Steam Pricing Structure Penalizes Long Term Players

[minderwiesen]

Hey team,

First of all a big congratulations to releasing the new Magnificent Rides DLC. I have kind of a timely suggestion and I haven't been able to get help from Steam or the Planet Coaster facebook messenger.

I purchased my copy of the game a month ago. I imagine many others have purchased long before me. On Steam, there is an option to buy a bundle with all except the newest DLCs for quite a discount! However Steam refuses to let me buy it because I already own at least one of the items in it.

As a result even at sale prices it would cost $63.56 for me to buy them all when the bundle (including an extra copy of the game) is $39.81 and I feel that penalizes people who were with the game earlier on. Agree?

Other developers offer the ability to "Complete my bundle" which still then receives a deeper discount and allows you to purchase only the remaining items you lack. Is there something that can be done prior to the winter sale ending because I'd like to spend another $30 on all of the hard work this dev team has put in to get these DLCs.

In a quick fix, could someone approve my "refund" so I can ultimately re-purchase (ex "exchange" for the current full bundle)? The only reason I'm actually hesitant to do it is the game license is being sold for less and I've already had the privilege to pay so I'm not really trying to get extra discounts on things I've already purchased.

Example of a bundle that includes DLCs to "complete": https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/616/Tripwire_Complete_Bundle/

 

[Joël]

If you’v bought the game on Steam, then Steam will have to look at your refund request.

I agree that it would be great to have a “complete my bundle “ option where you can buy the DLC that you haven’t got yet in one package.

 

[minderwiesen]

If you’v bought the game on Steam, then Steam will have to look at your refund request.

I agree that it would be great to have a “complete my bundle “ option where you can buy the DLC that you haven’t got yet in one package.

Sadly I tried to do that and ask for help from Steam but they denied their request. Then I tried to ask someone from the PC team on Facebook messenger and they said they couldn't do anything but that I should come on here as the developers would see it. It seems lot a lot of work but I'd really like to get the bundle.

 

[GeoChris 74]

I don't feel penalized what so ever. These newcomers to the game will give PC a nice push. The more the merrier. Us long time owners of the game have had the pleasure of playing and putting our creativity to the test for years already. Many of us will enjoy the game for years to come. I have payed full price for the early alpha and every DLC as it was released. With the hours of gametime that I have played; as of right now it has costed me an entire $0.21 per hour to play. Not bad in my books.

 

[HeatherG]

I agree with everything you said....below

I don't feel penalized what so ever. These newcomers to the game will give PC a nice push. The more the merrier. Us long time owners of the game have had the pleasure of playing and putting our creativity to the test for years already. Many of us will enjoy the game for years to come. I have payed full price for the early alpha and every DLC as it was released. With the hours of gametime that I have played; as of right now it has costed me an entire $0.21 per hour to play. Not bad in my books.

 

[g3rox]

It´s not problem of Steam. Steam has a function for this kind of packs. If you own something from the pack, it will simply change the price accordingly and let you buy the pack "without" the content you already own. However, I believe you as a developer have to set this up within SteamWorks environment. It´s either Frontier do want it this way, or they don´t know it´s possible.

I must agree this is not very customer friendly

 

[Bullethead]

I agree that it would be nice if there was a "complete my bundle" option so folks could take advantage of sales.

However, I disagree that the inability to do so "penalizes long-term players". On the contrary, it's more of a burden on new players--those who purchased PC after a number of DLCs were released. These folks don't yet know if they'll like PC enough to commit to buying all the DLCs already available, but might get 1 or 2. Then they decide they love PC and want the rest of the DLCs but are now unable to get the bundle deal. There are, of course, also some long-term players who decide, for whatever reason, to pass on certain DLCs when they are released, and thus end up in the same boat if they ever decided to go back and get the rest.

But for long-term players in general, we're addicts who've been here from the beginning and snap up every DLCs the moment it's released. Thus, we don't have this problem.

 

[minderwiesen]

It´s not problem of Steam. Steam has a function for this kind of packs. If you own something from the pack, it will simply change the price accordingly and let you buy the pack "without" the content you already own. However, I believe you as a developer have to set this up within SteamWorks environment. It´s either Frontier do want it this way, or they don´t know it´s possible.

I must agree this is not very customer friendly

This has been hard to communicate. I had a service request with Frontier directly and after a few emails they said they checked internally and this was “an issue with Steam that they couldn’t change”. It made me feel like they kept thinking about the full bundle option only and not a complete-a-bundle option that would be a separate / additional option.

The good news is after going the “refund” route via Steam (though in the notes saying I wanted to do an exchange), I separately filed an issue with the order asking to do an exchange. They were kind enough to courtesy credit/refund it. I immediately purchased the bundle, separately added the new Magnificent Rides DLC and even one of the construction kits.

To @GeoChris 74’s point though, I really didn’t want to do the refund/exchange route. I paid more for the game and I was OK with that; it was the price I wanted to pay when I got it, and I had the privilege to play it up til now. I was already getting my ROI from it and by Frontier not having it they lost out on a little extra money. Where I differ though is hard core long term player or not, I don’t agree that should be a policy to justify why someone new will pay less for ADDITIONAL content. If you have someone who wants to “true up” on all content, there should be an incentive available to all in some capacity.

 

[g3rox]

This has been hard to communicate. I had a service request with Frontier directly and after a few emails they said they checked internally and this was “an issue with Steam that they couldn’t change”. It made me feel like they kept thinking about the full bundle option only and not a complete-a-bundle option that would be a separate / additional option.

The good news is after going the “refund” route via Steam (though in the notes saying I wanted to do an exchange), I separately filed an issue with the order asking to do an exchange. They were kind enough to courtesy credit/refund it. I immediately purchased the bundle, separately added the new Magnificent Rides DLC and even one of the construction kits.

To @GeoChris 74’s point though, I really didn’t want to do the refund/exchange route. I paid more for the game and I was OK with that; it was the price I wanted to pay when I got it, and I had the privilege to play it up til now. I was already getting my ROI from it and by Frontier not having it they lost out on a little extra money. Where I differ though is hard core long term player or not, I don’t agree that should be a policy to justify why someone new will pay less for ADDITIONAL content. If you have someone who wants to “true up” on all content, there should be an incentive available to all in some capacity.

That is weird. I know about a lot of bundles, where that works, so why Frontier should be any different ?

 

[Not Owen]

My apologies for bringing this topic back up again, but I was about to post a topic suggesting a "Complete your bundle" or "Upgrade to Deluxe" but decided it would be better to just write my thoughts here.

Regarding the problem of explaining the concept of "Complete the set" bundles to Frontier, Valve's own docs for Steamworks describe it like this:

Steam Bundles is a feature that allows multiple products to be bundled together at a discount to provide additional value and benefit to your best fans.



There are two types of Bundles to handle common scenarios:

1. Complete The Set - Customers that purchase this type of Bundle will pay for, and receive, just the items in that bundle that they don't already have in their Steam library. This is most useful for bundles such as "Collector Pack" or "Franchise Pack" or "Developer Pack" that include two or more products (including games, software, or DLC). The customer can purchase one of these bundles as long as there is one or more item in the bundle they do not already have in their account. These type of Steam Bundles can only be purchased for the account making the transaction and cannot be sent or stored as a gift.
2. Purchase Together - this is important for bundles such as "Soundtrack Edition" or "Deluxe Edition" that include just a base game and single piece of DLC (such as Deluxe content or soundtrack). The customer can purchase this bundle only if they do not already have any of the products in the bundle. These type of Steam Bundles may be purchased as a gift.

How store bundles work
Steam Bundles work by applying a discount percentage (defined when creating the bundle) to all of the packages in the bundle not already in the account of the purchasing customer.

The three scenarios illustrated below show what the customer ends up paying based on the titles they already have and what happens to the price when an item in the bundle is discounted.


Why Steam Bundles?

A better experience for your best fans
Past Collector Packs were a bad deal for customers that already own one or more of the products in the pack. Either it made bad economic sense for those customers to purchase the pack, or they just felt bad about doing so since it looks like they were paying for products they already have. The new Steam Bundles system addresses this by allowing users to ‘complete the set’ and buy just the rest of the bundle for a discount off the items in the bundle that they don’t own.

Consistent Discounting
Past Complete Packs often got out of sync with pricing when the contents of the packs went on sale, resulting sometimes in the pack being more expensive than the individual items. The new Bundles system addresses this by automatically adjusting when the contents go on sale so they are proportionately always a good deal for customers and don’t require ongoing management on the part of developers. We can do this because the bundle is just a specified percentage off the current price of the items in the bundle.

Simplifying Regional Packages
This system also solves a number of region/low violence issues by eliminating the need to have multiple Complete Packs configured. Instead, these Bundles will just show the user the items they are able to purchase. So if a customer was in Germany, they would be purchasing a bundle and automatically get the low violence version of a game where customers in other countries would be purchasing the same bundle and automatically get the regular version of the game.

Source: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/bundles

It's obviously entirely Frontier's decision whether they wish to implement this or not, just providing this information in case anything wasn't clear.