14 DAY TRIAL // A lot of video games manage to push up their sales numbers by posting big discounts, but the leader of one digital retailer believes that the long-term damage a low price can do to a brand is not worth the extra copies that are sold.
Guillaume Rambourg, the managing director working at GOG, has told RPG that “Selling games at too high a discount – one often sees discounts above 80% off here and there – sends a message to gamers: this game, simply put, isn’t worth very much.
“Of course you make thousands and thousands of sales of a game when it’s that cheap, but you’re damaging the long-term value of your brand because people will just wait for the next insane sale.”
The executive added, “The industry failed to provide gamers with a fair and attractive offer on day one and therefore convince them to buy games when they are released, which is the best way to support a publisher or developer from a financial standpoint.”
When it was initially unveiled, Good Old Games focused on re-releasing older titles by making sure that they work on new systems while also packing extra content like soundtracks, manuals and extra content for a price point of 5 or 10 dollars or Euro, depending on the age of the game.
Since then, the service has been re-launched as GOG and now it also sells more recent releases while keeping its high-quality agenda and its commitment to elimination of Digital Right Management measures.
GOG says that it will work with publishers and developers to make sure that all titles that it includes in its catalog are fully updated and get extra content.
Rambourg’s statements might be seen as a dig at Steam, the Valve sustained rival for GOG, which is well known for aggressively cutting the prices on some of its titles, especially during the Christmas period.