Apparently digital sales, And steam in particular, have actually exasperated or brought back that dynamic more recently. It’s the sale situation. Apparently developers have little say in how much discount and when it’s discounted. Which can reduce margins for publishers and developers. Which puts more impetus on high volume early sales. It’s not about stocks neccisarily it’s about making sure a bulk of sales happen at the highest price.
But that’s basically feeding into the same marketing system already established. It’s behind the timed drm. The pre orders. The press embargoes. Strikes me that it’s largely created by a publication model that’s too reliant on marketing hype, shipping unfinished product, or not very good games. Then nickel and diming people on drm, micro transactions, And multi-player/social systems borrowed from mobile. Which are curiously often the sorce of bugs and poor reviews.
And amid all that it’s not clear that piracy is as much of a factor as all that nonsense. Like I said multiple publishers or developers. Especially Indy or newer groups. Have stated that they haven’t found the rigmarole to be worth monetary and pr costs. And have shown great success with not forcing pre orders, restricting press, shipping broken products and leaving them broken, And loading them down with microtransactions and horse armor.
