heavily putting out DLC I didn't like seeing it all, but I got over it, and actually eventually bought the game when it came on sale and that was quite possibly because 1. I like trains, 2. It was on sale, but THREE... Because they got their name out in front of me with all of the DLC that was showing up. So while I didn't like seeing it, the job was done, it was advertised to me enough to where the name was stuck in my mind when I went looking for a new game to buy. Seems it would actually work out in aGoD's favor getting their name on the new title list every now and then when they put out new DLC every now and then to those that still have not heard of the game. It's almost like free advertising if you think about it, they get their name out there and they get $0.99 up to whatever for the new DLC or somebody buying even just the base game.

My opinion is pretty clear, put it in game for those that are willing to let money sit in a wallet or have been issued a refund credit by Steam sometime in the past, as well as put the DLC onto the aGoD steam store page for those of us that are only willing to buy it that way and not willing to put money into a wallet where it could be sitting for a long long time.

Although I obviously have no proof, I still suspect that there is a deeper reason then trying to just get the content out to the player in a faster manner, I believe there is likely an underlying financial reason for Paradox to do it this way. After all they are a company, they have broken from the normal way of doing DLC on steam and as a company they are in this to make money first and foremost, then satisfy customers if they can.
 
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The weird thing is I checked yesterday and you could not buy the DLC directly through Steam (via outside the game.) Since it works through Steam I guess I will add that DLC. I had been holding off until i found out how it was paid for and who managed it.
 
Bored Peon said:
The weird thing is I checked yesterday and you could not buy the DLC directly through Steam (via outside the game.) Since it works through Steam I guess I will add that DLC. I had been holding off until i found out how it was paid for and who managed it.
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You never were (intended to). The game uses the ingame store solely together with your steam wallet. :laugh:
 
Sorry for the slow response time!

City builder: currently our back end system does not support having stuff in both the IGS and on Steam, so stuff in the in game store will be exclusivley there for the foreseeable future. There will be bigger DLCs in the Steam store, but no small ones. And to clarify the economic things: Steam takes a cut from both the Steam wallet and their own store, so there is not a huge economic difference there. But where we (Paradox) gain from this is that we control everything ourselves in the IGS. That means that we can release a thing a week, give away free stuff and not having to go trough steam. So we save in work time, and some money, but mostly work time.

I'm sorry if this turns you off, but we will release some bigger stuff through Steam as well and you can always get the free stuff:)
 
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"Buying" the free DLC worked just fine but... how do I buy the € 1,- DLC?

There is no "big" DLC to buy on Steam directly so I suppose it has to be in the ingame store.

I have € 5,- in my Steam Wallet.

I'm obviously logged into Steam while playing the game. Steam is not in offline mode.

When I click BUY in the ingame store, all I get is a decapitated dwarf head rolling in the center of the screen.
This does not change even after waiting several minutes.

Is the decapitated dwarf head a sign of the game being dead? All I can do at this point is to kill the task.
 
Gazz2z2z2z2z2 said:
"Buying" the free DLC worked just fine but... how do I buy the € 1,- DLC?

There is no "big" DLC to buy on Steam directly so I suppose it has to be in the ingame store.

I have € 5,- in my Steam Wallet.

I'm obviously logged into Steam while playing the game. Steam is not in offline mode.

When I click BUY in the ingame store, all I get is a decapitated dwarf head rolling in the center of the screen.
This does not change even after waiting several minutes.

Is the decapitated dwarf head a sign of the game being dead? All I can do at this point is to kill the task.
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You need to have the Steam Community In-Game activated
 
Christ!
Could they make this any more complicated?


At least the ingame shop should tell the user about the special conditions that must apply before one can successfully buy anything!
The task hanging irrecoverably is not helpful.
 
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