‘Why is our game worth less than a Nickelback poster?’: Dev rebutes pricing criticism

The studio behind a newly-released Early Access game has responded to players’ suggestions that the title is priced too steeply.

Brigador released on Steam after five years of development by indie studio Stellar Jockeys, priced at $20 (£15).

However, several players felt that the game didn’t earn its price tag, and took to the game’s Steam forum page to complain.

“Change the price man, $20 is too much,” suggested user SIDWULF. “$15 is perfect for this game.”

“£10 sounds about right, it’s a work in progress and as talented as the devs are, as quality as the product is (or will be), people will pay what they think it’s worth,” responded another user, Rootseven.

In response to the grumbles, the developers issued a lengthy rebuttal, breaking down the costs of development over a five year period, as well as offering a list of items that cost more than Brigador – including a toilet plunger, pair of Calvin Klein underpants, fruitcake and, most damningly, a poster for much-maligned rock band Nickelback.

“It’s bad enough there’s a Nickelback poster worth more than the game we’ve spent the last five years building, worse still to have people come along and announce that in fact our game is only worth about as much as this other more common Nickelback poster,” the studio wrote. “I hope you can understand the frustration this inspires.

It added: “We’re not asking for pity or charity, nor are we saying you should buy a game just because people worked hard on it— it’s possible to struggle valiantly and still make poo. But quality, depth, innovation all require time, and projects of this scope demand full-time work.

“We wrote an engine from scratch so that we could create fully destructible environments and still have good control over performance. Iterating on design, creating something even only partially new takes a tremendous amount of time, and if people are unwilling to pay a price commensurate with the labour involved in creating games like this then fewer people will take those risks, and many of the ones who do will get starved out the industry.

“At the end of the day we all have to eat. So yeah, we think it’s worth $20. Hope that clears things up.” 

Read the full post on Brigador’s Steam forums