Limited Run Games |OT| Sweet XOXO for Digital to Physical Media

Frump said:

I mean, why isn't Claire up $5 then? Do the 500 copies really make that much of a difference? If the game costs $8 digitally, you're trying to tell me that there's no profit to be made at the previous floor price of $24.99?

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Claire is on two platforms so it can make it's money back easier. At a small run of 2,000, it's harder for the developer or us to make any money with the costs of goods plus the ESRB fee. We would essentially be breaking even, and that's not how a business should run.

LimitedRunGames said:

Claire is on two platforms so it can make it's money back easier. At a small run of 2,000, it's harder for the developer or us to make any money with the costs of goods plus the ESRB fee. We would essentially be breaking even, and that's not how a business should run.

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Okay, so the ESRB rating cost would apply to both Vita and PS4? Those don't need to be rated separately and therefore have a double charge? I can believe that. However, I still don't understand how Claire costs twice as much digitally as Super Gunworld 2 while still getting a profit at a lower price.

I mean, you say the games are selling slower but that means they're still selling out, right? We're not seeing any sort of fudged numbers on the consumer end, I assume. Wouldn't bumping up the number to a profitable amount at $24.99 have made more sense if they all still seem to sell out?

Frump said:

Okay, so the ESRB rating cost would apply to both Vita and PS4? Those don't need to be rated separately and therefore have a double charge? I can believe that. However, I still don't understand how Claire costs twice as much digitally as Super Gunworld 2 while still getting a profit at a lower price.

I mean, you say the games are selling slower but that means they're still selling out, right? We're not seeing any sort of fudged numbers on the consumer end, I assume. Wouldn't bumping up the number to a profitable amount at $24.99 have made more sense if they all still seem to sell out?

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This is a lesser known game, we didn't want this game to not sell out. It's $29.99 to help combat the low run, ESRB, and make the developer some more money to continue working in the game industry. It might not be ideal for you or some others, but for us helping a developer be able to afford to stay in the industry and continue making art is one of the reasons we got into this business. Most developers live paycheck to paycheck if we print too many copies and they don't sell out that negatively impacts the developer.

We are also taking into account last Black Friday when we sold Stealth Inc, it sold very, very slowly. Which is why this is a lower run. We've added extras to make the $29.99 seem worth it, if it's not to you, then I'm sorry. Others seem pretty excited and we are too!

If sales are very slow on BF, why not just push it to the following week? You have more visibility from Windjammer's/Claire, the ETA won't feel as long, and the price would be more palatable for a lot of people also planning to order your other releases because they won't have to pay an extra $5.50 for shipping ($7.50 for me, since I don't trust bubble mailers).

Frump said:

In reference to number 4, it feels really unethical to charge your customers more when you're friends with the dev and want to get them more money. Why didn't the cost of manuals in the past cause the price to rise? You could've always, y'know, not made five trading cards too.

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I feel like responding to this one because I don't like the implication it gives off for both myself or Limited Run. I like Josh and Doug, the majority of my interaction has been with Doug and he's also the only one I met in person. The first time I met him in person was at E3 this year, nearly a year and a half after first speaking with Josh about doing this game and almost 6 months after the digital PS4 release. To imply I got any sort of special treatment regarding this release because anyone at LRG is friends with me is a bit disingenuous. That isn't to imply anything negative, it's just that our relationship thus far has been strictly as professionals/peers.

Although Josh, Doug, I'd like to think that we could be friends. I'll mail you a letter. Check yes or no.

Outside of that, it really is a matter of the ESRB thing (which blindsided every dev that was currently signed but unreleased) and recent sales slowing down. The rest of the stuff is minor. I did put more effort into our manual than many LRG releases did, and them wanting to support small devs like me is less about personal friendships and more about what their mission statement as a company has been since the beginning.

Mirroring the comment made by LRG here, ultimately I've been seeing a tremendous amount of excitement and positivity for this release. More so than I was anticipating considering how criminally (in my opinion) unknown Super GunWorld 2 is. I think there's going to be some disappointed people as-is with many LRG releases because this is a niche game, but anyone that's been looking for a solid old-school Mega Man style game is going to come away happy with something they might have never known existed otherwise. My game is so unknown, it never even got a final score on Metacritic (although the trend based on existing reviews and ones MC doesn't count is that it would have scored favorably....better than Mighty No 9 =P)

LimitedRunGames said:

We are also taking into account last Black Friday when we sold Stealth Inc, it sold very, very slowly. Which is why this is a lower run. We've added extras to make the $29.99 seem worth it, if it's not to you, then I'm sorry. Others seem pretty excited and we are too!

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Black Friday is one of the worst days for you to do your sale imo. If people aren't fighting crowds in stores they are spending time with family. I remember last year having to duck away and try ordering on my phone. I think I posted something about this last year and got shouted down, but if your sales were slow then there it is.

Doug called you his friend in a tweet back in February, when I first heard about your game, so I had no reason to think that it meant anything other than being a literal friend. Still, I'd say you ARE getting special treatment. A bunch of bonuses and an price increase others aren't seeing.

Frump said:

Doug called you his friend in a tweet back in February, when I first heard about your game, so I had no reason to think that it meant anything other than being a literal friend. Still, I'd say you ARE getting special treatment. A bunch of bonuses and an price increase others aren't seeing.

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I mean this in the nicest, most reasonable way possible, but I promise you this is a case of you trying to see special treatment or something skeevy where there simply isn't. The reply from LRG here in this thread was exactly the reasons behind the print count, price, and what's in it. I'm not sure what you're implying by a "bunch" of bonuses. The game has some trading cards in it (that weren't a thing when they signed the game, that's entirely their decision) that they stated pretty openly were added in an attempt to add more value to the package. That's it. Not because they like me, but because of the exact reason they said.

There's elements of the deal with LRG I can't discuss, NDA stuff, but if you're referring to the bigger/more detailed manual as a bonus that's not the case either. Every LRG dev partner has a choice about creating a manual, and how far they want to go with it. The manual isn't something I just get a bigger one of just because they feel charitable, that money put into printing those manuals gets taken out of what I will make. Some decisions changed and things happened (like the ESRB nonsense) that threw a wrench into a couple things with this release. I won't begin to act like I know all the details, but I know these guys are super open, very transparent and honest, and this is a case of there being nothing more than what they've told you.

I think a small price increase is fine. From the beginning, stuff sold out so fast that it felt like the low prices were kinda generous. But especially with ESRB stuff, an increase is super understandable (other than LRG having said they wouldn't raise prices because of it). Having a nice manual is also a really cool thing, that a lot of the releases get wrong.

emb said:

I think a small price increase is fine. From the beginning, stuff sold out so fast that it felt like the low prices were kinda generous. But especially with ESRB stuff, an increase is super understandable (other than LRG having said they wouldn't raise prices because of it). Having a nice manual is also a really cool thing, that a lot of the releases get wrong.

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The manual was never supposed to increase the price, I really think the ESRB thing just had a big impact on my game moreso than some of the others because my print run is low and also happened to have a decent full color manual.

emb said:

I think a small price increase is fine. From the beginning, stuff sold out so fast that it felt like the low prices were kinda generous. But especially with ESRB stuff, an increase is super understandable (other than LRG having said they wouldn't raise prices because of it). Having a nice manual is also a really cool thing, that a lot of the releases get wrong.

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I'm against price increases. For one, you have to factor in shipping, specially for any international customer. We pay $15 for shipping, which means a $25 game cost us $40 total. The hold shipment service, which was supposed to help us, is a complete and utter mess, which isn't really an alternative once you find out they didn't ship all games you've been holding, or that the package suddenly got lost when the tracking code never really tracked anything to begin with. Selling games you don't really have stock yet only makes everything even worse.

I'd happily take a price increase if the overall service and goods got better, which clearly isn't the case here.

superNESjoe said:

Not because they like me, but because of the exact reason they said.

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I mean, his fourth reason in that post was because he likes you but that's neither here nor there at this point. I'll admit that I'm probably looking at this wrongly because of the way it was revealed and handled (very short notice, Black Friday release date, no initial explanation for a larger price). I still don't like the way it was handled but I'll concede that I'm overreacting.

I'm sorry some people are upset by the $5 increase. Most of the fans I've talked with understand and don't mind paying just an extra $5.

We will take this into consideration in the future.

LimitedRunGames said:

I'm sorry some people are upset by the $5 increase. Most of the fans I've talked with understand and don't mind paying just an extra $5.

We will take this into consideration in the future.

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I honestly wouldn't have a problem with price increases if it was announced with a warning and a reason ahead of time AND if there weren't a deluge of releases now. If there are 8 SKUs in a month, that's an extra $40 a month and that's hard to pull. If there were only something like 4 releases in a month, an extra $20 a month is a lot easier to swallow, even if its not ideal.

LimitedRunGames said:

I'm sorry some people are upset by the $5 increase. Most of the fans I've talked with understand and don't mind paying just an extra $5.

We will take this into consideration in the future.

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It's a 20% increase, that's substantial.

And after saying Windjammers was $29.99 because of the companies involved, it doesn't that a short time later you announce a game made by 1 person that is $7.99 digitally will also be $29.99. Can we just expect $29.99 will be the standard price from now on with $24.99 being the exception?

LimitedRunGames said:

I'm sorry some people are upset by the $5 increase. Most of the fans I've talked with understand and don't mind paying just an extra $5.

We will take this into consideration in the future.

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I don't mind it either, as long as the stuff included with the game is meaningful. And for this game, having it on my wishlist for a while, getting a cool PS4 box/Disc + An actual Manual and Trading Cards makes it worth it IMO. Now if this was priced the same as a CE or $10+ more than it's currently going for, I would say it's too pricey, but right now it's fine IMO and I think some people are just a bit too picky about it because of the unknown nature of the game.

Maybe I'm grumpy, but the people who don't care about a five dollar increase probably won't care about a 10 dollar increase or a 20 dollar increase because they'll buy it anyway to complete a collection... because Lawbreakers sold out!!! (Still blows my mind).

And, personally, I see no value in the trading cards that come with releases so including five mean nothing to me.

This release seems icky to me and like a test run for stuff that will get me to no longer be that interested in releases, but I'm not the target customer I guess.

I have to regretfully skip due to Black Friday's offering. Gunna be buying myself Yakuza 0 and Nier Automata instead.

Brian McDoogle said:

Maybe I'm grumpy, but the people who don't care about a five dollar increase probably won't care about a 10 dollar increase or a 20 dollar increase because they'll buy it anyway to complete a collection... because Lawbreakers sold out!!! (Still blows my mind).

And, personally, I see no value in the trading cards that come with releases so including five mean nothing to me.

This release seems icky to me and like a test run for stuff that will get me to no longer be that interested in releases, but I'm not the target customer I guess.

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LRG is still a small company with a lot to loose. I've followed niche game-industry for a while, and business-wise there are just a lot of risks. Despite the... shipping short comings... I think there's a lot of cynicism considering pricing. This isn't someone like Atlus or even Capcom slapping on a higher price, cause reasons, it's still directly after ESRB feesn and extra stuff costs money.

Previously, people on here complained that LRG releases were "barebones" releases, and how they should compete more with the other limited print companies (some of which are gone).Now there's extra things like a manual etc put it, and that's not good either. Physical stuff isn't that cheap for smaller runs, and you just can't win with the wants and needs of each person.

So I'm a little behind and am wondering if LRG has issued any kind of statement about how the releases they've signed will be affected by the ESRB rating change that is now in place. I know Caladrius Blaze was the last game that didn't need the rating on the box, but has there been any talk of how quantities for future games had to be increased or anything like that to offset the new expense that was likely not calculated into the original signing?

Very excited for that Windjammers release. That will be my first Limited Games Purchase :D

Curler said:

LRG is still a small company with a lot to loose. I've followed niche game-industry for a while, and business-wise there are just a lot of risks. Despite the... shipping short comings... I think there's a lot of cynicism considering pricing. This isn't someone like Atlus or even Capcom slapping on a higher price, cause reasons, it's still directly after ESRB feesn and extra stuff costs money.

Previously, people on here complained that LRG releases were "barebones" releases, and how they should compete more with the other limited print companies (some of which are gone).Now there's extra things like a manual etc put it, and that's not good either. Physical stuff isn't that cheap for smaller runs, and you just can't win with the wants and needs of each person.

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One thing they can't avoid are direct comparisons from their competitors. Look what Badland is offering with the $30 Axiom Verge PS4/Vita release (which is a $20 digital title, right?).

Shizuka said:

One thing they can't avoid are direct comparisons from their competitors. Look what Badland is offering with the $30 Axiom Verge PS4/Vita release (which is a $20 digital title, right?).

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They're also printing what seems like a tremendous amount more, which allows them to bring the price down per unit.

superNESjoe said:

They're also printing what seems like a tremendous amount more, which allows them to bring the price down per unit.

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A fair point, as they are offered by large retailers like Amazon and Gamestop. More made = more bulk discount = cheaper pricing.

superNESjoe said:

They're also printing what seems like a tremendous amount more, which allows them to bring the price down per unit.

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At the same time, they don't have the assurance of selling every single copy they print like LRG does.

Shizuka said:

At the same time, they don't have the assurance of selling every single copy they print like LRG does.

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They also aren't likely facing the same kind of risk LRG is. They're competitors, but it's clear as day they aren't the same. The situations between the two are just completely different.

Personnally I'm not as bothered by the price increase (I don't "like" it, but it can be explained) than I am by the fact the game is released in a singleton week.

But I saw a review of the game and it definitely seems fun.

Shizuka said:

So, this blew up on r/Vita today.

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Wow, can't believe how many of those comments are positive toward the op. 'All sales final' shouldn't be that hard to understand...

emb said:

Wow, can't believe how many of those comments are positive toward the op. 'All sales final' shouldn't be that hard to understand...

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They're also a small company. Maybe for an extra five or ten dollars a purchase they could allow refunds for grossly delayed products.

I only skimmed the first few dozen posts, but they aren't wrong. The guy should get his refund, and LRG could've handled that much better. Even with their refund ban policy, they could simply say "Certainly we can cancel and refund you, but we should warn you. Any customers that cancel orders are immediately and permanently banned". Making him work for the refund he's going to get, just lets the buyer make a post like this that'll blow up.

I am not having much luck with LRG's customer service myself.

If any game should allow for exceptions of the "all sales are final" rule it should be Skullgirls.

They should be offering refunds on Skullgirls to those who request them, it should never have escalated to the point where the rightly aggrieved feel obligated to cite consumer protection laws.

According to the LRG posts on that thread they were accepting cancellations up until last month. So to deny this person but claim it's because all sales are final is pretty scummy, because they quite clearly aren't.

Brian McDoogle said:

They're also a small company. Maybe for an extra five or ten dollars a purchase they could allow refunds for grossly delayed products.

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Prices go up in many companies for a variety of reasons. There's so many accusations that they are doing it "just cause".



I have to say I'm surprised that Skullgirls got so much flack and Summon Night 6.... did not. Both had pre-orders that opened up over a year ago, and both were supposed to be released at the beginning of the year but only recently came out recently. LRG had people mad for a long time over Skullgirls delays, but Summon Night? All I ever heard was "lol that's Working Designs, alright!" So what's the difference?

Shadio said:

According to the LRG posts on that thread they were accepting cancellations up until last month. So to deny this person but claim it's because all sales are final is pretty scummy, because they quite clearly aren't.

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I didn't even realize they were doing that, so yeah it makes it worse.

Curler said:

I have to say I'm surprised that Skullgirls got so much flack and Summon Night 6.... did not.

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When you order from Gaijinworks, a year delay is really the best case scenario.

ConanEdogawa said:

When you order from Gaijinworks, a year delay is really the best case scenario.

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Yeah people are conditioned to expect it from Gaijinworks, so the people that ordered Summon Night expected it (for the most part) and people who weren't ok with it didn't order it. It wasn't expected from LRG so here we are.

ConanEdogawa said:

When you order from Gaijinworks, a year delay is really the best case scenario.

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I guess it's more just me being "unreasonable" to believe that no matter WHO is doing it, it's something that is being developed still, where things can go wrong. Maybe it's because I back so many Kickstarters, that it's understandable that it csn be unreasonable to expect the "expected ship month" to be set in stone. (Sekai Project aside) delays can and do happen, including to big AAA games.

If anything, LRG's biggest problem is those working in their CS/fullfilment centers. Too many issues not being responded to, not resolved, and plenty of games incorrectly being shipped out. That indeed, is a problem.

ConanEdogawa said:

When you order from Gaijinworks, a year delay is really the best case scenario.

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IIRC I had a 2.5 year wait when I ordered Growlanser Generations. EB even forgot I preordered it, and soldout without setting aside a copy for me...

Shadio said:

According to the LRG posts on that thread they were accepting cancellations up until last month. So to deny this person but claim it's because all sales are final is pretty scummy, because they quite clearly aren't.

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i assume that it's the Vita version they ordered and that has been sent in for production now where as last month they were still waiting on builds

emb said:

Wow, can't believe how many of those comments are positive toward the op. 'All sales final' shouldn't be that hard to understand...

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I'm shocked too by the 'mob mentality' of that thread. Anyone who has been familar with LRG and those who run it would know 90% of those statements are pretty incorrect. That buyer is acting like a child.

DrazilKaj said:

I'm shocked too by the 'mob mentality' of that thread. Anyone who has been familar with LRG and those who run it would know 90% of those statements are pretty incorrect. That buyer is acting like a child.

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There were a TON of accusations and people that don't understand business etc. in plenty of those posts (it was also interesting reading the international business bits). There are plenty of companies that do bad business practices that people get called out on (Capcom, EA, etc.) but others? There's often a lot that people don't understand the basics of, and with a bad situation like that, can get dogpiles and what not happen. The CS on there was not good, but I am surprised about the whole "legal action" part of it. That's really jumping the gun on the situation. I have to say, I am surprised with the Vita version confirmed to be coming so soon, that only now was the request to cancel made. I'd say it would've been a more reasonable request months ago, when stuff was still hanging in the air, if someone really wanted a refund, but with PS4 copies already in hand, it IS coming.

They must be LRG noobs

ConanEdogawa said:

When you order from Gaijinworks, a year delay is really the best case scenario.

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Still doing those working delays i see. God bless vireland and his gigantic self sustaining closet of jrpgs.

That Reddit topic is damn cringeworthy, even if some remarks are reasonable. OP should probably have had a better CS response. But I definitely get a "gamergater" vibe from all this unfiltered self-entitled rage.
I guess that's part of business, having to deal with immature slobs.

Semoreh said:

But I definitely get a "gamergater" vibe from all this unfiltered self-entitled rage.
I guess that's part of business, having to deal with immature slobs.

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Nah that has nothing to do with it, I sometimes see similar emotional responses on there/here, as well.

I can't help but feel this pulsing vibe though. I haven't witnessed insultslinging spiteful people here, but maybe I'm naive ^^

Anyway, I shouldn't have brought this up.