Popular Steam Game Raises Price After 7 Years Without A Sale

Critically acclaimed base building success Factorio is a funny duck. Since its Steam release in 2016, the game has never been released for sale. And now the developer behind Factorio is changing the price of its popular game, but it’s not getting a discount. Instead, the price jumps $5 the next week. The developers blamed inflation for the sudden price increase, and interestingly, the overall community reaction has been mostly positive.

Since its release seven years ago on Steam, Factorio has been a popular game, even if it never went on sale. On the game’s Steam page, it has a warning right away letting people know that its developers have no plans to “enter into any sale or reduce the price for the foreseeable future”. This will still be the case after it fell from $30 to $35 on January 26.

“This is an adjustment to account for the level of inflation since Steam was released in 2016”, the official Factorio Twitter account tweeted. You can expect a flood of angry responses from gamers, but it looks like the devs have done a good job of being transparent with their community, such as giving them lots of information about the price change at to come. Factorio also avoided microtransactions and other exploitative or costly DLCs. The bottom line is that not only are people okay with this price increase, but many are suggesting that the studio is providing more ways for gamers to financially support the game.

“Good, but now give me extra to spend more money [on] this game!” tweeted one player. “Honestly would like to see more ways to support the game as I already own it,” another fan tweeted.

Wube Software

You might be wondering why a studio would never let their game be part of a Steam sale for almost a decade. According to the creators of Factorio in a Forum post 2016it’s about respecting the players who bought the game, not rewarding people who “hesitate” to buy it at a lower price.

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“If you think [Factorio is] priced too high, then it’s your choice not to buy, and hopefully with enough time and further development, we’ll be able to convince you of its value.

Factorio isn’t the only game on Steam making changes to make more money as the economy continues to crash. Military shooter Squad is backtracking on a promise made by its developers to never make paid DLC or cosmetics. In a future update, Squad will receive its first paid DLC in the form of new in-game emotes.

Here’s what the team behind the online milsim shooter had to say on steam about new upcoming paid cosmetics:

As we look to the future, we see a long and healthy life for Squad. It has a large and dedicated player base. We have plans for more updates and to support the game beyond 2023. While many of these planned updates will be free, we also realize that we need a way to continue funding the squad development. Paid content like emotes is one of those ways to help fund this development and continue our work to improve the game.

Compared to how people reacted to Factorio’s price increase, the response from the Squad gaming community was far less positive, with some feeling betrayed after being promised that it wouldn’t happen. However, some were more open to the new option, understanding that developing a game isn’t easy or free and that at some point studios need a way to generate more revenue to help keep the lights on. lit. This is especially true as inflation continues to be a problem around the world.