It’s difficult to deny the “race to the bottom” when it comes to pricing video games today. Free-to-play, 99 cent apps, subscriptions like PS Plus, game bundles, and deep discounts encourage consumers to expect something for next-to-nothing.
Justin Bailey, COO at
Broken Age developer Double Fine, is acutely aware of the trend.
Asked by USGamer about fears of an indie “bubble” popping, he replied, “Indies are approaching [game development] as an artform and they're trying to be innovative, but what's happening in the marketplace is indies are being pushed more and more to have a lower price or have a bunch of games bundled together."
"I'd like to fight that," he said. "Double Fine wants to keep indies premium. You see that in our own games and how we're positioning them. We fight the urge to just completely drop the price. That's one of the things we want to encourage in this program. Getting people to stick to a premium price point and to the platforms that allow you to do that."
Though Bailey said Double Fine fights the urge to enact deep sales and discounts, the studio has partaken in Humble Bundle deals, where players could buy multiple catalog Double Fine games for as little as $1.
Double Fine's stance on game pricing will also influence games developed externally, as the studio
announced a new indie publishing initiative last month.
