2D Boy Celebrates World Of Goo
To celebrate its birthday, 2D Boy is having a pay-what-you-can sale on World of Goo that continues until October 25 (an extended date after the initial success of the sale). If you want it on another platform (Linux? Windows? Mac? Sure!), have wanted to try it but kept forgetting, pirated and want to show a little support, or just want to give money to this awesome little indie game, I'll wait, so go ahead.
During this sale, data has already been compiled, and 2D Boy seems happy. But why, VorpalBunny, could they seem so happy?
Here's a graph of the data from the first round of sales (if it's too small, here's a link to their blog entry examining it, with larger picture clickable):
Explaining the Big Picture, they wrote:
Since the birthday sale started, about 57 thousand people bought World of Goo off our website. The average price paid for the game was $2.03 a significant percent of which went to PayPal for transaction fees. Normally, they keep about 5% of the revenue, but because PayPal fees are structured in a way that they take a larger percentage for smaller transactions, we ended up paying over 13% in transaction fees. For all purchases of around 30 cents and under, we actually saw no money, PayPal took it all, but they probably ended up losing money on most of those transactions ($0.01) as well, they're not the bad guy.
At the same time, there seems to be some general silver-lining they have found in that it has been an experiment in what people feel they can pay, rather than perceived value of the game, and that it has gathered attention and money they otherwise may not have had on a game that is already a year old. Sales on both Steam and WiiWare also increased, which seemed a surprise for 2D Boy.
As for pricing models, does the fact that you can pay any price you want tempt you? Also, if you do end up going to buy it, don't forget to take their short (very short) three question survey provided in the e-mail with purchase confirmation.
VorpalBunny
Posted to Video Games on 22 October 2009
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: 2d boy, pricing models, world of goo
Such a shame people would pay so little for one of the most inventive and original games available. Still; at least 2D boy seem happy about it and having more people playing with Goo is always satisfying!
I'm glad they're making some money on it. I was heartbroken to hear last year that most of the copies out there were pirated.