Friday Facts #303 - Under 100 bugs (but still not stable)

[Antyradek]

It's quite sad you are losing players.
But which game doesn't?

I think adding more features should help. Like implementing natively a collection of most popular mods and shipping them with game.
So that they are not unbalanced, undocumented and map-destroying anymore, but rather work as official plugins.
Maybe add a special "advanced Factorio" mode for those, who get bored with normal gameplay and want a real challenge.

Another option would be to automatically download mods from connecting server without installing them (Minetest - an open-source Minecraft clone does exactly that and it works great). Minetest also can gather mods into collections, so you can have per-map mods.
This would solve problem with mostly-vanilla public servers.

[Jap2.0]

It's quite sad you are losing players.
But which game doesn't?

I think adding more features should help. Like implementing natively a collection of most popular mods and shipping them with game.
So that they are not unbalanced, undocumented and map-destroying anymore, but rather work as official plugins.
Maybe add a special "advanced Factorio" mode for those, who get bored with normal gameplay and want a real challenge.

Another option would be to automatically download mods from connecting server without installing them (Minetest - an open-source Minecraft clone does exactly that and it works great). Minetest also can gather mods into collections, so you can have per-map mods.
This would solve problem with mostly-vanilla public servers.

They're losing players since the launch of 0.17. There'll be another spike when .17 hits stable, then another when we get the 0.18 experimental, etc. Overall I don't think Factorio's losing players right now.

Including popular mods with the game has been shot down multiple times for various reasons.

Syncing mods with a server is already fairly painless - have you tried it?

[Gergely]

Last week, G2A started popping up on Google when I searched for games. Up until now I didn't know about their existence at all. All I knew about was from fff-145 an fff-171.

Now this.

It must be really, really, really bad if the developers themselves recommend pirating their game... which kind of makes sense because for some (likely dumb) reason these banks charge them for no fault of their own. Protect your credit card data people damnit!

[Ultros]

I do have one issue with the FFF though, in that people arbitraging the games across regions is being referred to as "regional fraud". This is pretty ridiculous, since it only stems from the store trying to sell the same digital product at different prices, effectively performing economic price discrimination.

Regional arbitrage is exactly how free markets should work, and there's no reason to be against such a system as a game developer or a gamer. It's the natural reaction (invisible hand) to the storefront manipulating the market.

[Impatient]

G2As business model is to profit from fraud. period.

[Impatient]

It's quite sad you are losing players.
...

I do not think they are losing players. I think each step in development sparks new interest. Players have a look at what is new or take a look if the bug, which bugged them got fixed or if a feature they longed for was finally implemented. It is natural. I think also press coverage sparks interest. As a reporter in a games magazine I would write articles ... when there is a new stable version or a new experimental version with new features. I really think the ups and downs are quite normal.

[Thorlord]

Even if you made 6600$ loss (330 games), you probably earned much more from the purchases there, since you seem to be unable to tell where your sales came from.

It doesn't work like that, when you get a charge-back there is a fee associated with it.
According to a quick google search,

Every dollar lost to charge-back fraud costs you an estimated $2.40.

https://www.verifi.com/in-the-news/much-chargeback-fee/

So 330 games, at $30, times 2.4. That's $23,760 in the red. Which means to break even from the cost of the fraudulent charges, they would need to sell 792 legitimate copies. For an small team, and an indie game, that could be significant. Imagine 1000 people playing your game and you didn't earn a single dollar from it. Not every chargeback is that amount, but you get the idea i hope.

So saying "Just pirate it instead of buying from G2A" means that they would rather have no sale, which costs them effectively nothing and lets them keep the profit from the other legitimate purchases, than for someone to buy a key from G2A, it being a fraudulent charge, and costing them several legitimate sales just to break even.

Not every key on G2A is purchased fraudulently, but if you are selling stolen Keys G2A is the fastest, safest, and most profitable way to do it efficiently and effectively. If I was a piece of shit trying to make money off stolen credit cards, buying keys and selling them on G2A would be a reliable way to turn those stolen cards into cash.

So to summarize: Discouraging people from buying games at a place that makes selling stolen goods easy and safe is honestly a good idea. Not just because it saves Game Developers money, but also because it de-legitimizes a marketplace that profits from theft and fraud.

[SWSe]

effectively performing economic price discrimination.

So what? That's a perfectly fine and reasonable thing to do. Students get discounts left and right where I come from. That is even listed in the article you linked. I hope I don't sound too agressive, but what IS the problem with that?

Obviously a difference is made between people. But not necessarily as discrimination, you may just as much see it as subsidizing a product for a weaker market. In order to minimize the fact that a specific part of the population is effectively discriminated against by having less money to spare due to where they were born. That's the only way to enable people in countries like russia to buy the game in a similar manner as "here".

But why should I be allowed the same privilege when I can perfectly well afford the full price of the game due to living in central Europe?

I agree that with many AAA games (especially ones that have microtransactions), pricing does seem unfair all the way. I don't think the concept of regional pricing is unfair in itself though. Factorio is imo worth it's full price and the devs even wanted it to have only one price worldwide, as you might know. They changed their mind when a large amount of players from certain regions were really upset about not being able to afford it, despite that not being a real problem for the average person in my location.

Either way, I'm pretty sure this "regional fraud" is also against the Steam Subscriber Agreement.

[Yijare]

Well... I expect that stable releases will not contain game breaking bugs. If you state that a release Is stable, I do not expect biters getting 10x stronger or global train crashing.

So from my point of view it does matter.

global train crash if you try to drive manually?

[Light]

Another reason for wanting to know when it's close to stable that Klonan seems to have missed is that updates often break mods which can completely halt the ability to play on a modded map.

Sure you can revert the version, but updates tend to break mods often enough that it's best to wait until being closer to stable so you know it won't be as likely to occur. Depending on the change it can take a while for authors to correct their mods, assuming they're even aware of the change in a timely manner.

If some form of notice was provided before a major mod affecting change is made then authors could deploy fixes right away without needing source access to achieve the same result. This is why Bob's mods are often patched within minutes of an update and people can keep playing with them without waiting, which given the size of his mod suite is very much a good thing.

That has been my minor frustration with 0.17 thus far with regards to the updates and I'm sure I'm not alone.

[Orum]

effectively performing economic price discrimination.

So what? That's a perfectly fine and reasonable thing to do. Students get discounts left and right where I come from. That is even listed in the article you linked. I hope I don't sound too agressive, but what IS the problem with that?

Let's pretend for a moment that no keys sold on G2A (or any other reseller) were purchased via stolen CC#s. Would Wube, or any other developer, still have a problem with them for their arbitrage alone?

I can only speculate, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did; otherwise, why do any price discrimination in the first place (or label it as regional fraud)? If their problem is solely with stolen CC#s, I think we can all agree that that's deplorable. But, as it seems they're trying to paint all resellers with a wide brush, and using fraud as the paint, that's a little shady considering there are ulterior motives at play.

[Optera]

I bought Factorio through steam and upgraded it to steam free with a few clicks.
If only every developer/publisher could be as customer friendly as Wube. *caugh* epic exlusive other factory building game *caugh*

[golfmiketango]

Dear Wube Software,

I probably speak for plenty of people here in saying that you guys are much nicer to your customers than the other game companies.

Can you please just take over the entire games industry while maintaining your current customer relations, ethics, QA and product quality standards? TIA.

Eagerly awaiting your horizontal integration,

-gmt

P.S.: forum moderators please feel free to move this post to bug or feature request forum as considered appropriate

[Bilka]

If some form of notice was provided before a major mod affecting change is made then authors could deploy fixes right away without needing source access to achieve the same result. This is why Bob's mods are often patched within minutes of an update and people can keep playing with them without waiting, which given the size of his mod suite is very much a good thing.

That has been my minor frustration with 0.17 thus far with regards to the updates and I'm sure I'm not alone.

We have that already: 70603. Bob is just more dedicated to updating his mods immediately when they break.

[Light]

If some form of notice was provided before a major mod affecting change is made then authors could deploy fixes right away without needing source access to achieve the same result. This is why Bob's mods are often patched within minutes of an update and people can keep playing with them without waiting, which given the size of his mod suite is very much a good thing.

That has been my minor frustration with 0.17 thus far with regards to the updates and I'm sure I'm not alone.

We have that already: 70603. Bob is just more dedicated to updating his mods immediately when they break.

I stand corrected. I was under the impression that Bob having source access (and thus knowledge of what's to come) is why he was able to so readily adapt his mods while the rest got surprised in an update.

Thanks for letting me know.

[BlueTemplar]

It's quite sad you are losing players.
But which game doesn't?

Looking at peaks, that would indicate an half-life of 16 weeks for 0.17 experimental.
Which actually sounded a pretty slow loss to me, being used to indie titles, and looking at games similar to Factorio (in peak concurrent players ever) confirmed it :
Factorio 0.15 : 11 weeks
Factorio on Steam : 10 weeks
(Factorio is getting more steady !)
Rimworld stable release : 7 weeks
Planet Coaster : 3 weeks
AdVenture Capitalist : 19 weeks (early numbers not available though)
Dawn of Man : 1.5 weeks
Surviving Mars : 1 week
They are Billions (Early Access) : 3 weeks
Age of Empires II: HD Edition : could not really apply methodology, too many small peaks, overall steady and growing
Mordhau : 4 weeks

A funny thing I noted is these games I surveyed, is that pretty often when concurrent top weekly players drops to half the peak, there's something shortly after that creates another peak ! (Developers feeling the heat ? Steam discount practices ?)

[BlueTemplar]

It doesn't work like that, when you get a charge-back there is a fee associated with it.
According to a quick google search,

Every dollar lost to charge-back fraud costs you an estimated $2.40.

https://www.verifi.com/in-the-news/much-chargeback-fee/

Oh right, I missed that because I confused the chargeback ($20), with the price of Factorio at the time ($20).
So that effectively doubles it to 20% of games sold via website worth !!
(And not counting time spent dealing with this issue, which might be significant too for small sale amounts like this !)

[exi2163]

Even if you made 6600$ loss (330 games), you probably earned much more from the purchases there, since you seem to be unable to tell where your sales came from.

It doesn't work like that, when you get a charge-back there is a fee associated with it.
According to a quick google search,

Every dollar lost to charge-back fraud costs you an estimated $2.40.

https://www.verifi.com/in-the-news/much-chargeback-fee/

So 330 games, at $30, times 2.4. That's $23,760 in the red.
...

If your card details are stolen it is not charge-back fraud. It is fraud if you revoke a transaction because you dont like the color of the item but dont want to go through the hassle of sending it back. Charge-back was always meant to protect the customer so the use of credit cards got more accepted. The system was never designed with fraudulent customers in mind so they never saw a need to protect the dealer.
The loss is not the 30$ for the game - if the key is revoked, the goods are returned. It is really just the charge-back fee from the credit card issuer which was ment as a deterrent for the dealer to not commit fraud on the customer. The loss is the customer's satisfaction because he cannot play a game he actually has paid for.

Charge-back fees for stolen credit cards should be way less but i dont think the cc companys have any incentive to change that so the only good way seems to be to use a payment processor which protects the dealer from fraud.

In the public opinion G2A is already a burnt cow. With companys like STEAM, EPIC, EA and Ubisoft just doing what the hell they want i dont think it seems viable for G2A to even try hard to become a clean platform because they have no support for beeing such thing. After all, G2A is just a platform for key sellers much like ebay and they earn money by processing transactions - exactly like the credit card companys
Also chinese companys (G2A) seem to have a problem to adapt to western standards fast enough. I'm very interested in how the story about those chargebacks continues.

[Dawid]

Regarding the G2A issue, I think people buy Factorio Europe to sell there in Poland as Factorio in Poland it's sold for 70 PLN (Steam), which is under 20$ according to both SteamDB and Google, whereas it should be sold for 110 PLN for the price to be around 30$ (28.98$ according to Google). I have just checked and the prices on G2A for Europe Gift start with 79 PLN.

Edit: This makes it even more plausible given that G2A was established in Poland and is very popular here.

Let me correct you about it, because you're completely wrong, as well as give some input on how gifting works now.
You see, in 2017, Valve changed Steam's gift policy and now you can't send gifts between regions. Well, you can, but you can only to that if the price difference between regions is not more than 12%, and difference between 70 and 110 is like 50% or the game has no price/is not available in your region at all, so that's not how it works.
So while people could've bought gifts in 2016 (because since 2017, you can't store gifts in your inventory and you can only have gifts that are either allowed by purchase like Divinity: Original Sin 2-pack or purchased before 2017), they can't buy and store them now. Sure, there could be speculative buyers, but they would have to know in 2016 that there would be price increase.

So now that we know Regional fraud mentioned in the article is out of the question, because steam did changes to prevent that, other way is card farmers. You know, those people who have tens or hundreds of accounts dropping them cards and selling them on the market, or selling CS:GO items (because you can't put items from PUBG on the marketplace anymore). When they sell it cheaper, they still make money on that, because there is no other way to take your money out of steam.

[someone1337]

I do have one issue with the FFF though, in that people arbitraging the games across regions is being referred to as "regional fraud". This is pretty ridiculous, since it only stems from the store trying to sell the same digital product at different prices, effectively performing economic price discrimination.

Regional arbitrage is exactly how free markets should work, and there's no reason to be against such a system as a game developer or a gamer. It's the natural reaction (invisible hand) to the storefront manipulating the market.

This requires geofencing to work, which is another highly problematic idea.

You cannot sell digital goods for diffrent prices as it makes no sense...

or do you have diffrent logistic problems to solve, if you sell a key in the us or in europe, or somewhere else? I dont think so.