Store & Crowns: Please read about important upcoming changes!

I smell a cover up.

 

To keep things more in line with perceived value of 1$ = 100 COTO’s, another possible option on the store could be:

$5 Current Release Stretch Goal Rewards and COTO pack. Get 500 COTO’s and all achieved rewards for the current release. Solid basic value.

$9 Rewards Program. 900 COTO’s, rewards and the other stuff you get with that. It’s a good value. Could possibly even make it 950 COTO?

$10 COTO purchase, and rewards. Provides 1100 COTO’s. Even better value, but still maintains the base $1 = 100 COTO + extra value for a higher purchase.

Would be completely fine with something like this as well.

 

@Chris the thing I appreciate about you most is you say what you mean.

Now go back to vacation so you can come back fresh and get the sun and moon spell you have been promising for a year now .

 

I suspected that was a reason. I'd be curious whether this particular reason ends up working out, because on the flipside, you make 0% from those who don't buy anything.

 

Hear hear! Raises a glass in @Chris honor Well said.

 

Yes, obviously the rewards program is the best option. I can't see anyone buying a $10 CotO package if you can spend $9 and get so much more. The stated packages really don't make sense if the $1 = 100 cotos is to be the perceived value; you don't even hit that level until you spend $60 or more.

I'd seriously reconsider starting at a perceived 75% of their value, and instead closer to 90%, moving up at a medium package to "full" value, rather than skipping over it. That would make the packages look more like this:

$10.00 --> 750 900
$20.00 --> 1600 1800
$35.00 --> 3200 3500
$60.00 --> 6300
$100.00 --> 10750

This does have the effect of making the $10 package and $9 rewards program the same "value", except you are then offering a slight discount and extra rewards for those who are on a recurring payment plan. That makes sense. At $35, you are exactly at the perceived value, and above that you are at a premium. Perception of value is huge when it comes to CotOs, especially when they are the only thing in the store!

 

Yessir! and water gathering... /whip!

 

They aren't losing money on small dollar purchases, because they are selling us digital assets already created and the cost to make them was paid when they were made - the profit margins are actually astronomical even with transaction fees. Port just wants the percentage of transaction fees to take a smaller percentage of the revenue, and thus are eliminating purchases less than $9/$10.

 

There's certainly an up-front cost to those digital assets, since it takes a good chunk of time to create them, and that time is being paid out in salary & health benefits to the employees who are spending that time creating them. Yes, the cost gets diluted across the number of times people pay $5+ in the store (or the $9 sub), but the cost is not insubstantial. If you ever read the standup notes, quite a bit of developer time gets spent on the rewards for each release cycle. So I understand the desire to recoup as much as possible. Additionally, even when assets are from the Unity store (as they sometimes are), it still costs Port money to buy those assets (which is not insubstantial) and then to modify them to work in game (I.e., you can't just take said asset and plop it in the game).

 

We're making this change from $5 to $9/$10 for a number of reasons. First, small transactions in the store need to go away. We lose almost 5% of our total revenue to fees as paypal and others charge 29 cents per transaction plus a % and lots of little transactions just end up sending tons of money to paypal. Our median transaction size is $5 right now, as in half our total transactions are $5 or under. Just getting that up to $10 means we're losing 50% less to paypal and Stripe.

FROM chris

 

Though it's not that simple. To me that's saying "Lots of people spend in small increments... so we're going to save money by *blocking* them attempting to give us money on their tier".

It could be that they're counting on a percentage of those who'd be chipping in $5/mo in support, doing it in 2 or 3 month chunks instead, skipping every other month. That could work, depending on user behavior. If the telethons were 2-3 month cycles instead of monthly, that's sync back up with people.

Or they could do what iTunes tends to do... which is just give the items up front, keep track/tabs of the smaller purchases made, and then do a single end-of-month invoice (or however exactly it is they cycle it). But as someone who has worked on eCommerce systems... that sounds like a PITA, and may not be worth the developer time, unless Paypal/others provides an easy system.

 

If fees and what not are the reason for change, why not make higher package then $100????

 

Because the truth is Profits matter... Not what we pay for the crowns themself, but how much money can be made, from smaller purchase amounts. because if ya wanted money selling 10k crowns for 5k seems like a way better deal to me.
or even a 1k crows for $500

 

So fully half of the transactions are $5 or less, and you are betting that a decent portion of them will just move up to $9/$10 per month? You are willing to bet that folks that dole out a couple bucks at a time, a few times per month are going to just move up to the subscription or a $10 coto purchase? Just to lower transaction fee ratios?

I would study some more micro transaction case studies before pulling the trigger on that, but good luck dude. Your own metrics are telling you that people more easily spend a few dollars at a time than a larger chunk all at once.

 

Chris discussed this on discord some. A lot of those $5 transactions were people who never figured out how to use the store to buy more than one thing at a time and would make three separate purchases to buy three things in one session. So yes, a lot of those $5 transactions WILL convert to $15 purchases.

 

i wouldn't assume the $5 or less transactions have anything to do with $9/$10 per month (or any monthly for that matter).

i know i've bought a number of "$5 or less" deco items at different points though out any given month. those types of things are completely different than my monthly subscription.

if someone wants to support the company at no more than $5 per month, it should be just as easy to spend $10 every other month. since the company is going keep more of that support at $10 than at $5 (transaction fees do add up) i'd think these supporters would be happy about this change.

 

Buying items from the online store is going away next release; so buying small items will still happen, just in-game for crowns.

 

I love it when @Chris gets snippy.