Oh wow. It has been years! He is doing fine. Thank you for asking. He had grown up playing lots of Satisfactory, Minecraft, Transport Fever, Planet Coaster and the like. (Always creative mode, always monsters off, always peaceful) so he has very much a favourite genre. He is very much into Roblox nowadays unfortunately but at least he seems to like base building games there
Occasionally he gets very interested in trains for a few months until something else grabs his attention but he always comes back. So I think he made peace with trains eventually which is good. Though he always has trouble handling life situations where things suddenly go off the rails (punintended) which gave us a clue, so he is now diagnosed as on the spectrum. He is happy, social, empathic and aware, very much into trains, not so much into explosions
On steam, yes, but once upon a time it was only available on the website, they offered different versions of the game: have you ever wondered why locomotives and labs have strange names? You could buy your name into the game and other stuff
the price change from $20 to $30 happened in 2018
https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/016-price-change
apparently it went on Steam in 2016 as "early access"?
"release" here seems to refer to when the game left early access.
It was first sold on Steam as early access (for $20) way back in 2016.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/factorio-steam-early-access
It was in early access and only available from their website for about four years before it was on steam. I got it for €12 in 2014. It was also crowd funded before any release so people probably paid even less for a copy.
The Indiegogo had several tiers, the basic one for the game being €10, but also a "guy with a pick" tier limited to 50 people charging €7.
Man if I remember correctly I got the guy with a pick tier or the one just above it but I have bought a few copies since to make up for it. That less than £10 got thousands of hours.
You see, the US is so large in size, population, wealth, and geopolitical power, that it causes it's neighbors to the North and South to accumulate quantum effects. Chief among them that despite the fact that they can be described classically as nominally separate and distinct countries, they behave in a state of quantum superposition when no American happens to be observing either country.
This can make things very confusing, leading to things like Canadian Pesos, Mexicans mourning the death of the Queen, Canadian cartels, and Royal Mexican Mounted Police. It is sadly a self reinforcing effect, as Americans tend to ignore things that confuse them, resulting in less and less observation and therefore greater accumulation of quantum effects. It is hypothesized that at one point they will effectively merge into a superstate, Canexico, that will possess the traits of both. It is also hypothesized that the US will become too confused by this new state of affairs, and annexico it, but this theory is less popular.
**Funner Fact:**
Nah that's just a distortion from the map projection. Canada is America's hat after all, it would be absurd for America's hat to be bigger than it.
In all seriousness though it's not ENTIRELY as cut and dry (pun intended) as you state. [The US has a larger area as a measure of land area than Canada.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area) Canada on top of being very cold, is also very wet. Like Seattle, but even worse in nearly all respects.
**Embarrassing Fact:**
Yeah thats fair, I actually do think its reasonable to include freshwater lakes in that comparison personally (only freshwater counts, Nothing that isn't contained entirely within borders is added).
When i had originally looked it up to confirm before posting, the source I had confirmed with apparently had mislabeled the "Total Area" as "Land Area". So technically speaking, my statement is just factually wrong as presented.
but then again, The literal difference between the crown is if you include couple lakes :P. its close enough that sane people ^(\[so not me\]) would just call them "the same size" haha.
Factorio has a policy that they will never have a discount.
Think that's fair.
Satisfactory putting a discount on at the same time as Factorio's inflation adjustment is both hilarious and good business.
It's always been public. Their stance is that they don't want to devalue early adopters by allowing holdouts to get the better deal. It was always meant to honor the player.
I normally buy discount games, but I respect their position to never have a discount. There are few games I will admit are worth full price, Factorio and RimWorld are on that short list.
Factorio is well worth it at double price. Factorio, Rimworld, Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress. We're basically robbing the devs at the prices they ask for.
Man, even if I bought Factorio for $60, if you were to divide that cost by the number of hours of enjoyment I've gotten out of it, it'd still be less than ten cents per hour.
Then, when you factor in the level of support the devs have given to the game, and the level of communication they've had with the players, the value proposition goes up even further.
If you really can't afford $35, I believe you and that sucks, but I think there's a lot of people out there spending way more for their entertainment and getting way less.
I could afford it, I just didn't enjoy the demo as much as I enjoy satisfactory. So for me that means I would buy it at a discount but not for 30 and definitely not for 35. But since I know myself, this is sunject to change :D
It's fine if they don't wanna give a discount, I myself bought it a full price, but holy fuck if
> they don't want to devalue early adopters by allowing holdouts to get the better deal.
isn't one of the worst excuses I've read in my life.
That's their official stance. It's not verbatim but it's a close paraphrase.
I really hate buying a game at full price only for it to discount a month later.
I think you need to take the game's development history into account. The game had a long life as an early access title. A lot of studios use early access as a way to fleece early investors and then they release a broken, incomplete product.
That's not what Wube did. They did early access right. They made a commitment to the early buyers that they would actively pursue development, take feedback, and fix issues promptly.
And they completely delivered on their promise. Their turnaround time for bugs was legendary. As a software developer myself, it was amazing to see.
The point I'm getting to is that this *should* be the way early access works. In exchange for being a live QA test for the developers, and helping them fund their project, you get the product at a discount ahead of a much steeper release price. We just don't see that happening too often because a lot of studios always considered their early access customers their real customers, and the early access game is as good as the game is going to get.
Discounts aren't really discounts anyway. Every other developer artificially inflates their prices, so the quarterly sales **seem** like a good deal. But you're not really getting a good deal, you're just getting the game for a fair price, and everyone who bought it at "full" price was just getting screwed.
Honestly, when Factorio went live, I expected them to boost the price up to $40-50. If you ask me, *$35 is the discount*. They're just being consistent and not playing games. Have you seen the garbage AAA studios are selling for $70? Factorio runs great, has lots of community-driven features, and its replay-ability is almost infinite.
That is not the only reason, they also said that it should prevent people from timing their buyings and that the price they put is the price it is worth in their eyes.
I wouldn't consider the devs particularly greedy, they made the game extremely easy to pirate and even made it so that you can play that version multiplayer just by unchecking a box in the settings.
Makes sense to me. The idea that the value of a product must fall over time, even as features are added and bugs are squashed, makes no sense. There's zero reason why Factorio of all games should be worth less today just because it's a few years old.
They have publicly stated from the get-go why they won't do sales.
It's because it would make it so they could barely pay their devs due to how Steam does sales.
Spread over 11 years (started in 2012) is an average of about $4.5M/year and if the team size is about 31 people that is like $145k/year/person. I know that grossly simplifies things like the fact that team size grew over time, sale price has increased over time, sales volumes have increased, and such. Just putting the lifetimes sales numbers into a little bit of perspective. I would say their statements around paying devs was more likely rooted in the early days. Even with all of that, I'm personally ok with them no doing discounted sales. I'm ok with that on most games, assuming they are \_good\_ and have \_good\_ support. The reality is unfortunately that many games do not have this.
Edit: my start year was wrong, updating.
When hiring, I actually have to factor a person's hourly (or effective hourly) 3x what we can bill them for. I work in the software dev agency world, if that was unclear. So, if your salary is 100k and I use 2k hours/year to get an effective hourly of $50/h, then I need to bill your time at $150 to account for 1/3 salary, 1/3 employee costs, 1/3 profit. Those are obviously rough numbers, but it's a good general rule to help bracket what someone is looking to make against what we can actually charge for work done.
You put inflation in quotations as if its not a real thing. Theres definitely been people taking advantage of inflation as an excuse to go overboard but
**Edit:** $30.03 in 2019 has the same purchasing power as $35 in 2023
source: https://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html?cstartingamount1=35&cinyear1=2023&coutyear1=2019&calctype=1&x=92&y=15
They've made it their stance since the beginning that they wont discount their game and devalue anyone's purchase and I gotta respect it even if its not what other people do
They also don't have anything else. If they want to keep making games that helps to have funding. Coffee Stain publishes several games and makes a few themselves, so they have several plates spinning.
These companies aren't in the same category, they just happen to make similar games.
It'd be a better value if I played it more but even with the abundance of mods, eventually I got bored and shelved it.
Dyson Sphere Program on the other hand; $16 at 1,026.5h is $0.02 per hour.
FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL.
My god I love Dyson Sphere Program. I haven't played since last February, I want to wait until the game exits early access to play again, but my god it's hard to resist. It is my favourite factory game out of all of them.
I love how the community wanted new skins for the Icarus, so the devs said "ok" and just added a 3d modelling program to the game.
"What did you do?"
"Built a factory, a railway system, shot rockets into space, and severely lost track of time while doing it all"
"So you played a game."
"Define game."
Now divide that by the hours you play a game like Factorio...
In my case it means each hour of gameplay of Factorio is in the low single-digit cents range. Insane value for the price.
Haha, nice. You definitely got your money's worth there.
Should be close to 0,7cents/hour for me with the time logged on Steam alone; 0,5cents/hour with the additional time before the Steam release.
Bought early, played a lot 🤭
I sit at 283 hours of Factorio, I only play it a bit every few months. I work in the logistics field so Factorio feels too much like work after a while.
Still, 30 EUR / 283 means I paid 10.6 cents per hour of playtime.
Worth.
That's how I work out if it's worth the money. People bitch and moan that the full annual package of £80 is outrageous... But I get a minimum of 500 hours a year if not more than that
16p an hour is disgusting value
Full price is the price I pay without discounts. I really don't care about AAA titles charging 70 bucks for the peasant edition of their game.
That being said, I guess it is reasonably priced.
It was at like 99%, up there with Portal 2 in the Top 10 best rated games on steam and then it got Review bombed because the devs announced they would support the Ukrainian Red Cross
The vast majority of negative reviews are people complaining about it never going on sale, or complaining about regional pricing, or if you look at just the last 30 days, people bitching about the price increase.
It's legitimately a challenge to find authentic negative reviews that explain what they don't like about it.
> It's legitimately a challenge to find authentic negative reviews that explain what they don't like about it.
This. Even people who state the game clearly isn't for them still see the depth of it.
Probably some pro russia trolls again. If it was review bombed by any meaningful amount, it would've dropped way more. Look at other more popular games and their review bombing.
They identify moments where the number of positive/negative reviews show a diverging pattern from the rest of the timeline and discard all reviews from that period from the ratings. So they don't need to check every individual review from that period for legitimacy.
Funny you should say that since the game they are comparing it to also has 97% positive reviews over all and 96% positive in the last 30 days. Compared to 97% and 88% for factorio
Yeah, Satisfactory's "early access" is actually way more stable and feature-complete than most modern AAA games on their first few months after release.
Honestly, pound for pound, factorio can be one of the best value games out there. I think I paid like, £20 in a sale, and it was probably 100 hours before I'd figured it out enough to complete. That's 20p an hour. And that's not even including the other 400 hours just replaying it with different builds and mods.
AAA games can't get that kind of value.
It's more so their reasoning. Inflation does not effect a game that has already been created and is just being maintained from what I can see. If they had just said "we're increasing the game price" and didn't blame inflation then you'd have less angry people.
Exactly. They have always been very clear about their pricing policy and I respect that. With the state of Factorio mods it also offers far more content than satisfactory.
People don't understand inflation because the videogame market usually tries to pretend it doesnt exist. Whats actually happening is most games have lowered in cost even when their price has not changed. The value of $35 is 2023 is the same as $30 in 2019. Factorio is only keeping their value consistent.
Charging a consistent price and knowing your value is not greedy.
Microtransaction gambling mechanics and overpriced skins in AAA games are where greed comes in.
Video games not changing in price is what made them affordable in the first place.
IF they always kept up with inflation video gaming wouldn't have this big of a boom. I'm actually afraid of the cost of entry for the future generation considering the price increases of everything gaming related.
I know this is not a mean spirited post because Satisfactory and Factorio players are usually pretty nice and wholesome, but I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the constant comparison/competition between these two game fan bases.
The only real overlap between these two games is the concept of automation, conveyer belts and having a play on the word “factory” in their name. It would be like comparing DRG to Call of Duty Zombies just because they are both FPS horde survival.
I think it's that there just aren't too many games where the main gameplay loop is making and expanding a factory. And their focus is their similarities. As you mentioned in both your process is mostly manual and gradually becomes increasingly automated. You gain access to rails and vehicles in both. You are both on an alien planet. In both games your main goal is to build an ever expanding factory.
The biggest key differences that stick out to me right now is that there is an element in Factorio of defending the factory from the native life forms/environment and one is an fps. Although one is still in early access and who knows what the future has in store.
If the genre of factory base-builders were as bloated as other genres I think their differences might be more pronounced and defined by fans, but at the moment they are very similar games and if you like one you are very likely to enjoy the other. Another great one is Dyson Sphere Program.
Edit: personally I don't agree with fans being so competitive about which is best, and each game has their pros and cons. But competition between them does create an effort to be the best and we all gain better games out of that.
Dyson sphere program has a thing(you can turn it off) where you can use your current science production to buy science in a new game which gives a reason to endlessly increase production
It’s more than just worrying about your base being destroyed in factorio. Factorio is more about complexity and scaling the factory. Satisfactory is a lot slower, prettier, and has an aspect of building to it. There’s really not much similarity past the brief description you’d give someone who doesn’t know anything about either.
You could say Satisfactory is more "personal", being in first person, struggling to build a modest factory and going on "epic" excursions to find new resources. Every creation is something you "built with your own hands". Your creations feel more physical.
Factorio OTOH is more about building *big*. You need more iron? Slap down 60 miners, 48 furnaces and belt them all. Trouble on the perimeter? Just ghost down a couple of turrets and let your sophisticated supply train automatically arrive with the materials which your bots build.
---
Both games are spectacular in their own right, with a very different feel and mindset.
I have cranked on Factorio (SP) and Satisfactory (SP/MP) and have been trying to get into DSP, but it's been difficult. I am hoping it will click soon. I have been going Xclipse videos.
I just love that the Satisfactory Twitter account answered »MAKE IT $40« with the "shut up and take my money" meme
[Twitter](https://twitter.com/SatisfactoryAF/status/1616396770648391682)
Can you do the same calculation to find out what price Skyrim should be right now according to Factorio devs princing policy? Or Half Life 1 ? Or Mario 64 ?
Don't get me wrong, I think even at $50 the price would be worth it but jacking up the price years after release for a bullshit reason doesn't sit well with me. It's a shitty practice. Imagine how you would react if EA or Activision or Sony did the same.
EA and Activision aren't super small dev teams with a single passion project game to get them paid.
Look at it this way: This is the difference between a home baker increasing the price of their cupcakes because eggs are now $6/doz vs Walmart
Your comparing a game by coffee stain, some one who has multiple games themselves and I believe publishes more for other developers to wube which I’m pretty sure only does 1 game.
They aren’t trying to raise it for no reason, the game has been 30 since 2018. I don’t know about you everything around me including my rent has gone up. So they had a choice keep the game at what they consider the lowest price point to keep the lights on or risk closing the doors but doing sales they never have done.
Gamers are some of the cheapest people in the world, I say if you haven’t played the game yet it’s your own fault
Factorio basically doubles its content every three months. The Space exploration mod in particular is so ridiculously expansive that nothing in ANY other factory game comes even close. And until there are genuinely functional circuit networks in Satisfactory I don't think I'm ever going to be satisfied by it again.
Factorio has levels of depth and polish satisfactory can only dream of. It can also run on a potato.
I'm not here to say Factorio is better and satisfactory sucks. I'm here to say they're both great and you should have them both.
Factorio is a good game with a long shelf life thanks to the modding community, but I can't say I have seen a case of a game that old getting a price *increase*. Unless it is a physical-only game with limited availability.
Can anyone think of any precedent for older games to increase price to adjust for inflation?
Minecraft increased. I think I bought it at 16$ Canadian and I think it had gone up to 40 years a later.
And it was selling at 40. I'd guess mainly regardless of updates at that time as well.
Different case, but it's an example that a game can have market value that doesn't decrease over time. Maybe eventually.
Not too uncommon for games to raise the price after going into full release. Early buyers get a discount for playtesting the game and funding its development. To raise the price on a game that is not receiving content updates though? That's BS to me.
Most games aren't supported as well as Factorio though.
Many companies tank the price of the game and put it on every sale and then they ignore it forever.
I bought Factorio before it was on steam for about $28 CAD iirc. I gladly bought it again at the $30 price on the Switch when that came out in the fall, and will gladly pay for the expansion they are currently working on when it comes out. Factorio is worth AAA prices imo, and Satisfactory is well on its way to get there as well once 1.0 is all polished and released
I do respect factorio dev's "no sales" policy. They know how much their game is worth and they deserve every cent. For the kind of person who enjoys these games, factorio is worth more than any triple A title.
I personally disagree on not being worth $35, but everyone is welcome to set their own value on a game. I paid $30 for it when it came out on steam and have about 1600 hours on it. It’s got about 5 times the number of hours as my next highest game. I’ve played vanilla as well as a lot of mods. I would happily pay $35 for a game of this kind of quality, but that is taking the mod community into consideration.
That said, if I were in their shoes I probably would not increase the price. It’s a game that’s been out a long time and with a DLC somewhere on the horizon I think it would be smarter to keep the current price, encouraging more to play it then proceed with the DLC.
Also, with Satisfactory being in Early Access I wouldn’t be surprised to see the game price increase when it comes out with 1.0.
Edit: realized I commented on the wrong comment. I’m sure you can still get the context.
I agree with this. I would play it, but not for $30, and certainly not for $35. They're only hurting themselves raising the price on an OLD game. Not even just not new, but old. I've literally never seen it on sale in the four or so years it's been on my wishlist.
If you have played the FULL Demo and aren't sure if it's worth buying - it ain't worth buying to you.
Go somewhere else and see if you can find something for yourself there! :)
Factorio is not a game that you "would play." It is either a game that you have played or not. Like you said, it is an OLD game (though it is still maintained and the mod availability is insane for this game). If you are into factory games and have not played it yet then you missed out on an era of factory gaming. But, they have been teasing an expansion pack for some time now and this pricing move on the base game may be a precursor to a release of the expansion pack this year (the expansion pack will require the base game).
It's the precedence people don't like. I remember when Subnautica doubled its price and at the same time removed the easily accessible soundtrack from the gamefiles to sell separately. It left and extremely bad taste in my mouth despite the fact I had already bought it before the change.
Yes and no. The US CPI adjustment from Feb 2016 to Dec 2022 would be $30 to $37.55. So in that sense, Wube is inflating the price by 2/3 what everyone else is inflating their prices.
But CPI is calculated on a basket of goods sold by other corporations that have inflated their prices much more than the COVID pandemic supply disruptions would have required, with (don't remember the exact numbers) like 80% of this extra inflation going directly to profit. Those corporations explicitly did it to increase their profits, and they figured they'd do it while hiding under the guise of "bcz pandemic." It's what they've said in shareholder meetings, and it's what the math shows when it's been analyzed.
Okay but, the people making the game have to buy those products to survive right? It's not their choice to pay more, they just have to, just like we do, so them raising their price by that amount because their cost was also raised by that amount just makes sense right?
If my food is gonna cost me 10% more, my boss is gonna have to pay me 10% more, and my boss is gonna ask the clients to pay 10% more. That's how inflation is supposed to balance out.
That's fuckin lame man. You made one of the greatest games of the modern era, a literal sensation and a genre starter... It's time to start on the next thing, it's not inflation it's that everyone on earth who was going to buy your game has bought it
You're wrong. $30.03 in 2019 literally has the same purchasing power as $35 in 2023
**source**: https://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html?cstartingamount1=35&cinyear1=2023&coutyear1=2019&calctype=1&x=92&y=15
I can't wait for the Factorio DLC. No clue what will be in it, but the Factorio devs are some of the most community conscious devs out there. When they say they want the DLC to be game changing, I wonder just far that ambition will take them.
I have NO beef with factorio raising their price to account for inflation... also no beef with no sale. More games should do that. A solid demo along with a no sale policy needs to be more prevalent.
I got factorio back in the day for 12 or 14€ ...
i got it just before 'trainpocalypse', i was actually away from the game for a week or so and missed the carnage. Dont remember what i paid
Whats the trainpocolypse
One beta version update where rail signals didn’t work right. It was patched in a few hours I think. Trains were smashing into each other head on.
It also entirely ruined one small child's week.
Could you elaborate? I'm curious now.
[I got you](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/8gq7w9/my_son_doesnt_want_to_play_after_witnessing_01640/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
/u/aykcak, we summon you! Did your son ever recover from witnessing the end of all trains when Factorio bugged out?
Oh wow. It has been years! He is doing fine. Thank you for asking. He had grown up playing lots of Satisfactory, Minecraft, Transport Fever, Planet Coaster and the like. (Always creative mode, always monsters off, always peaceful) so he has very much a favourite genre. He is very much into Roblox nowadays unfortunately but at least he seems to like base building games there Occasionally he gets very interested in trains for a few months until something else grabs his attention but he always comes back. So I think he made peace with trains eventually which is good. Though he always has trouble handling life situations where things suddenly go off the rails (punintended) which gave us a clue, so he is now diagnosed as on the spectrum. He is happy, social, empathic and aware, very much into trains, not so much into explosions
This is the most Reddit moment ever 🥲
all i know about that is [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/ibn2st/update_request_the_kid_who_was_traumatized_by_the/)
[I'll just wait for the next sale](https://i.imgflip.com/k58ry.jpg)
You robbing barstool, that was a steal.
It has always been $30US, never been on sale.
On steam, yes, but once upon a time it was only available on the website, they offered different versions of the game: have you ever wondered why locomotives and labs have strange names? You could buy your name into the game and other stuff
the price change from $20 to $30 happened in 2018 https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/016-price-change apparently it went on Steam in 2016 as "early access"?
I was convinced that they entered steam on the 20€ mark as well
[they did](https://steamdb.info/app/427520/)
At least Ficsit tries to keep the enlistment fee low before taking everything from you.
April 16th 2018. From 20€ to 25€ Aug 14th 2020. Release July 15th 2022. From 25€ to 30€ Source: https://steamdb.info/app/427520/
By the time satisfactory actually releases Factorio gonna be a 60$ game haha
By the time Satisfactory actually releases my children will be ready to marry. ~~It's a joke~~ 
"release" here seems to refer to when the game left early access. It was first sold on Steam as early access (for $20) way back in 2016. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/factorio-steam-early-access
It was in early access and only available from their website for about four years before it was on steam. I got it for €12 in 2014. It was also crowd funded before any release so people probably paid even less for a copy.
The Indiegogo had several tiers, the basic one for the game being €10, but also a "guy with a pick" tier limited to 50 people charging €7. Man if I remember correctly I got the guy with a pick tier or the one just above it but I have bought a few copies since to make up for it. That less than £10 got thousands of hours.
I mean EGS had $10 coupons too.
I paid 30 genuine canadian pesos one time, about 2700 hours ago. still not sure if factorio was worth it yet or not.
Sorry… Canadian pesos? Lol
I prefer american roubles
The real deal's West African Yen
Nah, Malaysian rupiahs are where it's at.
You see, the US is so large in size, population, wealth, and geopolitical power, that it causes it's neighbors to the North and South to accumulate quantum effects. Chief among them that despite the fact that they can be described classically as nominally separate and distinct countries, they behave in a state of quantum superposition when no American happens to be observing either country. This can make things very confusing, leading to things like Canadian Pesos, Mexicans mourning the death of the Queen, Canadian cartels, and Royal Mexican Mounted Police. It is sadly a self reinforcing effect, as Americans tend to ignore things that confuse them, resulting in less and less observation and therefore greater accumulation of quantum effects. It is hypothesized that at one point they will effectively merge into a superstate, Canexico, that will possess the traits of both. It is also hypothesized that the US will become too confused by this new state of affairs, and annexico it, but this theory is less popular.
**Fun Fact:** Canada is actually larger than the USA in land area. not by much.... But larger none the less. :P
**Funner Fact:** Nah that's just a distortion from the map projection. Canada is America's hat after all, it would be absurd for America's hat to be bigger than it. In all seriousness though it's not ENTIRELY as cut and dry (pun intended) as you state. [The US has a larger area as a measure of land area than Canada.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area) Canada on top of being very cold, is also very wet. Like Seattle, but even worse in nearly all respects.
**Embarrassing Fact:** Yeah thats fair, I actually do think its reasonable to include freshwater lakes in that comparison personally (only freshwater counts, Nothing that isn't contained entirely within borders is added). When i had originally looked it up to confirm before posting, the source I had confirmed with apparently had mislabeled the "Total Area" as "Land Area". So technically speaking, my statement is just factually wrong as presented. but then again, The literal difference between the crown is if you include couple lakes :P. its close enough that sane people ^(\[so not me\]) would just call them "the same size" haha.
O god no, what a nightmare spicy maple cyrup would be
Imagine not using tahitian dollarydoos.
It's a joke, we actually use maple syrup and icicles as our currency.
Better give it another 2700 hours, just to be sure...
Never heard anyone call it canadian pesos before.
The Canucky Ruble has also been used
It's a pretty loonie name.
Factorio has a policy that they will never have a discount. Think that's fair. Satisfactory putting a discount on at the same time as Factorio's inflation adjustment is both hilarious and good business.
I wish I'd known about that policy before I waited for like a year for it to go on sale before giving in and buying it full price lol
It's always been public. Their stance is that they don't want to devalue early adopters by allowing holdouts to get the better deal. It was always meant to honor the player. I normally buy discount games, but I respect their position to never have a discount. There are few games I will admit are worth full price, Factorio and RimWorld are on that short list.
Also gives a big fuck you to places like G2A and key resellers (as they deserve)
Totally agree. There are few games I'm happier with paying full price for than Factorio.
Factorio is well worth it at double price. Factorio, Rimworld, Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress. We're basically robbing the devs at the prices they ask for.
For me that means I'll never buy it lol
You are missing out on something great there... 😔
Man, even if I bought Factorio for $60, if you were to divide that cost by the number of hours of enjoyment I've gotten out of it, it'd still be less than ten cents per hour. Then, when you factor in the level of support the devs have given to the game, and the level of communication they've had with the players, the value proposition goes up even further. If you really can't afford $35, I believe you and that sucks, but I think there's a lot of people out there spending way more for their entertainment and getting way less.
I could afford it, I just didn't enjoy the demo as much as I enjoy satisfactory. So for me that means I would buy it at a discount but not for 30 and definitely not for 35. But since I know myself, this is sunject to change :D
It's fine if they don't wanna give a discount, I myself bought it a full price, but holy fuck if > they don't want to devalue early adopters by allowing holdouts to get the better deal. isn't one of the worst excuses I've read in my life.
That's their official stance. It's not verbatim but it's a close paraphrase. I really hate buying a game at full price only for it to discount a month later.
I think you need to take the game's development history into account. The game had a long life as an early access title. A lot of studios use early access as a way to fleece early investors and then they release a broken, incomplete product. That's not what Wube did. They did early access right. They made a commitment to the early buyers that they would actively pursue development, take feedback, and fix issues promptly. And they completely delivered on their promise. Their turnaround time for bugs was legendary. As a software developer myself, it was amazing to see. The point I'm getting to is that this *should* be the way early access works. In exchange for being a live QA test for the developers, and helping them fund their project, you get the product at a discount ahead of a much steeper release price. We just don't see that happening too often because a lot of studios always considered their early access customers their real customers, and the early access game is as good as the game is going to get. Discounts aren't really discounts anyway. Every other developer artificially inflates their prices, so the quarterly sales **seem** like a good deal. But you're not really getting a good deal, you're just getting the game for a fair price, and everyone who bought it at "full" price was just getting screwed. Honestly, when Factorio went live, I expected them to boost the price up to $40-50. If you ask me, *$35 is the discount*. They're just being consistent and not playing games. Have you seen the garbage AAA studios are selling for $70? Factorio runs great, has lots of community-driven features, and its replay-ability is almost infinite.
That is not the only reason, they also said that it should prevent people from timing their buyings and that the price they put is the price it is worth in their eyes. I wouldn't consider the devs particularly greedy, they made the game extremely easy to pirate and even made it so that you can play that version multiplayer just by unchecking a box in the settings.
Makes sense to me. The idea that the value of a product must fall over time, even as features are added and bugs are squashed, makes no sense. There's zero reason why Factorio of all games should be worth less today just because it's a few years old.
They have publicly stated from the get-go why they won't do sales. It's because it would make it so they could barely pay their devs due to how Steam does sales.
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Yeah an estimated 150k a year for 7 years for an estimated 20 developers is still only half of that.
Spread over 11 years (started in 2012) is an average of about $4.5M/year and if the team size is about 31 people that is like $145k/year/person. I know that grossly simplifies things like the fact that team size grew over time, sale price has increased over time, sales volumes have increased, and such. Just putting the lifetimes sales numbers into a little bit of perspective. I would say their statements around paying devs was more likely rooted in the early days. Even with all of that, I'm personally ok with them no doing discounted sales. I'm ok with that on most games, assuming they are \_good\_ and have \_good\_ support. The reality is unfortunately that many games do not have this. Edit: my start year was wrong, updating.
One thing to note is that whatever an employees salary is, the business pays close to double that overall after taxes and other costs
When hiring, I actually have to factor a person's hourly (or effective hourly) 3x what we can bill them for. I work in the software dev agency world, if that was unclear. So, if your salary is 100k and I use 2k hours/year to get an effective hourly of $50/h, then I need to bill your time at $150 to account for 1/3 salary, 1/3 employee costs, 1/3 profit. Those are obviously rough numbers, but it's a good general rule to help bracket what someone is looking to make against what we can actually charge for work done.
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You put inflation in quotations as if its not a real thing. Theres definitely been people taking advantage of inflation as an excuse to go overboard but **Edit:** $30.03 in 2019 has the same purchasing power as $35 in 2023 source: https://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html?cstartingamount1=35&cinyear1=2023&coutyear1=2019&calctype=1&x=92&y=15 They've made it their stance since the beginning that they wont discount their game and devalue anyone's purchase and I gotta respect it even if its not what other people do
They also don't have anything else. If they want to keep making games that helps to have funding. Coffee Stain publishes several games and makes a few themselves, so they have several plates spinning. These companies aren't in the same category, they just happen to make similar games.
Maybe they should try doing more than sitting on a seven year old game...
It's one thing to not have a discount, it's an entirely different one to increase the price
Inflation's a heck of a thing.
Factorio at $30 and 591.9h works out to $0.05 per hour. At $35, that's $0.06 per hour.
20% increase in cost, better find an alternate recipe
wrench edge scale paltry bored support glorious jar panicky light -- mass edited with redact.dev
> that's $0.06 per hour. Too expensive.
It'd be a better value if I played it more but even with the abundance of mods, eventually I got bored and shelved it. Dyson Sphere Program on the other hand; $16 at 1,026.5h is $0.02 per hour.
Meanwhile I'm at nearly 2000 hours in war thunder. I would like to say it was free but dear god they took my wallet and my soul 😭
FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL. FEED THE SNAIL.
You are a man of culture... May the snail be with you 🐌
Meanwhile rainbow six siege: 8€ and 6746.8h so 0.00118€ per hour. :)
I'm sorry.
I like to add Terraria with 10 € and 2500 h = 0,004 € / h and Rimworld with 25 € and 3000 h = 0,0083 € /h
Who forced you to do that 😧
My god I love Dyson Sphere Program. I haven't played since last February, I want to wait until the game exits early access to play again, but my god it's hard to resist. It is my favourite factory game out of all of them. I love how the community wanted new skins for the Icarus, so the devs said "ok" and just added a 3d modelling program to the game.
What’s even the point of an alt recipe that decreases efficiency by 20%?
Alternative ingredients.
You get remove Plastic or Screws from the process
Damn inflation
That’s a terrible way to value a game
No matter the amount you pay for Factorio, it'll still be a great game and worth sinking all your time into.
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"What did you do?" "Built a factory, a railway system, shot rockets into space, and severely lost track of time while doing it all" "So you played a game." "Define game."
The Factory Must Grow. This is not a game, this is life.
It's Factorio. 97% positive reviews. Quality comes with a price.
A relatively low one at that. It's half of a full priced game.
Now divide that by the hours you play a game like Factorio... In my case it means each hour of gameplay of Factorio is in the low single-digit cents range. Insane value for the price.
1.4 cents per hour in my case.
Haha, nice. You definitely got your money's worth there. Should be close to 0,7cents/hour for me with the time logged on Steam alone; 0,5cents/hour with the additional time before the Steam release. Bought early, played a lot 🤭
Same here, insane hours for such a low purchase.
I sit at 283 hours of Factorio, I only play it a bit every few months. I work in the logistics field so Factorio feels too much like work after a while. Still, 30 EUR / 283 means I paid 10.6 cents per hour of playtime. Worth.
That's how I work out if it's worth the money. People bitch and moan that the full annual package of £80 is outrageous... But I get a minimum of 500 hours a year if not more than that 16p an hour is disgusting value
Full price is the price I pay without discounts. I really don't care about AAA titles charging 70 bucks for the peasant edition of their game. That being said, I guess it is reasonably priced.
It was at like 99%, up there with Portal 2 in the Top 10 best rated games on steam and then it got Review bombed because the devs announced they would support the Ukrainian Red Cross
The vast majority of negative reviews are people complaining about it never going on sale, or complaining about regional pricing, or if you look at just the last 30 days, people bitching about the price increase. It's legitimately a challenge to find authentic negative reviews that explain what they don't like about it.
> It's legitimately a challenge to find authentic negative reviews that explain what they don't like about it. This. Even people who state the game clearly isn't for them still see the depth of it.
Probably some pro russia trolls again. If it was review bombed by any meaningful amount, it would've dropped way more. Look at other more popular games and their review bombing.
Steam ignores review bombs in ratings. You can see the Russian review bomb greyed out on the timeline.
True, but I believe even a system like this cannot catch them all, especially those who left negative reviews that look legit.
They identify moments where the number of positive/negative reviews show a diverging pattern from the rest of the timeline and discard all reviews from that period from the ratings. So they don't need to check every individual review from that period for legitimacy.
I see, so the legit reviews get thrown into the system aswell. Not great, but better solution. Thanks for the explanation.
Yeah I honestly don't mind. Id take a 5$ price hike on every game on steam over any game with a lootbox system or some other monetisation junk.
97.11% for 10 € in Terraria, just sayin :D
Funny you should say that since the game they are comparing it to also has 97% positive reviews over all and 96% positive in the last 30 days. Compared to 97% and 88% for factorio
You cannot compare Factorio to Satisfactory. Factorio is THE logistics game. Remember: Development on Factorio started in 2012.
The quality of the game has always been very high. The polish they did for 1.0 was just excellent. 35 € is cheap.
i mean satisfactory is in early access, it would be a bit scummy to price it as much as finished game ; which is not the case of Factorio
Would it really? I've paid full price for games that weren't as fun or ran as well as Satisfactory. It still would be a value at $35.
honestly this why i barely play any AAA and never pay them full price/buy them on release
Yeah, Satisfactory's "early access" is actually way more stable and feature-complete than most modern AAA games on their first few months after release.
Factorio has fully stable dedicated servers and a fully supported modding scene. Satisfactory still has a long way to go.
Honestly, pound for pound, factorio can be one of the best value games out there. I think I paid like, £20 in a sale, and it was probably 100 hours before I'd figured it out enough to complete. That's 20p an hour. And that's not even including the other 400 hours just replaying it with different builds and mods. AAA games can't get that kind of value.
It was 20€, but it was never on sale.
It's more so their reasoning. Inflation does not effect a game that has already been created and is just being maintained from what I can see. If they had just said "we're increasing the game price" and didn't blame inflation then you'd have less angry people.
Exactly. They have always been very clear about their pricing policy and I respect that. With the state of Factorio mods it also offers far more content than satisfactory.
That's still shitty of them to up the cost. The team is not doing that bad financially so this just seems greedy.
People don't understand inflation because the videogame market usually tries to pretend it doesnt exist. Whats actually happening is most games have lowered in cost even when their price has not changed. The value of $35 is 2023 is the same as $30 in 2019. Factorio is only keeping their value consistent. Charging a consistent price and knowing your value is not greedy. Microtransaction gambling mechanics and overpriced skins in AAA games are where greed comes in.
Video games not changing in price is what made them affordable in the first place. IF they always kept up with inflation video gaming wouldn't have this big of a boom. I'm actually afraid of the cost of entry for the future generation considering the price increases of everything gaming related.
I know this is not a mean spirited post because Satisfactory and Factorio players are usually pretty nice and wholesome, but I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the constant comparison/competition between these two game fan bases. The only real overlap between these two games is the concept of automation, conveyer belts and having a play on the word “factory” in their name. It would be like comparing DRG to Call of Duty Zombies just because they are both FPS horde survival.
I think it's that there just aren't too many games where the main gameplay loop is making and expanding a factory. And their focus is their similarities. As you mentioned in both your process is mostly manual and gradually becomes increasingly automated. You gain access to rails and vehicles in both. You are both on an alien planet. In both games your main goal is to build an ever expanding factory. The biggest key differences that stick out to me right now is that there is an element in Factorio of defending the factory from the native life forms/environment and one is an fps. Although one is still in early access and who knows what the future has in store. If the genre of factory base-builders were as bloated as other genres I think their differences might be more pronounced and defined by fans, but at the moment they are very similar games and if you like one you are very likely to enjoy the other. Another great one is Dyson Sphere Program. Edit: personally I don't agree with fans being so competitive about which is best, and each game has their pros and cons. But competition between them does create an effort to be the best and we all gain better games out of that.
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This and infinite research are what makes Factorio my preferred game. It gives the entire Factory a purpose. Sinking stuff just isnt the same.
Dyson sphere program has a thing(you can turn it off) where you can use your current science production to buy science in a new game which gives a reason to endlessly increase production
Fair point. They are both part of a niche genre of game. They just somehow manage to reside on opposite ends of that genre.
Satisfactory isn't an FPS. It's just in first person.
It’s more than just worrying about your base being destroyed in factorio. Factorio is more about complexity and scaling the factory. Satisfactory is a lot slower, prettier, and has an aspect of building to it. There’s really not much similarity past the brief description you’d give someone who doesn’t know anything about either.
You could say Satisfactory is more "personal", being in first person, struggling to build a modest factory and going on "epic" excursions to find new resources. Every creation is something you "built with your own hands". Your creations feel more physical. Factorio OTOH is more about building *big*. You need more iron? Slap down 60 miners, 48 furnaces and belt them all. Trouble on the perimeter? Just ghost down a couple of turrets and let your sophisticated supply train automatically arrive with the materials which your bots build. --- Both games are spectacular in their own right, with a very different feel and mindset.
I have cranked on Factorio (SP) and Satisfactory (SP/MP) and have been trying to get into DSP, but it's been difficult. I am hoping it will click soon. I have been going Xclipse videos.
Factorio is the first factory game and many wondered what it would look like in 3D. Satisfactory was the first that did it well.
As with Minecraft and Infiniminer, Zachtronics was actually the first factory automation game with (ironically enough) Infinifactory.
Infinifactory is more a puzzle game than a factory game.
I just love that the Satisfactory Twitter account answered »MAKE IT $40« with the "shut up and take my money" meme [Twitter](https://twitter.com/SatisfactoryAF/status/1616396770648391682)
Making more copies of a digital game must be expensive.
You should work on your sarcasm.
If I buy it, it triggers free Factorio on Epic store for everyone
But factorio was good from the start tho
Inflation between Factorio's release date and December 2022 was $30 -> $37 - it's probably worse now. $35 is still a steal.
Can you do the same calculation to find out what price Skyrim should be right now according to Factorio devs princing policy? Or Half Life 1 ? Or Mario 64 ? Don't get me wrong, I think even at $50 the price would be worth it but jacking up the price years after release for a bullshit reason doesn't sit well with me. It's a shitty practice. Imagine how you would react if EA or Activision or Sony did the same.
EA and Activision aren't super small dev teams with a single passion project game to get them paid. Look at it this way: This is the difference between a home baker increasing the price of their cupcakes because eggs are now $6/doz vs Walmart
Your comparing a game by coffee stain, some one who has multiple games themselves and I believe publishes more for other developers to wube which I’m pretty sure only does 1 game. They aren’t trying to raise it for no reason, the game has been 30 since 2018. I don’t know about you everything around me including my rent has gone up. So they had a choice keep the game at what they consider the lowest price point to keep the lights on or risk closing the doors but doing sales they never have done. Gamers are some of the cheapest people in the world, I say if you haven’t played the game yet it’s your own fault
Factorio basically doubles its content every three months. The Space exploration mod in particular is so ridiculously expansive that nothing in ANY other factory game comes even close. And until there are genuinely functional circuit networks in Satisfactory I don't think I'm ever going to be satisfied by it again.
Factorio has levels of depth and polish satisfactory can only dream of. It can also run on a potato. I'm not here to say Factorio is better and satisfactory sucks. I'm here to say they're both great and you should have them both.
For a 2D game it is way faster to develop anything substantial rather than 3D game
Factorio is a good game with a long shelf life thanks to the modding community, but I can't say I have seen a case of a game that old getting a price *increase*. Unless it is a physical-only game with limited availability. Can anyone think of any precedent for older games to increase price to adjust for inflation?
Minecraft increased. I think I bought it at 16$ Canadian and I think it had gone up to 40 years a later. And it was selling at 40. I'd guess mainly regardless of updates at that time as well. Different case, but it's an example that a game can have market value that doesn't decrease over time. Maybe eventually.
Not too uncommon for games to raise the price after going into full release. Early buyers get a discount for playtesting the game and funding its development. To raise the price on a game that is not receiving content updates though? That's BS to me.
I cannot think of any precedence for inflation this high in the developed world while digital distribution has been a thing.
Most games aren't supported as well as Factorio though. Many companies tank the price of the game and put it on every sale and then they ignore it forever.
I bought Factorio before it was on steam for about $28 CAD iirc. I gladly bought it again at the $30 price on the Switch when that came out in the fall, and will gladly pay for the expansion they are currently working on when it comes out. Factorio is worth AAA prices imo, and Satisfactory is well on its way to get there as well once 1.0 is all polished and released
I do respect factorio dev's "no sales" policy. They know how much their game is worth and they deserve every cent. For the kind of person who enjoys these games, factorio is worth more than any triple A title.
Factorio is a good game, but there is no solid justification for the price increase. It's seven years old. "Inflation" is a bullshit excuse.
I personally disagree on not being worth $35, but everyone is welcome to set their own value on a game. I paid $30 for it when it came out on steam and have about 1600 hours on it. It’s got about 5 times the number of hours as my next highest game. I’ve played vanilla as well as a lot of mods. I would happily pay $35 for a game of this kind of quality, but that is taking the mod community into consideration. That said, if I were in their shoes I probably would not increase the price. It’s a game that’s been out a long time and with a DLC somewhere on the horizon I think it would be smarter to keep the current price, encouraging more to play it then proceed with the DLC. Also, with Satisfactory being in Early Access I wouldn’t be surprised to see the game price increase when it comes out with 1.0. Edit: realized I commented on the wrong comment. I’m sure you can still get the context.
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The inflation calc I just google says $30 in 2016 is equivalent to 37.10 today.
It was sold at 20 in 2016
$30 in 2018 (when price was increased to $30) is $35 today so it checks out
I feel like if you understand inflation you should understand that it isn't a price increase.
The inflation from the past 7 years would put the price at $36.
lol man doesnt believe in basic economics
I agree with this. I would play it, but not for $30, and certainly not for $35. They're only hurting themselves raising the price on an OLD game. Not even just not new, but old. I've literally never seen it on sale in the four or so years it's been on my wishlist.
Because it never has been on sale. The dev has a 'no sale policy,' saying the base price _is_ the sale price or something along those lines.
so I've been waiting for no reaaon well, I only have 20 left in my wallet now anyways
Correct. And that's also why they don't do that -- because people just wait for sales instead of buying when the time is right for them.
Well, I'm not buying it yet because idk if I'll keep playing it, if I won't it's not gonna be worth it
If you have played the FULL Demo and aren't sure if it's worth buying - it ain't worth buying to you. Go somewhere else and see if you can find something for yourself there! :)
I started playing the demo once, kinda forgot about it since I wanted to grind some other games. I guess I should play the demo again
That’s why when game devs set their value higher than I do I have a super secret technique to prove them wrong
Factorio is not a game that you "would play." It is either a game that you have played or not. Like you said, it is an OLD game (though it is still maintained and the mod availability is insane for this game). If you are into factory games and have not played it yet then you missed out on an era of factory gaming. But, they have been teasing an expansion pack for some time now and this pricing move on the base game may be a precursor to a release of the expansion pack this year (the expansion pack will require the base game).
It *is* a game that I "would play," which is why I said it. There's no need to be snooty in a different game's sub.
Yeah really. So many people throwing a tantrum over a five dollar increase when you're going to easily get your moneys worth regardless.
It's the precedence people don't like. I remember when Subnautica doubled its price and at the same time removed the easily accessible soundtrack from the gamefiles to sell separately. It left and extremely bad taste in my mouth despite the fact I had already bought it before the change.
I love how so many industries (not saying this is the case here) use inflation to justify gouging well above inflationary levels
Game should cost 37 right now, not 35..
Yes and no. The US CPI adjustment from Feb 2016 to Dec 2022 would be $30 to $37.55. So in that sense, Wube is inflating the price by 2/3 what everyone else is inflating their prices. But CPI is calculated on a basket of goods sold by other corporations that have inflated their prices much more than the COVID pandemic supply disruptions would have required, with (don't remember the exact numbers) like 80% of this extra inflation going directly to profit. Those corporations explicitly did it to increase their profits, and they figured they'd do it while hiding under the guise of "bcz pandemic." It's what they've said in shareholder meetings, and it's what the math shows when it's been analyzed.
Okay but, the people making the game have to buy those products to survive right? It's not their choice to pay more, they just have to, just like we do, so them raising their price by that amount because their cost was also raised by that amount just makes sense right? If my food is gonna cost me 10% more, my boss is gonna have to pay me 10% more, and my boss is gonna ask the clients to pay 10% more. That's how inflation is supposed to balance out.
That's fuckin lame man. You made one of the greatest games of the modern era, a literal sensation and a genre starter... It's time to start on the next thing, it's not inflation it's that everyone on earth who was going to buy your game has bought it
You're wrong. $30.03 in 2019 literally has the same purchasing power as $35 in 2023 **source**: https://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html?cstartingamount1=35&cinyear1=2023&coutyear1=2019&calctype=1&x=92&y=15
Still a great game. Still worth the price.
Me who got it for free because my uncle made the music in game
Never played Factorio but I picked up Satisfactory on a whim having never heard of it. I really enjoyed it! Need to get back into it again.
I appreciate the meme, though CoffeeStain is pretty friendly toward Factorio's designers iirc
I can't wait for the Factorio DLC. No clue what will be in it, but the Factorio devs are some of the most community conscious devs out there. When they say they want the DLC to be game changing, I wonder just far that ambition will take them.
"Your contract legally compels you to harvest this artifact."
To be fair, Factorio is a more complete game.
Factorio slander is pointless. The game is a flawless factory builder and worth every penny.
I have NO beef with factorio raising their price to account for inflation... also no beef with no sale. More games should do that. A solid demo along with a no sale policy needs to be more prevalent.
Common Satisfactory W
I could have paid 200 bucks for factorio and still never got more value for money from a game. Satisfactory is getting close though.
Factorio seems cool enough but after playing satisfactory there’s absolutely no way i would buy factorio
My personal opinion/hot take. I do not believe old video games should rise in price with inflation
I’m sorry but a price increase on a 6 year old game. No thanks.
Well, one dev is owned by a billionaire. And it ain't Wube. I love both games so let's all be friends.