Video Game Pricing Strategy: Discounts, Sales & Long-Term Revenue
Your game's price is part of its marketing strategy. It influences how players perceive the game, which competing titles they compare it against, whether they buy now or wait, how attractive future discounts will be and ultimately how much revenue the game can generate across its lifetime.
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The Importance of Price
Pricing strategy is particularly important for indie games, where there is usually much less room for error. A poorly chosen SRP, unnecessary launch discount or constant participation in sales can generate plenty of unit sales without necessarily producing a strong commercial result. I have dealt with pricing from both sides, setting pricing strategy for major published games and managing the pricing, discounts and long-tail revenue of my own indie titles across PC and console. That experience has taught me that pricing cannot be separated from positioning, marketing and the commercial expectations placed on the game.
The Discount Lifecycle
Discounting should be planned across the commercial life of a game rather than treated as a series of unrelated sales. A title might move from full launch price through modest early promotions, increasingly significant sales and eventually deeper back-catalogue discounts as different groups of customers become willing to buy.
I have built discount lifecycle plans for publisher catalogues where pricing needed to remain reasonably consistent across platforms while still leaving room for special opportunities such as Black Friday, platform-led promotions or major publisher sales. The structure also creates new marketing moments for established games and gradually moves the offer from early adopters willing to pay full price towards more price-sensitive customers later in the lifecycle. The objective is to capture customers at different levels of price sensitivity without giving away margin from players who were already prepared to pay more.
release-and-forget projects. There are many reasons why some games are set on this path. The most common commercial reason is that the game failed to reach target sales expectations at launch. The studio had moved on to another title, or the game was never designed to have updates as part of the publisher’s portfolio mix. Post-launch, the game is now part of the publisher’s ‘back catalogue’ of titles.
For games that do have meaningful update potential, the decision becomes more complicated. An update can create a new acquisition opportunity, improve marketability and justify renewed marketing activity rather than simply moving immediately towards deeper discounting.
Platform rules also affect pricing decisions. Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo each create different promotional opportunities, restrictions and visibility around discounts, so the same pricing strategy cannot always be applied identically across every storefront.
I discuss the impacts of using major game updates as marketing moments, and there are commercial decisions studios need to make with the marketing team when moving forward with game updates.
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The right marketing team with experience in game content update planning and building LiveOps plans can help generate long-term revenues for a studio’s existing IPs. This is where pricing, content planning and LiveOps begin to overlap. A successful update can extend the commercial life of an existing IP and delay the point where deeper discounting becomes the main way of generating sales.
Choosing an SRP is a Marketing Decision
One of my earliest lessons in pricing came while working on Divinity II: Ego Draconis with Larian Studios and publisher DTP Entertainment. I was asked to recommend the standard retail price across Europe and the US, and at the time, I was surprised that this was landing with marketing rather than operations or development.
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It made sense once I started working through it. Price affects positioning. You need to understand comparable games, genre expectations, perceived quality, content depth, competition and what the audience believes a game in that category should cost. Set the price too high, and you may create expectations the product cannot meet. Set it unnecessarily low, and you give away revenue while potentially signalling that the game has less value than its competitors. The right SRP should therefore come out of the wider go-to-market strategy rather than being decided at the end of production because a storefront needs a number entered into a field.
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The headline SRP is only part of the decision. Regional pricing, currency differences, taxes and local purchasing power can change what the same game effectively costs from one market to another. Pricing therefore needs to be considered at a market level rather than simply converting a US dollar price into every other currency.
Early Access & Launch Discounting
Early Access has changed considerably. For many games it is no longer a quiet period where a small group of enthusiasts helps shape an unfinished product before the "real" launch. Players, creators and media may judge the game from the moment it becomes commercially available, which means Early Access can effectively become the first major launch event.
That makes pricing particularly important. A studio may deliberately use a lower Early Access price to reflect the amount of content currently available and raise it as the game improves, while another may keep pricing closer to its intended full-release position. What matters is having the strategy established before Early Access begins.
I am also cautious about automatic launch discounts. Across the games I have worked on, I have not seen enough evidence to believe every title needs to sacrifice margin simply because it has launched. If there is already strong demand, launch is one of the periods when players are most willing to pay. A discount should have a purpose rather than being included because it has become conventional. If demand is already strongest at launch, automatically reducing the price can mean giving away revenue from the very players most willing to pay full price.
Deciding on Discounting vs. New Content
Discounting is easy. Creating a meaningful reason for players to reconsider the game is harder, but potentially far more valuable.
A simple price reduction will rarely create significant organic interest from press or creators because thousands of other games are discounted at the same time. It can help convert players already aware of the game, particularly wishlisters, but it does not necessarily create new demand. Discounting is generally better at converting existing awareness than creating new awareness. Someone already watching the game may respond to a lower price, but the discount itself rarely gives a completely new audience a reason to care.
A meaningful update can. Improvements to gameplay, presentation, content or usability can create a new story, new assets, another reason to contact creators and a reason for existing players to talk about the game again. Studios therefore need to consider whether the next commercial opportunity should come from lowering the price or improving the product.
That does not mean every game deserves another year of development. The cost of creating new content has to be weighed against expected revenue, the size of the active audience, future franchise plans and what else the studio could build with those resources.
How We Used Pricing Differently With Droid Trivia
Droid Trivia became a useful pricing experiment because I could see the effect of different approaches directly. The game initially had an SRP of $14.99 USD, but following a substantial update, we increased that price to $19.99.
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Conventional thinking might suggest that increasing the price would reduce sales, but that did not happen. The game had become significantly better. The visual presentation improved, game modes expanded, sessions became longer, customisation increased and overall marketability improved. Players were receiving a stronger product, and the higher price better reflected what Droid Trivia had become.
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At the same time, the game performed differently depending on how promotions were structured. Large seasonal sales could generate high unit numbers at very low prices, while our own campaigns often generated fewer sales but at a much stronger average selling price. When viewed through revenue and profit rather than units alone, those campaigns were often much more valuable. That is why I look at average selling price, revenue and profit alongside unit sales. A promotion can look impressive because it sold a large number of copies while still producing a weaker commercial result than a smaller campaign selling fewer units at a healthier price.
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Don't Chase the Bargain Hunters Down the Rabbit Hole
Deep discounts have a place later in a game's lifecycle, but continually lowering the price can create its own problem. Players learn quickly. If someone repeatedly sees the same game at 70% or 80% off, that discounted price can become their reference point for what the game is really worth.
That can gradually reset the market's perception of what the game is worth. It also reduces the strength of future promotions because the audience has already seen a much lower price.
The question should therefore not be, "How cheaply can we sell this game?" It should be, "Which audience are we trying to convert at this stage of its lifecycle, and what price gives them enough incentive without unnecessarily giving away revenue?" This is why an indie game pricing strategy needs to consider revenue, positioning and the entire commercial lifecycle rather than simply choosing a launch price.
Franchise Planning: New Content or the Next Game?
Pricing also becomes part of a much larger decision when a game belongs to a franchise. At that point, pricing stops being just a storefront decision and becomes part of managing the wider IP's commercial value. The studio has to decide whether continuing to update and promote the existing title will create more long-term value than shifting those resources towards the next release.
I was already thinking about this while working on the Divinity franchise. We were not only marketing the product in front of us; future releases, additional platforms and the wider development of the series were part of the commercial picture. Money and development time spent extending one title are resources that cannot be spent building the next one.
The answer will be different for every franchise. The marketing and production teams need to compare the likely return from another update against the opportunity cost of putting those same people onto the next game. A growing active audience may justify substantial new content, while another game may be better managed through discounts, bundles and catalogue promotions as the studio concentrates on its successor.
Marketing is More than Promotion
Pricing shows why game marketing should extend beyond advertising, social media and influencer outreach. Good marketing also means understanding product positioning, customer behaviour, commercial performance and where a game sits in its lifecycle.
Sometimes the right decision is to discount. Sometimes it is to maintain the price. Sometimes it is to increase the price because the product has become substantially better. In other cases, the best commercial decision may be to invest in another major update or to move the studio's resources onto the next game entirely.
That requires marketing people who understand more than promotion. They need to understand the game, its market, production costs, platform economics and the long-term commercial value of the IP. Pricing is simply another part of making those decisions well. That is why pricing and discounting should sit within the wider indie game marketing strategy, alongside positioning, production planning, launch strategy and post-launch growth.