Yeah, I took your question seriously. I guess we’ve both seen the videos in question. One where the mention of keeping the lights on and other things were brought up and one where when the same topic was touched on a look of dissatisfied exasperation was involuntarily flashed and the word “yeah…” was uttered. Not a lot to go on all things considered - and like I say, I suppose it could be taken any of several ways. I got the impression they were dissatisfied and somewhat exasperated by the efficacy of the current system though. Combine that with the fact that they recently entered into a new financial partnership and I came to the conclusion I did.
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To see my 100+ creations being sold for less than half their value by a scalper site would be figuratively distressing. If Funcom had simply moved into content curation via their own store, we might’ve avoided all this. And I still say the DLCs should be broken into two paks for $10 each or $18 for both.
Andy says it in the Amsterdam stream. I think your one and only Firespark covers the subject in his “Bazaar Prices” vid and has a good snippet of it. Pretty sure that’s where I saw it.
ETA: My bad, it was his Battle Pass Revealed vid.
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But it’s predatory. There’s a running time during which you can buy the item. And a lot of people won’t know it’s going to be on sale again. That’s predatory, and he explained it well in the video…
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by definition it is not and a video in which it is misinterpreted does not change that, it just says something about the quality of the video content 
or the purpose of the video. generating clicks
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Sorry I can’t agree, its based on his opinion and emotion.
Not saying my opinion is a right but I base mine on my experience and research:
Predatory monetization schemes (e.g., ‘loot boxes’) in video games are purchasing systems that disguise or withhold the long-term cost of the activity until players are already financially and psychologically committed. Such schemes contribute to the increasing similarity of gaming and gambling and the potential for financial harm for those with Internet gaming disorder.
Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325479259_Predatory_monetization_features_in_video_games_eg_‘loot_boxes’_and_Internet_gaming_disorder
Predatory monetization schemes in video games are purchasing systems that disguise or withhold the long-term cost of the activity until players are already financially and psychologically committed. Such schemes contribute to the increasing similarity of gaming and gambling and the potential for financial harm for those with Internet gaming disorder.
Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/add.14286
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Andy made a $10-ish statement in the twitch stream for the BP. All the store items are going with the idea that $10=1000 cc and seeing what they have posted in the store that has cc pricing on it. Now the disclaimer on the store is that FC employees have repeatedly said the store item prices are not firm.
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doubt it. We would get complaints about how FC is forcing all of us to use their in game currency and it’s a underhanded evil tactic to have it that way. BTW, I believe this is the only way you can get sign off from Sony and MS on consoles because Sony has repeatedly stopped companies from directly monetizing via game linkages. They want their cut so you get directed to buying in-game currency at the console store.
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Totally agree. I think nearly $20 for a dinner table and it’s fixings are a bit much but if there are buyers out there, more power to them. The can digitally eat, drink, and be merry and it won’t affect me at all that I can’t also partake with that cost. But here is the thing, if they go on sale (because that is what you do when you don’t get significant purchases at the desired cost) then we can see what happens. The time that the company and team put on that table is a factor that needs to be recouped. If people aren’t willing to pay $18, then what about 10? 5? So it goes on a sale.
He explains it puts an unreal psychological pressure on the consumer to think they have to hurry and buy something…no different that a labor day sale at best buy or a steam week sale of 75% off. Are all of these also predatory? I mean if the concept of limited time sale of an item is a predatory tactic, then surely limited time changes to pricing is also predatory and therefore the whole dang economic system is just freaking evil and we have to overthrow the bourgeoisie!..sorry got carried away with the logical progression of the predatory store tactics 
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Clearly you have missed the point there, because you quite literally just described catering to the whales while attempting to claim that they are not. 
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Well, I finally watched the video. There are a few things I find wrong with the video, but let’s talk about this “predatory” thing, because I’m a little irritated by the insistence on a narrow definition of “predatory monetization” from King & Delfabbro paper.
Let’s get that out of the way first: yes, there’s a paper that introduced the definition of “predatory monetization”, and yes, most discussion nowadays tend to adopt that specific definition from that specific paper. I have no beef with that, or the paper itself.
What I do not like is the apparent insistence that we can’t use the word “predatory” to describe marketing strategies that don’t conform to that specific term. It might not be “predatory monetization”, but it might still be predatory behavior.
With that out of the way: is what we’ve seen of BLB predatory monetization or not? No, it’s not. Could it be considered predatory advertising? Depends.
One of the characteristics of predatory advertising is the lack of information or clarity about the transaction and/or the product. And that brings us back to those much maligned timers. If Funcom doesn’t make it clear enough to the customers that the timers are – allegedly – just to keep the shop UI uncluttered and that the items will be back, then the customers will misinterpret the timers and there will be a false sense of urgency.
But you know what? Quibbling about whether this is “predatory monetization” or “predatory advertisement” or something else is silly. Such pedantry only serves to distract from the fact that those timers are there to instill a sense of urgency and make people want to buy now, rather than later. I don’t care if you want to call that “predatory” or “shady” or a “dark pattern”. Whatever you call it, there’s no doubt it leave a bad taste in most mouths.
And I’m usually not the one to cast doubt on Funcom’s official words, but this idea that I keep hearing about how “timers are there so the shop looks better” (because they don’t have enough items to make categories or whatever) is downright absurd. I don’t know if they actually said that or it’s someone’s misunderstanding. I’m also not even going to speculate whether Funcom designers really believe that or not, because it doesn’t matter: even if they said it and believe it, Funcom shouldn’t put a minor aesthetic detail of their shop above the ethics of how they treat their customers.
The timers are my biggest beef with BLB, but not the only one. Prices are the close second.
Let me start by saying that I completely disagree with @Firespark81 on that one. First of all, Funcom didn’t set a “standard” with their DLCs, they set up an expectation, and that’s an important distinction. More importantly, the expectation of “how many items you should get for X dollars” is a huge misconception. It’s understandable, but it’s wrong.
DLC sales – and other monetization strategies – are simply ways of generating additional revenue to keep paying for ongoing development. Before someone gets pedantic, I’m not saying they’re not out to make a profit, too. Funcom is a for-profit company and, as such, they’re not aiming to simply cover the costs. They needed to generate profit back when they were selling DLCs, too, so it’s a moot point.
At any rate, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the base game sales simply don’t generate enough revenue, and that’s why Funcom started selling DLCs, and that’s also why Funcom is now introducing the BP and BLB.
Ongoing development costs money.
This is the biggest reason why “100 items are worth $10, therefore $20 should buy me 200 items” is the wrong model. It’s not the only reason, but let’s finish exploring this one first.
To define their monetization strategy, Funcom needs to answer the following question: How much money do we need to achieve our goals (e.g. offering a substantial amount of new content, like sorcery, for all players who bought just the base game) and how do we structure the prices of the things we can offer for sale to get that money? You’ll notice that there’s nothing in that question that translates to “How much money is 1 item worth?”
If the wording of that question sounds too stuffy, read it the following way: What would players be willing to pay for different bundles of extra, optional content? Or, alternately: How do we make bundles of extra, optional content that our players would pay enough money for so that we can achieve our goals?
So no, right from the outset, “100 items for $10” is wrong, on a conceptual level. But it’s also wrong on another level: not every item is “worth” the same to every player. Some players like the building pieces more. Others prefer the decorations. Others are into armor and weapons. But most players have their own unique structure of values they place on different items. Ask a player which DLCs they would recommend buying, and they’ll first ask you what kind of things you’re looking for and then tell you something along the lines of “personally, Argossean is the best all around, Turanian has some nice pieces and decorations, Aquilonian is nice but it’s only good for decorations if you already have Argossean, Khitan DLC is worth it for the decorations, but the building pieces aren’t that pretty”, and so on. (That was just an example, not necessarily my opinion.)
Long story short, expecting a certain number of pieces for a certain sum of money is a counterproductive oversimplification.
However, that doesn’t mean we can’t reason about potential prices at all. And that’s where I’m unhappy with the current figures, and why I’m hoping they’re only placeholders.
Even though “100 pieces for $10” is the wrong mental model, “1 banner for $5” is a highway robbery. We’re not talking about quantity over quality here, we’re talking about a single item costing half of what a well-rounded variety of content used to cost. There are more things like that in the screenshots I’ve seen.
I personally don’t mind paying $7 for “just” a building set, because building pieces and decorations were always my primary motivation for buying DLCs. There are others who will value other things more, and that’s fine, they won’t buy that pack, they’ll buy something else that is reasonably priced according to their definition of “reasonably priced”. But I seriously doubt that there are many players that will find just one item worth $5 or even $2.
Even if we recall the explanation that certain BP-gated items will also be offered on sale in BLB for those who can’t or don’t want to jump through all BP hoops, some of these prices look way too high.
All in all, between certain overpriced items and the FOMO-inducing timers, things are looking somewhat disheartening to me, and I really hope that we either misunderstood Funcom, or that they’ll listen to feedback and adjust some things.
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I think its obvious they were. Which is why they kept doing it, and why DLC like that is popular across games. Then they Stoped and took a Break as Tencent stepped in, gave them Monitzation Expert. And pushed out a way to make EVEN More money.
Those DLC work, its just not best way to make a money with BP/Season out there.
I 100% Doubt Funcom wouldve kept lights on, and kept pushing out those DLC if they didn’t make money. ANd I doubt even more they’d pick up rights to Conan with out those DLC working.
And I doubt Tecent wouldv’e bought funcom if they hadn’t been making money for 3 years…
I agree with alot of this, although 10$ for a dlc these days, is very charitable. The last point though, they dont necessarily have to be profitable, they just have to have something someone can see very proffitable in the future. Lets think real estate now, the average person would look at a run down house and say, yeah f that, not even worth the land under it… a trained eye will say… wow i all have to do is this, run this like that use these products and BAM almost instant 40,000 in my pocket.
EDIT: Also without looking, what ive seen mostly is tencent buying games past their prime. I just hope they dont go p2w under them.
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I don’t think either of those is “obvious”.
I don’t know if there even exists a way to get some hard data on how Conan Exiles (not Funcom, just Conan Exiles) is performing money-wise, but I’m willing to bet that most of us, if not all of us posting here don’t have that data. We’re all just speculating.
Counterpoint 1: Funcom is a for-profit company. As such, it’s not enough for them to merely cover the costs of “keeping the lights on”, they have to generate profit. So this whole thing isn’t black and white, it’s not “either they’re making money or not”. There are shades of grey in between and a monetization strategy change does not automatically mean that “greedy Tencent stepped in and asked for more money”.
Counterpoint 2: Conan Exiles was released 4 years ago. Over those 4 years, the price of a cosmetic DLC hasn’t changed. Do you think the costs of “keeping the lights on” also stayed the same?
Counterpoint 3: Even the costs of “keeping the lights” on aren’t as simple as you paint them. You have to match the revenue to the goals. If the goal is “implement sorcery and make it available to anyone who bought just the base game”, then you need revenue to match that goal. If DLCs don’t provide enough of that revenue, you have to try something different.
Counterpoint 4: Speaking of goals, it’s perfectly reasonable for those to shift. I have no doubt that Funcom keeps a finger on the pulse of Conan Exiles, and that they realized that they need to step up the production of new content (not just DLCs, but new game mechanics too) to keep the players interested. And, as we’ve seen already, new content costs money.
Counterpoint 5: Did you notice they got rid of a bunch of servers? Do you really think that the existing revenue allows them to “keep the lights on” comfortably and the only reason for Funcom to make an exception in their “no wipes on officials, ever” policy is pure greed?
Personally, I doubt that the DLCs “work”. They’ve been underpriced pretty much from the beginning, but that doesn’t mean that Funcom could just double or triple the DLC prices in the future. I would gladly pay $20 for each of the cosmetic DLCs I bought for $10, but I’m not naive enough to think that everyone would greet a 100% price hike with same equanimity.
I mean, just look at the reactions already: “I better be getting 200 pieces for $18”.
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Right. Plus, literally everything that can be bought is only available at any given price for a certain time.
I mean we have to take some personal responsibility here. When I was a kid guys would come to my small town for a couple of weeks at a time selling Persian carpets. Signs everywhere, like “closing down sale!” “one week only!” you know what I’m talking about. They’d come up people and try to get them to buy a carpet. Did people freak out and accuse the Persian carpet guys of bullying them into buying something with predatory business tactics, weeping as they handed over their money and carried their carpet away? No. They either bought a carpet or said “nice try, mate.”
Although this is also true 
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EDIT: i didnt read the original quote, predatory is a stretch id agree… right? Maybe not
Yes I think predatory is a stretch. If we cry predatory at the most commonly used and ancient of business tactics, how are we going to point out actual predatory tactics, like capitalising on addictions or targeting minors?
True. But I think it’s on us to not be suckers. We can’t reasonably expect businesses not to business.
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Re: Compare DLC and Battle Pass.
This one objects.
The DLC and the Shop are the same in principle. Direct exchange of funds for cosmetics.
The Battle Pass is an exchange of funds for the opportunity to do banal make work to “earn” cosmetics, consumables, and in game currency.
If one is to not engage in the drudgery and instead wishes to purchase the full battle pass outright it quickly will leave the realm of being cost equivalent to previous DLCs, we don’t know how much extra it will cost yet, but this one will be extremely surprised if it doesn’t at least quintuple the cost of the previous DLCs to simply buy the items from the pass outright.
Even if we overlook the cost and only look at the projected time, quoted at two hours a week over 13 weeks…
A single hour of this one’s time at friends and family consulting rate is worth several times more than the prior cost of a DLC.
26 hours at the minimum wage in this one’s municipality would Purchase the Game, Siptah, and the lion’s share of DLCs en masse.
Let’s keep the comparison between direct transactions.
Because just buying the Pass without also paying time gets one nothing.
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Well, it’s actually impossible for them to be “catering to whales”. Because part of the definition of a whale includes something like “a very powerful player” and everything in the store is cosmetic. So maybe we should use the term “Queen” instead of “whale”?
But OK, even if they are “catering to Queens” and I seriously doubt they are, what’s the problem with that? Who gives a shirt? I don’t but I’m not one of those woke SJWs either. Even under @CodeMage 's worst definition of the word I just couldn’t care less!
FC isn’t ripping anyone off. The exchange is clearly printed on the screen! You get “This Item” for “This Many CC” and 1CC = $x.xx So I just can’t see how it’s anyone’s but the player’s fault if they spend “too much” -whatever the F “too much” means. That’s totally on them - 100%. On top of that WTF, who appointed you (meaning anyone else at all) the proprietor of other people’s bank accounts or their spending habits? I’d be like, GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WALLET!!! It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to!
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