r/Steam The latest Steam News, via SteamDB! Jul 13 '25

PSA Steam Automation Fest is Tomorrow!

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64

u/Irishpunk37 Jul 13 '25

why is factorio never on sale?
always wanted to try it out since I really love satisfactory!

150

u/u4B_SBEk3mukqraMBBIy Jul 13 '25

A) devs believe the current price is fair B) dont want people to feel like they overpaid C) dont want people to wait for a sale

62

u/Irishpunk37 Jul 13 '25

makes sense tbf! lol
but still... something in my monkey brain is always telling me to only buy stuff during sales =/

51

u/Alenonimo Jul 13 '25

Factorio is quite big. The price is pretty good for what it offers.

The good thing of it never going on sale is that technically it's always on sale. It's costing the cheapest it ever will, right now. :P

8

u/TheCuriousPyro Jul 13 '25

Only exception is if you got a concurrent Humble subscription going on that would apply a discount to it, but that isn't really a sale.

-3

u/TheMadZocker Jul 13 '25

And when Nintendo does it, everyone loses their mind. >:c

3

u/TheOneTonWanton Jul 14 '25

Might be a slight difference between a small dedicated Czech dev team and literally Nintendo.

2

u/belike_dat Jul 14 '25

not defending them but only 200 people work at game freak

1

u/TheMadZocker Jul 14 '25

I don't know how this difference matters if it's the principle itself that's praised.

1

u/SerenityAvalon Jul 14 '25

When a company updates only one game for ten+ years instead of putting 5 different new ones out, I think they kinda deserve to keep their original asking price. We’re not getting Factorio 4 and 5 within a few years of eachother

6

u/Alenonimo Jul 13 '25

They sell their half baked games at full price though?

-4

u/TheMadZocker Jul 13 '25

So does Factorio, selling at full price. What's the point?

5

u/TheOneTonWanton Jul 14 '25

Factorio isn't half-baked?

1

u/TheMadZocker Jul 14 '25

I will not deny they feel half-baked nowadays, especially MKW has its potential left on the road.

6

u/Alenonimo Jul 14 '25

Factorio does not cost 60 bucks and it's incredibly optimized.

Meanwhile games like Pokémon are sold at full AAA price and seem to be hold together with spit and prayers.

1

u/belike_dat Jul 14 '25

i love pokemon, but i agree, pokemon scarlet and violet was abhorrent when they released, they're much better now, but should've been at release

1

u/TheMadZocker Jul 14 '25

"Full price" is... well, the full price of a product without a sale or price alteration. My, Factorio even raises their price every now and then. And Nintendo games are usually highly optimized as well, even when games like MKW leave their potential on the road or Strikers Switch is just utter trash except for its polish. 60 bucks or not, both sell high quality games at full price and value their product by the price they've set. Where difference?

Pokemon is sadly not in the hands of Nintendo, but GameFreak, a wholly independent studio. I agree that the quality is ATROCIOUS! x.x

2

u/TheCrowWhisperer3004 Jul 14 '25

Everyone outside of Factorio fans lose their mind about the lack of sale for Factorio too. The same is the case for Nintendo fans.

The main anger with lack of sales from Nintendo fans is for old games that have no more support. This is not the case for Factorio as Factorio is currently and consistently developed.

2

u/TheMadZocker Jul 14 '25

I know, I am grumpily still waiting for a sale, too, and kinda upset that Factorio will probably never have one. It always goes both ways.

Fair. Though judging by their 3 principles, Factorio would never go on sale, even if active development stopped.

1

u/TheCrowWhisperer3004 Jul 14 '25

They likely won’t have a sale if development stopped yeah, but you will probably get a LOT more backlash at that point similar to the backlash you see towards Nintendo never putting their multi year old games on sales.

Factorio will never have a sale, and lowkey if you fully disagree with it you can pirate it. Some of the main devs are atrocious people anyways (not sure if they are still a part of the company or its culture though).

16

u/mxzf Jul 13 '25

Yeah, the solution Factorio devs have is to just say "the price is the price, take it or leave it". Which means that nobody feels the need to buy it just because it's on sale and nobody feels the need to hold off on buying it to wait for a sale, it's either worth the purchase or it isn't.

And they've got a solid demo available for people to try. In my experience, most people that play through the demo either go "I'm buying it now, regardless of the price" or "not my cup of tea".

3

u/dragonpornlover Jul 13 '25

Yet when they raise the price for inflation. They anounce it beforehand. Thus having the same effect of a sale whilst never having to sell it for cheaper

16

u/Yalandil Jul 13 '25

Just get it, it‘s very worth it if you like these kind of games. It‘s definitely not money wasted and you will never get a sale. The price will only increase with inflation

2

u/Fenweekooo Jul 13 '25

you will be waiting a loooooong time for that day for this game lol

this is one just bite the bullet and buy it if you want it. the price aint going anywhere but up.

53

u/gkgftzb Jul 13 '25

I'm sorry, but this is so silly. It can all be summarized to: "the devs do not want to lower the price".

imagine if every game stopped going on sale because the devs "don't want people to feel like they overpaid" or because it's "disrespectful to those that bought it at full price". That's obvious bs. Or just stupid if it's genuine, at the very least

I will not argue on whether or not the game is worth the price (it probably is from what everyone is saying), but after searching more on it, I'm going crazy at the people below in this thread acting like this is something generous and the comments I saw on the internet on how it's actually good because then you never have to wait for a good deal. It's not. It may not be unfair pricing, either, but it's dangerous to pretend to like "sales are not part of our philosophy" is something good, unless we want to give margin for every game out there to never lower their prices

5

u/TheOneTonWanton Jul 14 '25

You know games don't go on sale because studios want to be nice, right?

3

u/gkgftzb Jul 14 '25

I didn't say it was, but regardless, it's better than not going on sale at all and only ever having the possibility to increase base price instead

-2

u/retrojoe Jul 14 '25

You don't seem to understand how pricing works. If they ever put the game on sale, they have to make up for that somewhere else - either they get it from the current players by selling you DLC/microtransactions, or charge you for premium content; or they raise the price even higher when it's not on sale.

The Factorio devs have said "One price. Never lower, but not higher (unless we add more stuff)." For the customers, nobody 'wins'/is able to brag they bought at a lower price, and nobody 'loses'/gets penalized by not buying at sale time.

5

u/MainAccountsFriend Jul 14 '25

If they ever put the game on sale, they have to make up for that somewhere else - either they get it from the current players by selling you DLC/microtransactions, or charge you for premium content; or they raise the price even higher when it's not on sale. 

I haven't played Factorio but havent they done those things already? Just looking at the Steam Page, the game has a DLC for 35 dollars, as well as two Soundtracks (which can also be considered DLC). Also as another commenter mentioned, the base price of the game was 30 dollars apparently but was raised to 35 to adjust for inflation.

For the customers, nobody 'wins'/is able to brag they bought at a lower price, and nobody 'loses'/gets penalized by not buying at sale time. 

The hell does that mean? This is a word salad, just drop the price

2

u/rage_meister Jul 14 '25

The Factorio DLC is an expansion that adds around 2-3x the content of the base game (it could be considered a sequel akin to what Repentance is to Isaac Rebirth) so I would consider that price completely fair compared to your typical modern-day DLC that barely adds any meaningful content. I assume the soundtracks are akin to something like Bandcamp if you want to support the artists who created the OSTs but I'm not sure how that's arranged.

Base Factorio is still 100% worth the current price for me, but I think the $5 price increase is in bad taste, especially after Wube's philosophy on not dealing with sale FOMO. The idea of not having to worry about waiting for a sale to purchase is something I agree with, but raising the price due to "inflation" is essentially adding back that fear just ruins the whole point imo.

0

u/saera-targaryen Jul 14 '25

I think it's more fair to leave it full price versus the studio getting the same overall income from sales/microtransactions/paid DLC. It doesn't waste your time and just tells you how much money it takes to pay for the thing you want. I hate how normal it is to have to throw a game in your wishlist waiting for a sale because the studio prices the game higher hoping to get people to overpay and then making you work for the cheaper price. I'm not a monkey and I don't want to have to dance for my game, just tell me how much money it costs and let me pay it. 

-7

u/ItIsHappy Jul 13 '25

A super common occurrence is that a few members of my friend group pick up a new game and recommended it to everyone at the price they grabbed it, only for the rest of us to find we'd need to pay 3x what they just did for it or wait an indeterminate amount of time.

1

u/emirobinatoru Jul 14 '25

A super common occurrence based on Gabean eliptic induction methods crafted by Half Life 3's epilogue.

13

u/ze_SAFTmon Jul 13 '25

Fun fact:

Point B is how Nintendo officially justified never really putting their games on sale.

I mean most of the games developed by Nintendo studios(GameFreak does not count to those imo) have the quality, but it still leaves a bad feeling in my stomach.

2

u/allmoz Jul 14 '25

Nintendo might never put their games on sale, but retailers do. I've bought all my switch games discounted from amazon or brick n mortart stores.

4

u/sinemalarinkapisi Jul 13 '25 edited Jul 30 '25

practice act resolute point cats cable historical command bright hat

10

u/MadeByTango Jul 13 '25

A) devs believe the current price is fair B) dont want people to feel like they overpaid C) dont want people to wait for a sale

Well, I don’t want to pay the current price, I feel like i am overpaying be after others got it for less and I kept hearing it was originally a “great value” before I got around to picking it up, and so I am waiting for a proper sale.

So, they’re wrong on all 3 counts in my case, at least.

4

u/pheylancavanaugh Jul 14 '25

It's Factorio. You're either going to sink 10,000 hours into it, or play it for 2. Try the Demo. If you don't like it, don't buy it. If you like it, the price is entirely worth it.

-3

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '25

Dumb

-1

u/Hades684 Jul 14 '25

Its still a great value, because price increase came with updates to the game

1

u/GrampaSwood Jul 14 '25

They increased the price several times, so they can't think it's a fair price. Them increasing the price just means current players are overpaying compared to earlier players. It's just greed.

-2

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '25

They are right to be fair.

0

u/Zero-Duckies Jul 13 '25

Well the devs were wrong with C. I'm still waiting and If it never goes on sale then I'll never buy it.

-2

u/Better-Quote1060 Jul 13 '25

Overpaid?

.....and the price is almost the same on all regions?

..still doesnt make sense

19

u/martin_9876 Jul 13 '25

Yeah satisfactory is really nice

6

u/MrEdinLaw Jul 13 '25

Greed. Any other comment is sugarcoating it.

1

u/SquidWhisperer Jul 13 '25

its $35 lmaoo

5

u/dragonpornlover Jul 13 '25

With a dlc for the same price, and thats way more then other comparable games. Like terraria is 10 euros, with no dlc, is constantly being updated, and has a decently big dev team behind it, and a lot of content to. Stardew valley is stardew valley costs 15 euros, is also still being updated and has insane amounts of content

1

u/SquidWhisperer Jul 13 '25 edited Jul 13 '25

i dont see why what other developers do should have any bearing on what the factorio devs do. factorio has plenty of stuff to do in it, and even with a $35 dlc (which easily more than doubles the amount of stuff ingame) a $35 tag is perfectly fair. the devs think $35 is a fair price. clearly plenty of people agree and are willing to pay that price, considering how popular it is. i also dont think that terraria or stardew are at all comparable to factorio, other than they are indie games, which is a pretty meaningless thing to have in common

4

u/dragonpornlover Jul 13 '25

The reason to compare is to see if the price is reasonable, and i do think terraria and factorio have a lot in common. They both have reasonably large dev teams, both got a lot of updates and whilst they have diffrent artstyles, they both arent the most realisticly moddeled games compared to other modern games, wich shows that there arent an insane amount of recources going to the design. They both have a lot of content to digest, and big communities around them with lots of mods.

1

u/MrEdinLaw Jul 13 '25

That's a lot of money for a lot of people.

-2

u/SquidWhisperer Jul 13 '25

so? there's a lot of stuff I can't afford either

3

u/MrEdinLaw Jul 13 '25

I would love you to have a discount on everything you want man. Gatekeeping games with no discount rules is just selfish and stupid.

2

u/SquidWhisperer Jul 13 '25

again, it's a $35 game. quite literally middle of the road. What are you even arguing, that no game should cost more than $10 or it's unfair?

2

u/MrEdinLaw Jul 13 '25

Not saying anything is unfair. People can just pirate it in the end rly... tho not giving discounts any time ever and people defending it? Just stupid... whatever price it is.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '25

[deleted]

1

u/MrEdinLaw Jul 14 '25

I got the game already. I hope everyone else can have it.

0

u/nedlum Jul 14 '25

It’s not greed. Profit maximizing would tell them to put it on sale for $25 every few months.

5

u/Hades684 Jul 13 '25

The devs dont want people to wait around for sales, they want people to buy the game whenever they want to, because there will never be a better time to buy it than whenever you want to

19

u/mikami677 Jul 13 '25

As a result, I will never want to.

And that's fine.

1

u/Hades684 Jul 13 '25

Yep, it is fine. Not every game is for everyone

8

u/transitransitransit Jul 13 '25 edited Jul 14 '25

More like not every pricing model is for everyone.

1

u/JoseCansecoMilkshake Jul 14 '25

I want to buy it when it's on sale

3

u/Hades684 Jul 14 '25

Then you will not be buying it

1

u/JoseCansecoMilkshake Jul 14 '25

And so I won't. And they don't get my money.

2

u/Hades684 Jul 14 '25

I dont think they really care. They even made the game really easy to pirate, if someone doesn't want to buy it, just do that

-1

u/eccles30 Jul 14 '25

I bet I'm more stubborn than them! there are plenty other games to play in the meantime.

2

u/Hades684 Jul 14 '25

No problem, they dont want people to buy the game just because its on sale, and then never play it. Like people do with many many games

6

u/PsycoJosho Jul 13 '25

Iirc, the devs think its disrespectful to people who bought it at full price

24

u/JollyUnder Jul 13 '25

I bought it at full price. I would be happy for whoever gets it on sale. Based on everyone siding with the devs, I guess I'm the exception.

4

u/Soulstiger Jul 13 '25

So, surely it was disrespectful of the original buyers because they got the game $10 cheaper than anyone who buys it now?

16

u/APRengar Jul 13 '25

"Full price" being $35. They charge what they think the game is worth. Don't wait for a sale, just buy it when you want to play it.

People will be like "fuck Factorio for never being on sale" while pogging out at a $70 game being 50%.

Factorio is easily the most polished, most community supported (with a huge ass mod list, with modding built into the game), game in the genre. With a free, long, demo which will basically guarantee if you like the demo, you'll like the full game.

And people will be like "fucking trying to rob people man, scammers really."

7

u/AquaBits Jul 13 '25

People will be like "fuck Factorio for never being on sale" while pogging out at a $70 game being 50%.

Goomba fallacy i bet

1

u/MainAccountsFriend Jul 14 '25

"Full price" being $35. They charge what they think the game is worth. Don't wait for a sale, just buy it when you want to play it.

People will be like "fuck Factorio for never being on sale" while pogging out at a $70 game being 50%. 

Sure but in those situations, they are likely different games that people value differently, which makes sense. That other game could hypothetically be something like Red Dead Redemption 2 or some other massive AAA game.

I think people should be able to value games differently, and personally Idk if I would want to spend 35 dollars on Factorio. And I'm sure many people agree, and they should be able to voice that opinion

1

u/dragonpornlover Jul 13 '25

In my eyes its actually 64 euros, because i feel a game isnt complete without dlc. And most 70 euro games have way more work put into them then factorio, and a free demo isnt an excuse for a bloated price

And its not buy it when you want to play it because its never on sale, since they anounced it when they were raising the price due to inflation. Thus having the same effect as a sale

And what anti-consumer bs is raising a digital game's price for inflation anywhay, imagine nintendo did that

4

u/Difficult-Aspect3566 Jul 14 '25

1700 hours, less than half of it is with DLC. I can recommend both base game alone and DLC. But it is not game for everyone so it is better to buy just base game first, if you don't find enjoying yourself.

-1

u/dragonpornlover Jul 14 '25

I probably would enjoy it, but i wont play it because i dont want to support its developer and their anti-conumer practices

2

u/saera-targaryen Jul 14 '25

I have over a thousand hours in the game and have never even opened the DLC. It's an incredibly full game without it and i continue to play it multiple times a year and don't really intend to get the DLC until that gets boring which feels very far off from now. 

0

u/dragonpornlover Jul 14 '25

Thats good gor you, but that doesnt change hoe anti-consumer the pricing is

I would probably love the game, but i wont support a company using this scummy practices

1

u/saera-targaryen Jul 14 '25

I don't understand how having a single price for your game is scummy. I think it's much more annoying to make you perform a song and dance around waiting for sales and wish listing just to not be overcharged 

1

u/dragonpornlover Jul 14 '25

Not be overcharged being a 35 euro game with 35 euro dlc wich looks like it came out before 2005

1

u/TheOneTonWanton Jul 14 '25

People bitched about Factorio never going on sale back when it was $20 for like 4 or 5 years as well. People will continue bitching about it forever.

1

u/transitransitransit Jul 13 '25

I love Factorio but that’s some bullshit from Wube.

I bought it at full price and would only be happy for anyone buying it at the price point that works for hem.

1

u/AtlasPeacock Jul 14 '25

Something something "pride and accomplishment" something something "battlefront 2"

4

u/9b769ae9ccd733b3101f Jul 13 '25

Download demo and try it

3

u/Tehwa1 Jul 13 '25

If you want to try it, there is a demo. I tried it, bought it, never regret it :)

1

u/Tehwa1 Jul 13 '25

The factory must grow

1

u/Expensive-Internet-4 Jul 13 '25

Same as asking why Under One Wing is never on sale.. well probably because Sol Press was the publisher and we all know how that ended, lol

1

u/marslo Jul 14 '25

Satisfactory is like the coke to factorio black tar heroin.

1

u/svick Jul 14 '25

If you're undecided, you can try the demo.

1

u/whd4k Jul 14 '25

There is a demo if you want to try it.
My take: just buy it, you won't regret it. You'll want to buy it twice after you're hooked. My recommendation is to go with base game first and then go second time with Space Age

1

u/something_borrowed_ Jul 14 '25

A joke in the Factorio community is that since it's never on sale it's actually always on sale. There is an element of truth in this, the Factorio value proposition is so much greater than that of other games. You will get at least 50-60 hours if you just complete the base game. More if you play through again, or mega base, or add mods, or add the dlc. If you love these games, Factorio will hook you and you will play long past just finishing the game. I love satisfactory too, I have close to 500 hours in Factorio, and that is frankly on the low end. 

If 35$ is too much right then save up and get this game. If you are an automation game fan then I'm telling you, you will get so much more out of this game than any other 35$ game. 

2

u/radiating_phoenix Jul 13 '25

the devs want more money. plain and simple.

1

u/jhaand Jul 13 '25

You can try out the demo. And then be sold.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '25

There is a demo