Most players in Turkey want special pricing for LFS s3. The high exchange rate of Euro and Dollar puts the players in serious trouble. A lot of players say they can't buy s3 on Turkish forums. If you get your hands on this, a lot of players from Turkey will switch to s3. Turks are impatiently waiting for the full version to come. For players in Turkey, please make a pricing at a low exchange rate, this will be beneficial for both the LFS Platform and the players in Turkey.

Hello dear LFS producers, because of the exchange rates in Turkey, the game is very expensive in Turkey and at a level that most players cannot afford. If you make a pricing for Turkey, a lot of people will buy s3 and this means an increase in players.

I agree, at least it makes sense to make a local pricing not only for Turkey but also for other countries with bad economy and there is a possibility that more players will come.

There is already a local pricing system in place... So it is 50% off for Turkey already for example. Similar discounts are in place for other countries. The problem is it still needs to do economically sense and after all the Devs need to pay their bills in Pound Sterling.

The discussion is not new either... if you search for forum threads you will find a couple and on the Live for Speed discord it also pops up regularily.

Indeed, it's not a simple question of "why don't you make it cheaper".

While the turkish economy is in ruins (thanks to one of the worst rulers of probably not only the recent history), devs are already going towards people from the poorer countries.

Yes, your currency is in bad shape, yes, some in Turkey cannot afford food. But devs need to eat as well. And also pay the bills not only for themselves, but also for running the online services of LFS.

LFSTech:

Hello,

We are aware that LFS seems very expensive in Turkey and we do already
give Turkish racers the cheapest rate of our available price bands.
Because we are a very small company we cannot have a whole range of
different prices on offer as some other companies may do. We do not earn
a lot and we need to be able to live on what we do earn.

We provide a fairly extensive, time unlimited, free demo so that
everyone can enjoy LFS. We also have the option to upgrade to S3 in
stages so you can spread the cost. You can even add small amounts of
credit to your user account over time until you have enough.

I know this was not what you wanted to hear but thank you for your
understanding.

You are already paying 50% less than the base price for an LFS license in Turkey.

This means the developers are willing to compromise their return (in GBP) so that you are able to enjoy the game at a lower price (in TL).

Remember, companies are not required to lower their prices for other economies, this is a choice they have made so that you can enjoy their product for less.

I'm sorry to see how the economic situation continues to worsen in Turkey, and I sympathise, but expecting the price of LFS to reduce further in Turkey is unreasonable.

I know you want to buy the game and support the makers. But unfortunately your leader doesn't allow it, not LFS manufacturers. Thanks to them, they apply a 50% discount price.
You can end the game unanimously

Quote from mbutcher :

You are already paying 50% less than the base price for an LFS license in Turkey.

expecting the price of LFS to reduce further in Turkey is unreasonable.

Allow me to reiterate some economy 101 basics. Firstly. An ideal sale price is exactly as much as each individual customer is willing to pay at most. The next best option is to sell basically the same product with minor differentiation at different price points. Finally, you can tweak the price point until the total net sales reaches the maximum. Secondly. It costs nothing to produce a digital copy, so there is no such sale price at which you'll be sustaining losses through grossing less than your expenditure. This means each copy you didn't sell is a bit of money you didn't earn, no matter how little. Unless you're at the point where for most people the price isn't the deciding factor in getting the product, you'll be actually sustaining missed income losses for not lowering the price, through underselling. Thirdly. UK household disposable income is about 25 000£ while in Turkey that's more like 2 500£, even with 50% discount it's still 5x more expensive for a Turkey citizen to buy LFS than for a UK citizen. And considering a videogame is a very frivolous luxury purchase, this makes it a a lot more than 5x harder sell to a Turkey citizen.

But you don't have to take my word for it - just look at Steam regional prices. Basically every publisher that's not out of their mind* sets Turkish regional prices to 80-90% discount from British prices.

*Not to be taken as a jab at LFS team - average person isn't expected to have economy higher education and know any of this. But when you have a whole department of economy majors and PhDs and you decide that you know better, that makes you certifiably crazy.

Quote from raidho36 :

Thirdly. UK household disposable income is about 25 000£

That is an average and believe me, in the UK many live below the bread line. Without overtime i am lucky if i get 12.000£ a year. While its a lot more than the avg household income in turkey, you should know that averages does not account for every individual.

Quote from bishtop :

That is an average and believe me, in the UK many live below the bread line. Without overtime i am lucky if i get 12.000£ a year. While its a lot more than the avg household income in turkey, you should know that averages does not account for every individual.

And 2 500£ is average in Turkey, with median being far less. The point stands unshaken.

Adding to my previous post. Here's a chart that illustrates pricing vs sales vs profits of digital goods. It's a gross simplification and doesn't do any justice to humans purchase psychology, but it clears up certain ideas. If you sell at a price point that's too steep for your audience, you make less total profit than if you sold it for a more agreeable price. Of course demand isn't infinite and at some point you reach a limit of how many units you could move even if you gave them away for free, so care need to be exercised not to price the product too cheaply.

It is a nice plot, but isn't the label "income" for the green curve more appropriate? You still have to deduct the running costs (probably with fixed, scalable and periodic terms), taxes etc., or am I wrong? If that is the case, "profit" is rather deceiving.

Quote from TFalke55 :

It is a nice plot, but isn't the label "income" for the green curve more appropriate? You still have to deduct the running costs (probably with fixed, scalable and periodic terms), taxes etc., or am I wrong? If that is the case, "profit" is rather deceiving.

Net income (gross income minus expenses of producing & shipping the copies which is virtually nil) would be more appropriate yes.

Counter-intuitively, company running costs are unrelated to company income - you must minimize one and maximize the other independently. Uniquely to digital goods where once produced, the supply of copies is virtually infinite and free, you can't scale down production of copies to improve the price to cost ratio. Also uniquely to digital goods, there is no penalty for setting the price at arbitrarily low points, as long as that moves additional units. Of note here that increasing sale price in budgeting for various things such as "future development costs" only reduces your net income. Also of note here is the sunk cost recouping, trying to allocate purchase money for something you've already paid for in full, such as "past development costs" - this is fallacious in addition to reducing your net income. As I said, company income and company running costs are separate and independent. Like a lot of science, this is counter-intuitive so when making decisions on such matter you must exercise 100% of your conscious ability and disregard intuitive & common sense thoughts entirely.

Just a quick note that we don't just send a digital copy that costs nothing and say good bye. We sell a one-off lifetime license for a service and continual updates that may last for years or decades.

You seem to be lecturing as if you know everything, but the principles your 'science' is based on aren't applicable to the situation in question.

People in Turkey who use LFS have bought a computer, so we believe they can buy a half-price LFS license which is a small fraction of the cost of a computer. I believe in some of these countries it's more that a lot of people don't think that software is something that should cost anything. But I don't know of many things where a single one-off payment that is the price of a quarter of a tank of fuel, can buy you a lifetime's service. It's all very well saying, times are hard in Turkey and they need to buy food. Well, LFS developers also need to buy food! And if it's Erdogan's fault, which it probably is, then voters need to take some responsibility for voting terrible 'leaders' into power. I'm not going to say much about politics but these awful nationalist leaders that have been voted into power in various countries, aren't really doing much good! It's certainly not LFS developers' fault!

Quote from Scawen :

You seem to be lecturing as if you know everything, but the principles your 'science' is based on aren't applicable to the situation in question.

Economy wasn't my university major but I studied quite a bit of it - I do understand the basics.

I'm just explaining how to make more money AND make more customers happy in doing so. Feel free to ignore all of that. But like I said, do take a look at Steam regional pricings - surely these people know what they're doing, maybe it'd be beneficial if you followed suit.

One point I'd like to make is that the study of economics is hugely, fatally flawed. I'm talking generally now, not about LFS. Classical economists simplify a problem down to a few things, so simple that it has no relation to the original subject. Then they do some questionable mathematics based on that, then apply it back to the original situation that is no longer applicable. The result: DISASTER! And to be quite specific, these classical economists who think that "economic growth" is always a good thing. This is based on the assumption that humans are a tiny force, on a planet of infinite size, which can accept any amount of pollution we throw at it and can provide infinite resources. It's complete rubbish, but this is still the mainstream economics that informs most economists, politicians, press organisations and the general public.

Economists have a lot to answer for, including the destruction of the natural world that supports all life as we know it. But they aren't answering. It's too complicated to face reality.

Anyway, that's really off topic, other than the point that to be knowledgeable about economics makes me think that someone is more brainwashed, and less informed than someone who has not studied economics.

Back on topic, copying Steam isn't necessarily the best approach. I believe their sales models are more 'classical' as in, sell as many units as possible, milk that cow as much as you can, then release Version 2 of the game, and milk that cow again. It's not related to the LFS model where people give us a tiny payment and we provide them free updates and support for the life of the product. It's different.

Study of economics is flawed in the same way as Newtonian physics is: if you aim for the stars using nothing but textbook equations and neglect to make course corrections in assuming it was perfect to begin with, you'll be terribly off mark. That said, Newtonian physics is still better than Aristotelian physics, or no physics at all.

Whether the intention is to milk first time customers or build an audience, is on per-game basis. However, most games share the same regional pricing either way. Take a look at that of Factorio, a known long-standing indie game: https://steamdb.info/app/427520/ or Skyrim, a long standing AAA game: https://steamdb.info/app/72850/

To compare Classical Economics to Newtonian Mechanics is absolute nonsense.

Newtonian Mechanics is not perfect but is astoundingly, incredibly, accurate for millions of mechanical objects. It describes in minute detail the world as we see it, and beyond, from tiny scales to huge. Predictions are confirmed by real measurements.

Classical Economics on the other hand is a gross oversimplification of the set of all transactions, that bears no relation to the subject it claims to represent, totally fails to predict outcomes and is a complete load of rubbish that should be discarded immediately.

That's not wrong and I can't say I disagree. Fundamentally, economics is governed by human psychology, and humans don't always follow basic logic and reason, nevermind rigid equations. That said, it still explains well the bulk of the bell curve of possible behaviors, and has a respectable predictive power provided you have exhaustive data for it. The A/B test being one of the most widely known and effective probing tools, and there are many ways to obtain the relevant data. The same way as Newtonian physics is really good if you know coefficients of friction, the gravitational constant, viscosity values, and so forth, but if not - it's nigh worthless.

Back on topic, I think this thing about LFS appearing unaffordable to people who *can* afford to buy a computer - I'm simply not convinced. From our point of view we are providing a service for many years, it's not just a download of some software we've released and have moved on (that traditional game development model). We are contacted by people every day and are constantly working, helping people and developing future updates. We are spending a lot of money on servers as part of the service.

I think from the buyer's point of view (in lower income countries) it may be convenient to say, "OK this £18 they want for S3 - I may use this thing from time to time for about 10 years, OK that's £1.80 a year". I am convinced that people who own a computer and an internet connection, cannot truly think that £1.80 is too much money to pay for a year's entertainment.

The way I see it, this is less of an argument and more of a rationalization.

At the end of the day, if you insist that people who can only pay 3£ must pay 18£, that's 3£ you never gonna see, nevermind the 18£.

If you can't afford LFS, maybe it's not a priority and you should save for more important things other than racing games?

do Intel and AMD lower their cpu prices in Turkey ? Is there some special discount from Nvidia and AMD to sell their graphic boards overthere ?

Looks like arguing that Ferrari or Tesla shall reduce the cost of their vehicles by 80-90% because when in some countries around the world people there cannot afford an F12 at 400k€ or a Model S at 100k€ ... The production cost remain the same for the company ... and in the end if no-one has the money to buy it, just do not sell the thing there ... I think the devs already made a great gesture by reducing by 50% the price of their software in some part of the world, and as usual, for some it is never enough !

Yes, everyone knows the argument that selling something very cheap will increase the number of sales. Give it for free, you will have even more consumers ... of course ... Why not paying them to use your product ? it will bring even more people . Keep in mind as Scawen is saying, that here you are having very few people involved in keeping the product alive, the project is not ended and their aim is not to just sell more licences without having anything to do anymore with the product.
The great AC from Knuos is a good example : it can be found very cheap nowadays, but the counterpart is you have to deal with the actual content whatever the bugs there are inside, and nothing more forever from the dev team ... but, is it serious to compare the sales of LFS and AC ?

I may be to much of old school generation, but back in the days we saved some money if possible.

After a while we had enough to buy something we wanted, nowadays people buy anything on rent.

In my opinion it is more than fair to have already a chance to get LFS cheaper in many countries.

And my opinion on how the devs handle this is easy, keep it as it is. From economical side, may be

only my point of view, for sure its better to sell an LFS licence in 1 or 2 years ( or whenever)

for the current price than sell it now for just half of it or even less. This will never end ,

I guess. Some people will keep on asking to get it cheaper for all time once it gets to start.

I've been playing this game for 10 years now I want to buy a s3 but our damn economy money is so worthless
Please make 10 dollars only for Turkish players
be sure thousands of players will give 10 dollars and buy s3
10 dollars 18 pounds shouldn't be a big difference for you rich countries