Normally I'm not one to fret about prices, and I'm by no means outraged nor will I demand that the devs lower their price. it's their work, and they can charge whatever they see fit for it.

However, when compared to games like Spelunky, Downwell, Nuclear Throne (substitute the Vlambeer game of your choice here), or basically any game whose backbone is the depth of their mechanics, I'm finding it hard to find it in myself to put down the money for this game for the content that's being reviewed. I loved the game when I saw it as a game jam entry, and I was very excited to see it on Kickstarter (which I didn't back on principal), but it seemed to completely vanish up until just now. Apparently there was a pretty significant preorder deal going on ($15 USD I've been reading?) which I'm sad I missed out on. Roughly 2 hours of campaign and then some endless mode I won't engage with due to lack of competitive spirit seems like a very scarce offering.

At the same time, I've always been eager to buy shorter games just for the experience. Gone Home and Firewatch, for example, are two games that I bought at full price knowing that they were fairly short, but it feels as if the narrative and world-building involved in those games somehow justified that (admittedly lower) cost.

How does everyone else feel about the price of this game? In my shoes, high-intensity arcade titles like this are hard to justify even at their "regular" $15 USD price point, but I usually go for it anyway just because of the insane moments that they produce. Superhot is just asking a bit too much for me to bite, which is a shame, because it looks like such a sharp exerience. Is this too much for you, or does the promise of the game sell it for you?

Like you said initially developers are allowed to ask whatever they see fit for their products but I think at that price they are probably taking a risk of it not selling very well due to that high price point. If they made that a much more reasonable price than I believe it would sell much better. I think there are many people who are on the fence about this purchase because of that.

It feels like the majority of people wont buy it until its $5 so might as well charge what they feel it is worth to those who truly care about it and want in. It is kind of weird the psychological impact a difference as small as $5 in a price can make.

There is an 18 USD "deal" from GMG.com if you use the 20% off code from their website.

If it doesn't sell well, the price will drop sooner than later. Eventually it will reach the pricepoint where you feel comfortable buying the game.

It is too much for me for sure. If it was that price and came on a disc I would probably be less hesitant, but I tend to not buy digital games for that much.

I think they really shot themselves in the foot with the price. Anecdotally the indie game sweet spot has proven to be $15 which most are ready to pay without hesitation. Anything above $15 has people hesitate and anything above $20 usually means they'll wait for a sale. This is all very much dependent on the game and person, but by and large that is the trend. I've read a few reviews of SuperHOT that all mention how you breeze through it in an afternoon - that's not something that entices potential SuperHotters to pay upwards of $20 no matter how cool the idea.

I'm not sure what motivated them to charge this amount but in the end I think it's just going to cause most gamers to sleep on it until a serious sale rolls around, especially when you have some really big releases rolling out just around the corner. Personally I was extremely excited for it, counting down the hours until release, and even I'm kind of balking at the price. I'd love to have a fun week long filler before the Division comes out, but at 22 euros maybe I can wait.

Seems like an odd choice. I'd think 29.99 or 39.99 would have been better spot if they were going that high. But going that high is not a smart choice I think.

But yeah I'm not buying a 2 hour game for that price.

I fully expect the game to be personally worth the discounted "greenman gaming"-price (just short of €17 for me) but I'm also really in love with what SUPERHOT has to offer. I think going over 20 bucks might very well be a mistake when compared to what that can buy you on various digital stores.

I must say I was surprised they didn't go for €15 since that seemed like a really smart choice. Then again, I ain't no economist and the original "full price" on digital downloads is a transient concept anyways. I'll let 'em have their premium for uniqueness and the balls to go forward with the concept and wait for XCOM2 and Rise of the Tomb Raider a little longer.

SUPERHOT is a better choice for complementing my final hours of Pillars of Eternity so it makes more sense right now.

@humanity: Still the top seller on Steam right now, so it doesn't really seem like they screwed themselves that badly with the price.

Not that I'm gonna pick it up at that price either.

I actually commented about this on Jeff's review shortly after it went up.

In my opinion, $35 is just too much. The thing for me and video games is that the ratio of Time Spent:Money Spent is usually really good - especially when you compare it to something like a Blu-Ray Movie. For example, Let's pick a random movie. Let's go for a really long one, for the sake of argument.

Interstellar is 3 hours long, and goes for about $20 on Amazon - 3Hrs:$20.

I bought XCOM2 at launch, that ended up being about 50Hrs:$70.

The Witness, 30Hrs:$40.

Dota 2, 3400Hrs:$200.

I think you can already see where I'm going with this. Let's say Superhot is 3 hours long (I know most people are saying 2, but let's aim high). 3Hrs:$35. For me, as a relatively frugal gamer, that's just not something I can justify - especially when a movie like Interstellar is, objectively, a better value proposition.

Hopefully the price comes down, I really do want to play the game and support the developers; but definitely not at this price point.

Endless mode is the only thing about it that comes close to justifying the price for me. I played a lot of the game jam prototype.

It costs $11.32 on GOG (there is a small discount now, so it only cost me $10.19)

Y'all are doing it wrong.

I hope it sells well because I think originality and ingenuity should be rewarded. It's a great concept with really interesting execution. That said, although I'll probably buy it at the current price and feel shitty about it later, I do think it's a bad price for what they are offering.

@rafaelfc: It'd cost me €20 on GOG with the 10% discount which is the same price it'd cost me on Steam which also currently has a 10% discount. Where do you live that it's only $10's?

€20 is too much for me for this game. €15 might even be too much considering the apparent play length. Although I don't use play time as a particularly valuable metric over enjoyment, there are tonnes of games that have come out under the sub-€15 price point that provide both excellent mechanics and long playing time.

It's 25 in the US, and I still think that seems a bit expensive. My laptop can't run it anyway, so I'm not too mad about it. Hopefully I'll play it one day because it does look cool

The end of the GOG version gives a 15% off Steam Coupon to recruit share. I imagine the steam version is the same.

Are you sure about that? Unless you're converting from some other currency, it isn't that price in every region.

I live in brazil, so it's a billion times weirder that it appears cheaper for me. Also, I didn't know the price was region specific on gog. My bad.

SUPER. HOT.

Edit: just to clarify, GOG payments are in dollar here and I have to use an international credit card to purchase from them. This pricing is really weird for brazil, since everything costs more here.

@rafaelfc: Originally GOG didn't use region pricing. That changed sometime last year.

@bassman2112: I don't like this attempt to quantify entertainment like that. Making comparisons between films and games in terms of how you are engaging with them is already dicey. Are two hours spent playing a game involving the same senses as film viewing? How often does someone rewatch a movie on average? Yes, I got from the opening to end credits tonight playing SuperHot in two hours but my enjoyment of those mechanics isn't satiated and there are plenty of endless levels for me to unlock so I'm more likely to revisit it in the near future despite being "done" than I am likely to rewatch any film I saw this week in the next year or more (perhaps ever).

I just find trying to analyze the hows and whys of something like this futile. SuperHot is no other game so it costs what it costs. Citing some other thing's cost is pointless because those things aren't SuperHot.

I will say that the price is keeping me, personally, from buying this right away. Maybe it's just a dumb mental hangup, but I just can't justify spending that much on a game like this. I don't go hard on the whole "time played=money" idea or anything, but if I know a game is fairly short (like this or Firewatch for example) it is definitely something that influences my purchasing decisions. I'm glad it seems to be doing well anyway, at least.

I was going to say that sounds really overpriced but... then I looked up current CA$ and, the exchange rate is what seems to have killed you (living in the UK, I feel that pain: we got the $600 PS3 for £425, by the time the XBOne released for $500 the exchange rate had changed enough that it cost £430 - yes, for us the XBOne launched as more expensive than the PS3 and we sure didn't see our wages go up as the exchange rate changed in those years).

US$10-20 (depending where you live) also seems slightly higher than I'd say is a great price for SuperHot but that's because I dropped $14 by backing it so I'm not sure $22 (the price where I live currently on Steam) is really the best of price for a short experimental game like this. I'd certainly push it to your wishlist and look for it next sale if you're having doubts about the Canadian price.

I really like the game, but it's not going anywhere and there are a lot of other games you could be playing for $20 that you've probably not tried yet either. Video games: they'll still be there for you later, patched to likely be better, possibly looking nicer if you upgrade your hardware, and costing less. And every sale is good for devs (because the marginal cost approaches zero for digital goods) even if they eventually discount deeply to push total sales up.

When I was hearing that the pre-order price was around 14 USD, I was fully expecting the game to be 20 USD, probably working out to about 22 CAD with the launch discount, and I would have been pretty happy at that price. The current price doesn't even match the exchange rate between the USD and CAD.

The thing is, even if they sell well, I have to wonder how many people, hearing that the game is super short, are buying it, beating it, and refunding it. And they really have shot themselves in the foot if they find it isn't selling well since, if they do a price decrease or sale any time soon, that will just anger the people that bought it at the old price.

I might end up buying it on GOG after all, since it's a full 10 dollars cheaper and I always prefer GOG anyway, but I'm concerned that if it's the type of game to get frequent content updates, the GOG version will lag behind/never get them/miss a few features, as has happened for some other games.

I'm a bit torn on this.

On the one hand, I think it's really important that indie games begin to shed the arbitrary expectations that come with being labeled as an "indie game", not even just in terms of price but also things like scale, genre, and mechanics. Developers should be able to charge whatever price they feel is appropriate and/or necessary to make their business sustainable. Admittedly though, I feel like I have a bit of a vested interest in this - feel free to totally ignore my opinion if you're purely interested in the "consumer advocate" position.

That being said, it is difficult to completely remove yourself from that "value" consideration, but it's also a really difficult thing to even factor in because there are so many people out there with differing financial situations, amounts of gaming time, and game preferences. For better or worse though, above $20 seems to where I think most people start to think more in terms of "value" and whether or not the game's quality and/or length justifies the price. I know that Super Hot is really cool, but I can't deny that the price and length are actually making me hesitate on the purchase.

If you haven't read the recent replies by Jane Ng of Campo Santo (Firewatch) and Hugh Monahan of Stellar Jockeys (Brigador) to complaints about pricing, I'd highly suggest reading what they had to say. They both provide a very interesting look into the things that factor into deciding what to charge for a game.

Hi The_Nubster, you have to check out this game. It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years.

@chaser324: I read both of those responses you linked, I agree with them both (though I think the Brigador one shows some bigger problems with their project than a price tag).

I bought both Firewatch and The Witness on release, after a day or two to make sure they didn't launch as total shit shows. I knew Firewatch was going to be short and something I'd only play once, but it was €17 on offer and that seemed like a fair price. The Witness was a bigger gamble for me because I didn't like Braid and I'm not crazy about puzzle games either. But it got so many people talking and I felt like I'd miss out on something if I didn't get around to it as soon as possible so I said f it and picked it up. After finishing both, I was happier with The Witness and kind of let down by Firewatch, but I still think €17/20 for Firewatch absolutely suited that game.

For Superhot though, it's a great looking game but I just don't think it's worth €20 to me. I remember seeing it ages ago when it came out of its game jam and thought it looked neat but wouldn't carry a game. Then the trailer sold me that no, in fact those mechanics probably could carry a game. Then the reviews came out and everyone was talking about it's length. Had this game been €15 I probably would've bought it this weekend to screw around with, but I just don't think there's enough "hype" or content in the game for me to justify the price tag. But I also totally agree with developers that they can and should set prices and that there's a reason they need to set them the way they feel. Someone earlier made an interesting point that in today's market of cheap games, maybe setting the price a little higher will result in your die hards getting it, some non-die hards getting it and then everyone else getting it when it's 50% off in a few months.

This is clearly a game designed to keep you playing to get better scores so the whole "only two hours of content" is pretty subjective.

The story mode is there just to get you going, if anything that's what they shot their foot with, should have left it out and concentrated on adding more challenge modes, several leaderboards etc to really focus on that "I must get a better score" aspect.

I for one think is important for indie devs to start valuing their product otherwise steam will turn into the fucking appstore... Where everyone looses their shit if they are charged more then 0,99 for most things... I'd say we are halfway there already.

Well developer arent always good at business. You look at your competitors and price accordingly sometimes taking a loss at first.

I paid $25, I think it was worth every penny, but price is the sort of thing that everyone has to decide for themselves. There are some games you couldn't pay me to play, others I pay any price for.

@chaser324: I think it's almost unreasonable to shed the "indie game" label, when you are in fact an indie studio making an indie game. I think The Witness is the first "indie" title that I've played which did not feel like an indie game in either scope, game length or content. The Witness felt very much like a fully realized game in ways that the very laser focused Firewatch does not. Superhot has all the qualities, and shortcomings, of an indie game which in term subject it to indie game scrutiny and expectations. The moment these studios start surpassing those expectations will be the moment players stop treating them as mere $10-15 stopgaps between large AAA releases. Like I said before, I think The Witness definitely did that. I don't think Flame in the Flood or Firewatch did. Most important of all is that the game really speaks for itself, much more so than the studio behind it. I would group Invisible Inc with a lot of other "indie" titles even thought KLEI is not really an indie studio, and similarly I would not pay more for Invisible Inc than I would for a typical indie release which I internally categorize as $10-15 products.

I paid like $20 USD. I'm not one to break down dollar per hour, so I'm having fun with it. I'll enjoy it for longer than it took to earn the money to buy it.

I didn't buy it for the campaign. The Endless mode levels will be where the bulk of my time goes with this. The 2 hour thing is silly. I never looked at this game and thought "I gotta see this story through!" It's not why i'm here. If the campaign is why you want to play this, then you're absolutely right. Don't pay full price.

I went to Steam to look at the price, and then immediately wanted to see if I was crazy or if it was just inordinately expensive. I think a major problem in the indie gaming scene is a price expectation that consumers have developed over the years.

So many indie games, regardless of production quality or game genre, have launched at $15 for so long that when something is $25 or more, many people (myself included) automatically become skeptical. I did the same thing with The Witness. Knowing very little about the game, when I saw that it cost $40, I was concerned. Granted, that game has a significant run time and so much content that it is well worth the price, but I had to make sure before dropping the money on the game. I'm a person that drops $60 on AAA titles, too. I think we need to break that trend or indie games might start getting hurt.

@chaser324: I don't think that "indie game" is a meaningful distinction anymore, when there are big publishers willing to release really small things these days. However, there is such a distinction as a the size of a game, or the size of the idea behind a game, in terms of scope, story, breadth of mechanics, and I think that size is proportional to its value to most players. And I think that Superhot is a pretty small game from that standpoint. It's basically one good mechanic with some mildly amusing trimming, yeah?

I... I don't quite understand what you're saying here. The Kickstarter etc was US$14. The full game is about US$20 (22.50) at launch.

The current exchange rate is... 0.74 US Dollar to the Canadian Dollar so that's... CA$30.50.

Only the headline of this thread and your assertion are actually not including the 10% discount (which is included on that US$22.50 price) so we actually need to convert the US$25 price and that makes it... CA$34. So when you say the Canadian price isn't right, you're saying they're overcharging you a Canadian Dollar too much? What??? If you want to say the price is too high then go for it, but this is not you getting screwed over with a bad regional price.

[List of prices by region using current exchange rates]

Does anyone here happen to know how long it was for sale in early access, and at what price? I had heard that it was for sale for 15 USD for a while, and then only taken down relatively recently before the full release. If that's true, it increased in price by about 66%. That said, I've only seen this mentioned by people who are a little to emotional about the price of a videogame, so I don't trust it 100%.

If it's true, I think the price increase is the bigger issue than the price alone.

@brackstone: the backer price was $15 and now the full price is $25 so it's not a dramatic jump but it's still too much. That said I did buy it, cause hey, support devs that are trying something different.

Stop thinking and hit the button!

@brackstone:That is true. It was $15USD as of a few days ago, but only available through Humble Widgets (which I think it just a payment processor and key distributor devs can use). I don't know if that was a preorder, or early access, or what, but it was $10 cheaper. Here's the price chart from isthereanydeal.com https://isthereanydeal.com/#/page:game/price?plain=superhot

That said, a price increase like that for something coming out of early access isn't that uncommon. Superhot's increase is more than most, at least proportionately, but the practice is fairly common.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/comments/47phs8/bundle_stars_save_10_on_superhot_and_get_fps/

Developers are allowed to charge whatever they want for their game, it's up to the individual to decide whether the price is worth what they're asking. For me personally, it's a bit too much especially considering the relatively short length of the "campaign". There are just too many other games I'm interested in that are cheaper than Super Hot. I'd sooner spend the money on buying 2 or 3 other games for that price and wait until Super Hot goes on sale.

Which brings up a point that I try to keep in mind whenever I think games are too expensive for what they're offering. These games, inevitably, go on sale (unless the developer is trying to be cute, which in the case of The Castle Doctrine completely killed the community and ruined the experience for fans). If the price is too high, you just wait until it goes on sale. Problem solved for the most part, especially considering how crucial sales are for developers. I'm sure that future sales came into discussion when deciding the price for the game. I'd like to be able to play the game right now, but I'm not willing to put down what they're asking for and I think that's OK. All that's needed is a little patience and self-control, if someone doesn't have that, then they likely have bigger problems to worry about than a video game being $10 too much.

@shivoa: Your math is slightly off, but the difference only comes out to a dollar or so. It's an insubstantial amount. I should been more clear, I wasn't saying it was a ripoff, it's more of a weird thing I noticed. This whole thing got me thinking about steam exchange rates, since I saw some people saying it was costing drastically more or less in some areas. It seems steam is very inconsistent with it's exchange rates and regional pricing. Sometimes CAD saves a little (Dark Souls 3 is way cheaper proportionately, for example. Seriously, like 10 bucks cheaper, in USD, if you're Canadian.), sometimes it loses a little.

@humanity: @cameron:Yeah the practice is common and fine. It's not an insubstantial increase in this instance, especially considering statements that the game would be $15-$20 USD.

All said and done, I'll probably just get it from GOG once my paypal funds finally transfer.

I paid 20 euros of this and I'm not exactly swimming in money at the moment, but it has still been worth every cent I spent. Ranked around four hours into the story and few challenges so far and I'm loving it so muc h. I hope there'll be continuation in some form. Also, I'd just like to say...

SUPERHOT IS THE MOST INNOVATIVE SHOOTER I'VE PLAYED IN YEARS!

Use this discount and join me now : http://superhotgame.com/discount/#5C681C83EE95

@grulet: I spent like 20 minutes just reading that chat channel, repressing the urge to screencap like every single screen. It's so perfect.

Personally, the race to the bottom on indie game prices has been something I've worried about for the past few years. I've put hours and hours into games that were $15 at release and I maybe picked up on sale for a fraction of that. I typically play and complete and buy way more indie games than I ever bother with $60 to $80 AAA titles, and sometimes the content (especially in terms of quality) is comparable between AAA and indie. Even if it's not in terms of actual gameplay, then along the lines of something like Her Story, where I found myself thinking about that game a lot for long after I was "satisfied" with it.

It's harder than ever to make it as an independent developer, and there's not the same guarantee of income when/if you get folded into a bundle or steam sale. In that context, folks who do the armchair economist thing and take a prescriptive view of the market like "well, coming in at this price point is what other developers are doing so you should too" aren't really doing the developers any favours. The indie games market isn't what it used to be. The Steam storefront isn't what it used to be, and thanks to the saturation in that space, it's no longer a viable strategy to do exactly what everyone else is doing and hope that kinda works out for you.

So I'm glad to see more developers trying to come in at a higher price point from the jump. It gives them a little bit more room to incrementally come down in price over time, and hopefully it means that attitudes will start to shift in terms of valuing that work. Making games is hard. Making games is also profoundly expensive, and crowdfunding and crash sales and humble bundles do nothing but distort the realities of that situation. I'm not even saying that the Superhot developers are doing this in some kind of principled stand. The Canadian price point in particular is exacerbated by a wide range of issues with the economy that are well beyond the control of the developers.

To be clear, I backed Superhot on Kickstarter and even I was surprised to see the price point when it launched. Having played through a good chunk of the game so far, if I had picked it up at that price, I think I'd be satisfied with what I got. That comes from a lot of things. I really like ASCII art, I really like the in-mission aesthetic. I really, really like the mechanics. A lot of what this game does checks a lot of boxes for me that may not even exist for some people. That's kind of the problem with trying to push the game price vs. game content argument. It's tied to so many subjective aspects like taste and interest and how you spend your time that I'm fine with reviews that maybe bring it up as a side point, but it's real hard to build a sound argument explicitly on that metric.

I went ahead and used this. Thanks!

The only bad problem here is that it suck seeing prices in usd and have to convert it to cnd using google. Games that I would like to buy (in us price) becomes higher in canadian dollars, and then i'm less willing to buy.

You have universal health care and a culture that doesn't glorify guns and mass murderers, we have slightly cheaper games. I think you got the better hand.