TIL the dev of Iron Lung, an acclaimed indie horror game, faced significant backlash over increasing the price from $6 to $8
Then, responding to those who have said he’s “only doing this for the money", Szymanski tweeted: “Yes, no fucking shit. I make games for a living. If I didn't want to earn money from them I wouldn't charge money for them.”
The game follows the premise of being trapped in an underwater submarine out of necessity to capture deep pictures.
https://www.ign.com/articles/iron-lung-dev-says-go-pirate-it-or-something-in-response-to-price-rise-backlashOpen linkView original on kbin.melroy.org584
Comments129
People will literally complain about everything, no sense in trying to appease everyone all the time.
No matter what it is you do or how well you do it, even if you do it for free, a specific subset of motherfuckers will still act like you owe them something.
Especially when you do it for free. I write a lot of open source and sometimes the comments are real "nice".
That’s awesome of you and I hope, while those people are unlikely to disappear from your life, your memories of ungrateful feedback last no longer than they would for a salamander.
Sounds like something a lizard would say
licks eyes nervously
I wish cities and elected officials would have the same mindset. Instead the best action for some reason has become inaction.
Best to do nothing, then have one group or another hate you?
You can't please everyone so you've got to please yourself
10 shakes ahead of you!
Lmao..
AAA dogshit shovelware game increases price from $60 to $70 and some people are unhappy.
Small time indie dev bumps game price from $6 to $8 to keep up with inflation and people lose their shit to the point it goes on gaming msm
No wonder we’re the most abused market.
Well, one is a 17% and one a 33% price hike, so outrage is totally understandable! I'm not being serious, btw.
This is an excellent example of how you can use statistics/percentages to push a false narrative.
Cause you hear "Dev increased game 33%" and you wonder what the fuck is going on, and in that same vein a 17% price hike doesnt sound nearly as outrageous. Despite the fact that 33% is a paltry 2 dollars, that came with a massive increase in content, and the measly 17% is a massive increase in price for a game that is fundamentally worse than what was made 10 years ago in scope and content.
and to be clear, I am not saying RecluseRamble is in any way pushing any kind of negative/false narrative. I'm just using his % without context (within the vein of his own post) to show how things can be manipulated.
I agree, I hate it when I say "removing unemployment payouts to millionaires can save our nation tens of millions of dollars!" to be met with "that's just .418% of our national debt"
Lmao I love it, gonna get this game now
Also check out Dusk. It's a full length game as opposed to a one and done streamer game.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Dusk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
No mate, I'm doing you a favour playing your game. You should pay me. It would be great exposure. I've got literally some followers.
And yeah, I'll bang on about minimum wage being too low and I'll post about AAA Devs ripping off their workers, but a lone developer asking $10 for something that probably took them months, too much. Too much.
What a sell out.
(/S just in case)
And what's worse, half of those complaining bought Elon's blue tick!
Gamers: Where's my game? Why do you subject your developers to crunch? Why is it so expensive? Why don't you pay your developers more?
Why haven't you released the game yet, this is outrageous! Why have you released this unfinished and untested mess, this is outrageous!
Just print more money no
$8
Meh, it's two dollars and the dev is an indie, at least it doesn't go towards filling the pockets of a large publisher.
TWO dollars!!?!?!?
There it is. I knew that kid would be in here somewhere.
"You're only doing it for the money" to a game dev is the same as being asked in a job interview to show all the git repos you worked on in your spare time.
People develop skills, and they often choose to use those skills to make money. We expect game devs to only break even now? F off with that shit.
The people complaining about a $2 price increase are the same guys harassing women on Instagram for free OF subs.
I hope this is clever marketing from the developer because I had never heard of this game until now and also because I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would abuse an indie developer for $2.
I understand some people might do that, but they'd have to be a tiny percentage.
People bully FOSS developers when their creations are free so I can't say I'm surprised.
The same person made DUSK and Squirrel Stapler. Squirrel Stapler and Iron Lung are shorter games that have been popular with streamers.
I once made an app for Samsung watches for disc golf scorekeeping. It could accept any number of players, apply a handicap throughout the game so you could know exactly how you were doing vs your opponent with different handicaps on every hole, and gave a nice scorecard at the end to view. It was $0.99
Someone complained that I made them "throw away their money down the drain" since it didn't also have gps to tell them how far they were from the hole.
Yes, some people will literally waste 100x more resources, in mental energy and time, than the price of admission to complain.
But my point was that this type of criticism can be ignored - if you get 1000 sales and 2 people turn out to be dickheads you shove them in the (mental) bin.
Dunno how Samsung store works, but ik on Google play you can literally refund the app in one click within two hours of buying it. I've literally just bought apps to try out before and refunded if I didn't like them.
Did they face significant backlash? Or is IGN just trying to "make fetch happen"? I might have just missed it.
I believe it. A friend of mine raised the price of his game from free to $2 with a big update, and still kept the download for the older version free. He got all sorts of backlash, even death threats. These people are children.
Yes they did, just read the tweets linked
Tweets do not represent significant backlash .
Edit Significant backlash would be something like getting delisted from steam
A ton of people attacking the dev on Twitter is significant backlash. An earthquake does not have to cause a Tsunami to have a big effect.
Thank you for responding, but no, I'm not going to xitter.
IMO, not even visiting is very weird. Just use a blocker and steal their revenue.
As an uninformed, I also wonder why you think IGN would make up stuff.
They (including Musk) make money off of how ubiquitous it is, even if you're not viewing ads. They leverage that daily view count.
No judgement, but if you're visiting X/Twitter, you're supporting them. As for IGN, there's the "too much water" controversy, but basically, they're just way too corporate for me...
Not using a service that you dont like and dont agree with is weird? Really?
It's like insisting on always paying with cash imo. Does some ethics but quite a bit of an inconvenience if you're in a queue.
Ok yeah, you can be annoyed, but your cash example is ALSO perfectly fine if a person decides digital money isnt for them
Yeah, I get the same level of annoyed on both of these. Cheerio
You can't say things like that here! We are a bunch of nerds who cling so tightly to online privacy and morals it is practically our personality!
Nah it is weird, in the sense that most people really won't put in that much energy to avoid a site even if it was to gather information. It's atypical.
it's called ethics.
Fuck you all, im going to go buy it out of spite
Buying the game now
Tale as old as time. I'll just leave this here: https://genius.com/Tool-hooker-with-a-penis-lyrics
Cool song, question: why's it named that?
Maynard James Keenan, the singer of Tool, is artfully insinuating that he is a "hooker" prostituting his music, and since he is male, he has a penis.
From singing about prostituting his music to now being a black belt in BJJ and having Mike Tyson train in his gym.
It's crazy how things come around.
Consumers these days have so much entitlement. I understand not wanting to be tricked with advertising or wanting a safe product, without toxic chemicals or whatnot.
But at the end of the day, assuming that's the case, someone should be able to make whatever they want and charge whatever they want. If no one buys it, they're a bad business person. The end. But lately I've seen so many people doing things like starting witch hunts to go after makers of something they don't like. Or trying to strongarm a company into changing a product by holding their reputation for ransom. Or deciding as a community on an idealized business model and punishing companies that don't use it.
And the gaming community is the worst of them. Like if you don't like multiplayer games, fine. Don't shit on a game for like 5 paragraphs just to finally say, "See? RDR2 did just fine, we should be making single player games. Anyway I didn't actually play this and neither should you. 0/5 stars."
Like bro, this team worked really hard to make a game they believed in. They didn't have to run it by you. If you don't like it play something else. But people will claim you have no right to have created what you did, the audacity that you thought you could is appalling, and frankly... You're an immoral person to work for money. Like damn guys, chill. Nobody has to make you games. I don't go see Starry Night and write a letter to Van Gogh's estate like, "I'm not a fan of blue"
I picked this one up a few days ago, very cool game concept and well executed
Isn't only like an hour and a half or something?
The price change was accompanied by an update that included
That makes more sense thanks for informing me
Didn't it only become popular because of that sub that joined the Titanic?
it had boosted sales thanks to the uncanny similarity with the sub. prior though it was still pretty big in the indie horror gaming sphere
did you use to make a dank bot by any chance
nope, you've got the wrong person
Sounds like something that someone who made a dank bot would say.
No, it got popular before that 'cuz Markiplier.
Not sure if that coincided with the release time, but it is on its own a very cool game, if that event got people's foot in the door to experience it and enjoy it on its own merits, then hey.
I like how this subtly suggests the developer sabotaged the Titan in order to gain more exposure.
I wonder to what degree people react because it's a cheap game and for some people this is the only stuff they can afford (especially in the current economy), so raising the price feels like a personal attack to them.
People who buy 70$ games don't care as much because they're already able and willing to drop such hideous sums on games, and the hardware needed to run them.
if an increase of two whole dollars is enough to freak someone out, they don't need to be buying video games. Like if you're really THAT broke, you've got other priorities.
That's fine, I wasn't going to buy it anyway :) especially if the creator only did it for the money. I will stick to indie games creators make because they like games <3
Edit: hahaha apparently I hurt some people's feelings by having an opinion. Too bad. Indie game isn't worth $6, and it's made by someone who doesn't care about the game, but yeah, go off. I'm going to go play Stardew, something worth money by someone who cares about their game :)
I hope you do your job for free too cause you just like to work :) <3
Shut up. That indie dev has to eat as well. Indie devs also need to get paid to eat and pay rent. Just like a painter selling their art to make ends meet.
You're the kind of person that want arts for free from artists because "it's only 5$ bro".
As the dev said, go pirate it or something.
Why else would you add a price to something?
The distinction is he agreed he was only doing it for the money. Idc if they charge for their hard work, they should. But if an indie game is only in it for the money, it's no better than a gacha.
He never said he was making the game only for the money; he said that he set the price for the money. Things like a filter that turns everything into Markiplier and continued updates show that he also has passion.
He literally did, and you even put it in your post.
"to those who have said he’s “only doing this for the money", Szymanski tweeted: “Yes, no fucking shit."
When people tell you who they are, listen.
"this" refers to bumping the price
I guess pronouns really are difficult for some people.
Welcome to the world.
We do shit for money.
Money helps us eat.
Oh yeah Eric Barone and Toby Fox gave their millions away right? Stfu.
Turns out, it's not possible to fill your stomach and keep a roof over your head by having enough passion.
"haha, I hurt your feelings by having an opinion". No, you're setting unreasonable expectations in a society that requires money to cover the basics of living. If you'd like to start a revolution to jump directly into a moneyless anarchist collective society, then that's different. Actually, no, it's not, because that revolution isn't happening anytime soon, may not actually work out that way in the end, and even if it does, people shouldn't have to wait to solve the basics of living.
Lmao, no this does not have a larger meaning. An indie dev stated he only cared about the money and started charging $2 more. Shocker.
He did not. He said "I want to earn more money". That does not preclude being passionate about something, just wanting to have a roof over his head.
"If you're passionate about something, you should do it for free" is not a workable position in our society.
You can rewrite it as much as you want, but no, he did say that. It's even in the post.
"to those who have said he’s “only doing this for the money", Szymanski tweeted: “Yes, no fucking shit."
I have no idea why everyone is taking this so personally. I said it's not the game for me, and you all melted LMAO
We're taking it personally because a lot of us are in exactly the same position, or have someone close to us that is. Our passions have to feed us. You're directly undermining that.
I literally am not, this is not the guys passion. He is in it for the money. He stated that directly.
Being there for money and passion is not mutually exclusive.
It's a 5 dollar game (being generous) that was already overpriced at $6. I get wanting more money, but your product isn't worth the price increase to begin with.
I forgot that everyone is forced to buy this game. This price increase is an outage. If only the people who thought about playing it could make the decision to buy it or not, then that might be reasonable. But come on people, this game costs more than
a small pizzahalf a small pizza!/s
Facts and opinions are different things.
If you don't like the game, or think it's overpriced, don't buy it. The dev should continue to price it as they see fit.
When AAA publishers price games at $70, the solution is not to buy it. It's not different here, except that $6 > $8 is not a difference most people (except the dev, due to volume) will care about.
And if the difference between $6 and $8 really is where they draw the line, they can always wait for a sale. I've bought many indie games on sale where I thought eh, that might be fun for $12 but not worth risking my $20
Well. Thankfully he never said that his statement was an objective fact.
Seriously, what’s up with you people? Do you need every single statement prefaced with “this is only my subjective opinion and not concrete fact but-!” Or you’ll take it like they’re trying to preach the word of god?
You’re not a computer. Why are you acting like one?
This tends to mean you've misunderstood a basic social norm.
Like interpreting obvious opinion statements as objective fact?
Which part of your statement made it obvious?
Well, one, Jesus Christ, it’s not even my statement. Two, the guy saying “this game isn’t worth $8” is obviously a subjective statement because it literally cannot ever be an objective statement.
Like. By definition.
When you see a movie rating and someone rates it four out of five stars, you understand that’s not them declaring a universal constant, correct?
Here's perhaps what has eluded you overall: $2 isn't even worth continuing this argument.
They did. Just because you don't explicitly say "this is a fact", doesn't mean you're not making a statement of fact. "This is a $5 game" is a statement of fact. "I wouldn't pay more than $5 for this game" is a statement of opinion. That's the difference between humans reading a passage and computers doing the same. Humans take context and past experience into account, all of which say that the phrasing they originally used implies an objective fact.
No he didn’t. He said “this isn’t a $6 game, let alone an $8 game”. Both of those are subjective opinion statements. He is referring to the perceived value of the game being lower to the actual costs of the game ($6 and $8 respectively)
This is really not a difficult thing. I’m not sure why so many Lemmy users are struggling with it
In the only perfectly logical interpretation of the comment, you would be correct. Unfortunately, humans are not always perfectly logical and will often say things that are illogical. The most common meaning intended by the phrase "this is a $5 game" is the illogical one of presenting it as an objective fact.
I refuse to believe that this is the first time you've encountered an illogical statement.
So under your grand interpretation, you should default to just saying “no, when they said that they actually meant it in the wrong way”.
You might just be too cynical and online to read man
It's fine (and expected in most human interactions) to default to assuming that the most commonly intended meaning is what's intended. And no, that doesn't mean you should respond like an asshole. Respond to the intended meaning of the original statement instead of commenting on how your use of the English language is superior to theirs.
This is how human interactions work in general. It's worth learning if you want to fit into society.
Yeah, I dunno how fairly to price a video game. But it’s kind of interesting that price increases on some things are universally seen as bad, but when a video game developer does it (irrespective of how much money they have), everyone suddenly becomes the most staunch Ayn Rand free market capitalist in a way I don’t think they would be if their local plumbing company or restaurants suddenly raised prices 20% and said “no fucking shit, I do this for a living”.
It was a big thing with the Disco Elysium game, wherein the creators by all means did every single possible move to maximize their personal profits and ended up having it come back to haunt them, and basically everyone said they were being exploited by this horrific system because they’re vaguely communist game developers.
Again, it’s not to say that David shouldn’t price his game at $8 or that the DE guys didn’t get fucked, but it’s interesting how political views become flexible based on how much an audience likes a guy.
I realize this is grounds for the most downvoted comment on Lemmy. That’s fine. It is what it is.
You’ve left one thing out of your little “everyone is a libertarian when it comes to video games” theory there - I’ve never heard of the game, never heard of the dev, I am very much left leaning and I support the dev’s decision to raise the price of the game by 20% if that’s what they want to do. If it’s worth it, people will still buy it. If it’s not, they won’t. This is hardly some AAA publisher pulling a bait and switch during pre-orders. The game is out and available, anyone unsure of it can easily read reviews, watch videos of people playing it, etc and of course, they can also do a refund.
That’s fine. It’s not really a flaw in my statement. I assume you’re also fine with increases on most goods and services then on a somewhat “at will” / free market basis. My comment only refers to people who are often staunchly against such practices but make a “hole” in this view specifically for video games / media
I believe the prevailing opinion is that price increase for anything is fine as long as it goes towards the people doing the work. Increase a game's price so the devs get better pay? Cool. Increase the price of bread so that bakers get better pay? Cool. Increase the price of anything so that shareholders get better returns? Not cool.
Yeah, the other comment mention about AAA game increasing price from 60 to 70 and "no once cares" and it's fucking bullshit. Everyone would be in arms if it happens to a game that's already released.
What they usually do now is selling it at 80 from the get go but it's another discussion. People go in arms when a game DOESN'T go into discount after some time ffs. The usual expectation is for a game to go cheaper overtime, not more expensive.
The market will decide that
Make a better game for cheaper
With blackjack? And hookers?