I hesitate to post here, as my Posts usually end discussions for some reason,
but here goes...
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please don't expect all of your customers to meekly accept everything that officials of Shrapnel say as Indisputable Truth merely because you (that's a general 'you', not you personally) say it.
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Well, since Arryn thinks we (that's a personal 'we', not a general 'we') are lying to all of you I will answer her arguments for the others here that want more information as to our philosophy regarding downloads and who might entertain that we know a little about this business.
1. We have offered downloads in the past and still do, although our download games are also offered as physical product now. The games we offered as purely downloads are the worse selling games we have ever had. Why is that? We believe there are two main reasons. One, the fact that a whole lot of people don't like downloads (see 2 below) and two, the ease of piracy as the manual is in electronic format.
2. The games that are offered as either download or physical product are sold as physical product 4 to 1 over downloads. Why is that? Our guess is most people want physical product. When they spend money, they want something they can hold in their hands.
3. Downloads as a percentage of those games unit sales create over 10 times the customer service requests as do physical products. Add to that the increase in behind the scenes man hours of maintaing the servers for downloads and you have a big expense in downloadable products. This is not a bigger expense than offering physical product, which is quite expensive also, but on a par. So if we aren't saving money and we get more sales with physical products, why do downloads? Due to these facts, in June, I (that's a personal 'I', not a general 'I') made the decision that we would offer no new downloadable games. Expansions, however, may still be offered as downloads, we haven't decided yet on the avenue to take with them.
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Shrapnel isn't remotely close to large enough to be able to afford to create the server farms needed for even a small-scale Version of that sort of thing. If they cannot afford to invest the resources to provide electronic downloads, nor are willing to take the risk, what makes you think they could do centralized server gaming (which is costlier and riskier)?
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We are working on the finishing touches on our first MMP offering with our own dedicated servers (look for an announcement later this month) so we are probably a wee bit larger than Arryn thinks.
Oh and Arryn, if you are still reading this, please stop the flaming that is going on in this thread. Or I will stop it. And that is a personal 'I'.
There are some good discussions here folks. Please don't let my post end them.
Regards,
Tim Brooks
President
Shrapnel Games, Inc.