The other side of the story (Bundled Indie Games List rant)

Isn't a Bundle good advertisement for a game (create fanbase), to get more ppl in games, that would have never buyed it for a full price?! And if the game is really good it will sell later on, so no matter if there is a site called "Steamgifts.com", that marked them "bundled". Dont you think ppl may dont buy these indie games for example cause, there are more than a trillion keys on the market that were given away through bundles, free keys, facebook-advertisment etc?!

@OP - please read this and tell me again how exactly does it hurt you

I think the main issue here is not fully on the CV but also the people. Some people care more about their CV than they care about giving away games for the sake of giving away games. Those people care more about what they will gain, which is entering higher CV giveaways in order to have more chances to win a game, than giving away games. They are giving to gain and at the end i believe this is not the way of thinking you should have when doing a giveaway.

I see people use CV in order to circumvent the people who only give away bundle games or reward those who gives often. We cannot deny that there is a slew of people here that are opportunist. They are only here to profit without contributing or doing so minimally. While not everyone is like that or has the ability to give away games, some do but choose not to.

I myself never put a CV on my public giveaways because i want to help every one especially those who cannot offer games, but in my almost year on this site, I have seen so many people take advantage of this, some who just want to win a game just for the sake of winning others who want to use it for trading and many other issues that i have encountered.

So yes, the CV system is flawed but most of its flaws resides in the people. Giving away a bundled games shouldn't stop you from giving it away even if you don't get a "reward" for it. Giving things away should be done without any expectation outside of helping a person.

Sorry, but there are only about 350k registered users here. Most of those accounts will be inactive. Most of the ones that aren't will never give anything away. Most of those that do would never be interested in giving away specific indie game X anyway. The fact is that there's just not enough potential sales here to even make a discernible difference. Any given title will make more sales in a week, if not a day, than being in the bundle list or not will ever cost them. It's just that simple.

I fully agree that the system is flawed and it does of course affect sales (pff, look at how well Just Cause 1 sold because of that massive %- off = lots of CV profit).

I can personally say that I bought To The Moon full priced, more then once (for my giveaway, taht was some time ago...) and I also bought Thomas Was Alone and Hotline Miami full priced, on steam. Steam does get a bigger cut out of this, and if I knew they would be bundlened I would ahve waited, and paid the exact same amount as if I would have bought them on steam. Why? Because Steam takes more, or exactly 30% of the sales, atleast most sellers take around that number, I believe if I remember correctly steam deos not want to publish how much they take. Or did they? I don't know. Nontheless these games that I bought full priced, were absolutely marvelously great, in fact they are the best games I have ever played - far better then any AAA game.

If bundles decrease sales in the long run, and if it would be more profitable to not bundle a game - that is a question and philosophical question that does probably not have a straight answer. You may ask game developers who had their games bundeled, and see how well their sales did after being bundeled - but you cannot rewind time, make them not bundle the game and see how well their profit goes then. You never know how it goes.

Anyways, I'm going off topic. I personally LOVED seeing Thomas Was Alone, and Hotline Miami getting bundeled, because I knew they would get much more publicity, and much more money to the developers. I was happy to see that. If it will go badly for them in the future, I cannot know, I can pray for their well-being but I cannot know.

(TL:DR?) As a conclusion, I fully agree that SG needs a fix up in the system, and this is just another reason to why.