Well, as fun as that sounds, my steam account is waaay older than early access games. And when I started actually using it I lived in Ireland. And I've never considered myself a Spaniard, but nobody cares about that.

Anyway, I actually went out of my way to ask a few contacts within Spain and guess what, none of the them sees the banner. So there's something going on there.

EDIT: I was actually on Germany on Monday, which the same as jamyskis so I should have been able to test it there... now it's mabye both Spain and Belgium? Who knows.

EDIT 2: I actually found one person who can see the banners over there. yay?

It's more likely to be connected to browsers / browser settings / script blockers / ad blockers than to geolocation or nationality, though.

Do you have a script blocker active? If so, are you letting content from all Steam domains (including steamstatic.com) through?

Nope. I don't have any script blocker in any of my computers, in any of my browsers, and the steam client doesn't have any mod whatsoever (if any actually exist).

I'd have to see numbers that bear this out. In general most prices go down from the starting price of the final release. If people are indeed counting the beta as the first proper release and reducing from there, then it's an even stupider move, as many betas end up heavily discounted or even bundled.

And you are assuming that people will pick it up in a discounted form - that is not a direct comparison to the point I am making anyway. I am talking strictly about the debut price, and the lost opportunity of making sales at that price by undercutting your customer base with a cheaper entry point.

For an example, consider the game Enola. It has been both reduced and bundled a number of times, yet still has a high initial price mooted for release. By the time it comes out almost everyone who is interested in it will have it already. If it had instead been developed and then released without all this advance solicitation, it may have indeed sold at the price point they want. But as it stand now only the most uninformed consumers will be making that expensive purchase.

Which language are you viewing the Steam pages in? Maybe there's a problem with some of the translations.

English. Prices are sometimes in € and sometimes in $, depends on the mood steam has any one day.

That already seems pretty messed up, it should be only Euro if you're in Belgium, although if you follow certain links to a Steam page, it's possible that url has a different currency set and it may change it temporarily.

How can you expect to have good sales with a game which is still in alpha?! What the hell has this world come to? =/

Ah, ok, they have better things to do than buy games, then. So you shouldn't worry about it.

I think you may be hallucinating. Either that or just blinded by intense hatred. Anyone that tries to be objective instead of posting clueless rants must be a Valve/Steam zealot in your eyes...

Yeah, but that's my own fault. As I said, I travel a lot, and sometimes I tell it I'm still at a $ location to get around the regional pricing. It seems to confuse the poor client at times, usually it gives me the prices in € but sometimes I see them in $

it actually works that way in most working places.

whether its genuine scam or not - i cant say. I remember considering whether to buy it or not in some sale. It was reported being so buggy that i skipped it. Seems i did the right choice.

My apologies if I derail this a little bit...

The wife and I just flushed $17,000 down the toilet after a relative's business partnership, into which that money was invested over the last three years, appears to be headed for the swirly drain. Well, shiznits. What's done is done and I'm not going to change my relationship with my family member - we're adults and sometimes investments don't work out.

Here's the lesson, and I think it applies to cases like these alpha- or 'early'-release games: you're investing in programmers, not business people. "Me and Jimmy have this great idea and we're gonna quit our jobs to work on it full-time." Gonna go out on a limb and say that most of these little indie "studios" are winging-it when it comes to finances, budgeting, etc. That's a big part of what happened with our investment - we forgot that technical expertise in the business does not equate to business management expertise. We looked at their professional background and figured, "Yeah, they should have no problem with this." And we were correct as far as doing the actual work goes. But when it came to managing the financial and legal bits, an important part of keeping a business going, they didn't have the background. That, and the majority partner deviated from their growth plan almost right from the start, taking on too much too soon. That's also a management matter.

And that's how you lose $17,000 plus interest on something that should have at least broken-even. Live and learn. Next time - if there IS a next time - I'm gonna have my finger directly in the pie whether they want it there or not. If I'm going to lose another $17k then I at least want the satisfaction of knowing that I helped make it happen. ; )



So when looking at the estimated $1-2 million in income from this game, keep in mind that unless these guys knew to handle the money then it was a crapshoot all along, no matter how great the concept, how good the early screenshots and videos looked, how playable the alpha and beta are. This really isn't much different than a destitute lottery winner: sudden infusion of money and no idea how to use it wisely, and so it gets squandered.

As others have stated in various Kickstarter threads, you may as well accept that your early access money is gone the moment you click that "Process Order" button. There is no guarantee that the programmers will accomplish their goals programming-wise, and there is a good probability that they have no clue of what to do with the money they raise along the way. "We raised $23,000 but my car's transmission broke and needed replacement, so...." So what? I didn't fund your car repairs. Doesn't matter. Once they have the money they can fuck things up in any number of ways.

I hope cases like this get people to realize that programming skills and a good idea only get you so far. There needs to be a bit of business sense and budgetary discipline to back it all up, and I suspect most of these indie folks don't figure that out until they're in the thick of the project. In light of that, I think it's reasonable for a prospective backer to ask about the business, accounting, and project management experience of the principals behind a KS campaign or early-access project: they're asking you for money, so they should have no problem answering those questions.

i agree with this.

Early access and kickstarters should not be thought as buying something that is or even will ever be complete.

I wouldnt even really think of them as investments either, but rather more as gambling -_-

I've never been to either Spain or Belgium, and I'm not seeing those banners either.