{"id":214,"date":"2025-09-04T16:17:25","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T16:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/?p=214"},"modified":"2025-09-04T16:17:25","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T16:17:25","slug":"indie-pricing-why-silksong-can-be-sold-for-20-and-smaller-indie-games-cost-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/04\/indie-pricing-why-silksong-can-be-sold-for-20-and-smaller-indie-games-cost-30\/","title":{"rendered":"Indie pricing: Why Silksong can be sold for $20 and smaller indie games cost $30"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Why is a sequel to one of the most beloved modern indies priced lower than a two hour experimental platformer or a boutique narrative game?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Silksong strategy: Volume over margin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Silksong is going to sell dozens of millions of copies!<\/strong> It has been hyped and expected for many years. The studio does not need to squeeze higher margins from each purchase because <strong>the scale of the audience will make up for it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This strategy works for Team Cherry and maybe for Toby Fox, but the rest of us have to approach things differently \ud83e\udd72. This charts explains it well \ud83d\udc47<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"546\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-215\" style=\"width:666px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image-300x160.png 300w, https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image-768x410.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Smaller indie games strategy: Base price sets perceived value and discount culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the saddest realities in digital shops is that <strong>most players perceive the value of a game from its base price<\/strong>. When players are discovering new games, <strong>an accessible $10 base price tag is immediately perceived as bad quality game, while a thirty dollar tag sets a higher bar of expectation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As an example, Spy Bros. originally had a $7,99 price tag. It did not sell well, so I updated it to $12,99, and now it&#8217;s selling a few hundreds (that&#8217;s a LOT for smaller indie games!) every time we have it on discount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"737\" height=\"405\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image-2.png 737w, https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image-2-300x165.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 737px) 100vw, 737px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The wider lesson<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Indie pricing is not about how many hours of content a game delivers or its quality.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00b7 For Hollow Knight: Silksong, $20 is about being accessible and fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00b7 For smaller games, $30 is about developers trying to survive in a fierce competitive industry \ud83d\ude05<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you for your time reading this. I hope you enjoyed it!<br>Yours truly, Pablo Navarro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why is a sequel to one of the most beloved modern indies priced lower than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27,20,21,23,25,26],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rawr-stuff","tag-bros","tag-hollow","tag-knight","tag-pricing","tag-rawrlab","tag-spy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawrlab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}