A rant about shareware

Ed Kolis · #1 November 7th, 2002, 10:16 PM

If I had wanted to buy Master of Orion II when it was brand new, I would have had to spend about $40 or $50. If I had wanted to buy Space Empires III when it was brand new, I would have had to spend about $30.

OK... If I want to buy Master of Orion II now, I would have to spend about $10 or $15. But if I want to buy Space Empires III now, I'd have to spend, guess what... $30!

So why is it that shareware never drops in price as it ages, like commercial software? Sure, it might be a good game, but still - $30 for THAT ancient thing?!?

There are a lot of good shareware games that I'd consider buying if they'd dropped in price after a few years... I know shareware (and independent, like Shrapnel) publishers have more overhead, but surely it can't cost THAT much to burn a CD... Or copy a floppy, in some cases! What's going on here???

Phoenix-D · #2 November 7th, 2002, 11:28 PM

Part of what you're seeing with retail IIRC is left-over copies. The make a metric assload of CDs and keep them around until they're all gone. This keeps costs per unit down, but a small publisher probably can't afford to have that many CDs just lying around.

Phoenix-D

capnq · #3 November 8th, 2002, 12:32 AM

Plus, only a distressingly small percentage of people who use shareware ever actually pay for it. Commercial software makes most of its profits from the early adopters who pay full retail for it, but shareware never sees that kind of revenue.

disabled · #4 November 8th, 2002, 05:24 AM

acutally, SE3's cost did drop. When you buy it you get a cd with SE1,2,and 3 plus a whole pile of SE3 ship styles and mods.

SE2 costed 25 bucks
SE3 was 30 with disks.

Total is 55 + S&H. You're paying 30 + S&H not a bad deal.

tesco samoa · #5 November 8th, 2002, 09:45 PM

SE3 and eariler should be freeware now... Downloadable...

I agree on the price drop... It should go down... as well.

Urendi Maleldil · #6 November 8th, 2002, 09:58 PM

Hmm. SE3 and SE2 are still fun games in their own right. In fact I'd say SE3 is more fun than SE4 in spite of its lack of features.

$30 isn't a lot of money, even for a really poor game. The compilation CD is a great deal because it has both those games plus SE1 and a whole bunch of mods and shipsets for SE3.

Odds are if you own a computer you can afford a $30 CD. If you don't care it doesn't matter, but if you really want those older games $30 is not an obstacle.

(yes, I agree though that $15 is nicer than $30)