I think No Man’s Sky is also in the same boat.
I mean games which keep releasing further content over long periods without charging extra for it. Surely the amount of new sales eventually dwindles considerably. Is the cost of new content once you have the core game this low or…?
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Sea of Thieves has microtransactions.
No Man’s Sky was wildly successful at launch, making the devs a ton of money. I guess they felt bad about not delivering on their promises, so they used that money to fund further development.
Also paired with that for NMS is the fact the studio is like 35 people.
And it’s still a top seller
NMS also gets that gamepass money so they always have money coming in regardless of how many units are actually selling
It floats because of the ships’ buoyancy.
Yes, I’ll see myself out.
I bought no man sky at some point because I felt it had enough value to warrant the price so adding things do translate into sales. You just have to balance the investments into the game and how much extra sales you can get.
Terraria is also a good example. They have kept their game relevant for so long that they are actually getting brand new customers just trough birthrates. Everytime they release stuff people talk about the game and people that were too young to buy it at release suddenly buys it.
They have kept their game relevant for so long that they are actually getting brand new customers just trough birthrates.
Can confirm. My nephew is 9, younger than Terraria itself, and has recently become obsessed with the game.
By using ships.
Duh
Yes, this is the comment I was hoping to find
The vast majority of these “timeless” games seem to come from smaller devs. Minecraft started out indie before being bought out, Terraria is still indie, NMS is a small team etc. They work on those games because they want to, and it makes them enough money to stay satisfied. Games from publicly traded companies are held at gunpoint by their shareholders, so if they don’t keep the money machine printing and they don’t make it print faster and faster, they will face consequences.
I love how you put it. I think the particular consequences of not making money quickly enough is pulling the plug in projects. Investors want money, not games.
Don’t know much about SoT, but NMS is made by a company of only around 25 employees and made probably well over $100M in its first year even despite the horrible reception. Sean Murray and his company was/is swimming in cash. This let them focus on fixing and adding things to the game that should have been there on release even if it didn’t improve the game’s reputation and result in sales going forward. But, it did. From their last financial statement they had a profit of almost £33M in 2022 from £39M in game sales. That was helped by a £7M tax rebate. But in 2021 they still had a profit of £18M from £27M in sales.
Edit: Also, from all the money they’ve made they had £138M in straight up cash in the bank/on hand in 2022. Hello Games could run at its current expenses for many, many years without any additional profit if they wanted to.
NMS is a good example of creating a situation where people don’t WANT to pirate your game. People will buy it to play with friends and it’s generally a good deal. Compare that to Paradox games, who monetize everything, which I’m convinced are mostly played through piracy.
Most paradox games I’ve seen have an unlocker you can find online that just enables all the DLC.
Is Paradox really a good example? Their games usually have a stupid long life with deep discounts on the base game, and multiplayer allows you to play DLC that the host bought. I feel like with them, there’s a “buy it on sale” or “don’t buy most DLC” mentality instead of a “pirate it” mentality, but correct me if I’m wrong.
Only reason I bought CK3 was because of the Steam Workshop. Otherwise I’d be playing pirated.
No Man’s Sky is a mystery to me. I don’t see how they can exist for so many years pumping out free content for a game that, did admittedly well financially when it launched, but can’t be making enough fresh sales to pay the ongoing bills.
even with the rocky launch, nms made a pile of cash at launch from all the early hype. then they released on additional platforms over time since, spurring additional sales on those.
I’m honestly surprised they cared enough to fix it. Same with Cyberpunk. I’m more use to seeing games like Halo Infinite being a armor shop with a half-ass branded mini game to milk the fans.
That’s the downside on if a major publisher agrees to publish your game. Typically the big ones will exert control over the game development; NMS is mostly indie so they can do what they want.
If it was up to some bigwig at EAVISIONUBI CORP. the game probably would have been dropped after it failed. CD PROJEKT RED also self-published, so it was entirely up to them on fixing Cyberpunk or not.
Yeah but games already take a pile of money to create. I would think the initial sales would be mostly used up to cover the creation if the game.
No Mans Sky still to this day sells pretty good. Sure, they don’t sell a million copies every week but Hello Games is pretty small and they can comfortably keep pumping out content even if they only sell, say, 15k per month. And given how NMS is still talked about so frequently, how they launched for the Switch recently (my second copy btw) and how well received the VR was, I think that number is pretty reasonable.
I’ve bought three versions of NMS over the years due to platform changes and at one point a snapped disc.
Hello Games also has other titles and they’re a small dev team. They’re an example of what game companies could do if they wanted to, rather than strangling the player base with microtransactions.
I think it’s a combination of low development cost (so a single update can bring in enough income to last at least several months to a year), and the fact that they target a particular audience which constantly has an influx of new players.
Minecraft is a good example - they primarily target the younger demographic, and as long as people are born, there will always be new young people who haven’t bought Minecraft yet. And every update will be talked about on media and on YouTube, and that’ll convince those new young people to buy Minecraft.
We see the opposite side of the same coin with Pokemon, where there will always be people willing to buy the new Pokemon game, even if it’s essentially just the same thing as the previous games. It’s not because the new game is good, it’s just because there’s always going to be children who want to experience Pokemon for the first time
They do sell skins. Also its on Gamepass, so Microsoft may see it as a game that attracts subscribers.
Path of exile is another example. Many many years of new content, base game is free. You can buy increased stash size, which, while difficult, isn’t necessary, but massive QOL. You can also buy cosmetics.
Someone like me likes to support them for the hours I play, so when they release new context every 3-4 months and new leagues start, I usually buy something from them.
Not sure. But I haven’t spent a dime when I play SoT so I don’t feel bad about playing it.
It is actually kinda fun and relaxing.
It is actually kinda fun and relaxing.
😶
Are we playing the same game? Full of snotty squeakers and Xbone chucklefucks? Hell, the “cheat” coding community is largely fueled by the desire to avoid other players in order to make it “kinda fun” at all. 🤪
Not sure about any of that. I don’t play with a mic, I’m on PC, and when I played it was usually later at night (around 10-3 some nights) so that might have something to do with it.
I honestly love just sailing around, fishing and generally just chilling out with the vibe in the game.
