Wow, interesting data!... I have curiosity for this and also for donate buttons stats

16,000??
...
*sigh*

Cheap gits..

I don't know... I would feel ashamed of myself to give the guys less than 5 bucks for it... actually I would have given them at least 10 if not more... I mean this is the most awesome game of the last years!

cheap gits indeed...

do those guys even know that with paypal's fees they're probably actually *losing money* if you only donate one cent?

and this is why trusting in the good will of others isn't often reliable :D

Maybe if they offered a choice.
5 bucks or so for the game.
7-10 bucks for the game plus some kind of extra.

I'd be more curious to know how much this could potentially help them in the long run. I'm sure many people got World of Goo that never would have if it wasn't practically free. These may be more commercial gamers, less involved with independent gaming. They may in turn fall in love with the game and tell their friends. When they tell their friends and spread the word, the birthday sale will be over. Will their friends buy the game at full price? Possibly.

I doubt they'd be extending the sale if they didn't think it'd help them in the long run.

A big part of this is greed/carelessness, and a big part is people really not understanding the complexity of the issue. Most have to learn it the hard way (by buying the game for 1 cent and then coming here to read about it). Perhaps the best pay-your-own-amounters are those of us who screwed somebody once and then learned our lesson.

I remember the first time I paid under a dollar for something I knew was worth over fifteen, the author (it was a book in digital form) emailed me to say that nobody had ever offered so little before and that he'd lost most of it to Paypal. I apologized and explained that I was a relatively poor student, and he replied, "Well that's certainly understandable. You should have just emailed me; it's yours to have."

This isn't that bad really, that's $100,000-ish for a studio of only 2 guys is a lot of money in a week, AND in addition the sales on Steam - at full price - went up 40 percent for the week.

So what do you think; is our culture large enough yet for anybody to offer this kind of deal to the masses and be supported in return?

What did all the advertising cost? You have to factor that in as well. Might be hard for a person with no base to make this kind of money right away.

For everyone who used paypal look closely at their site they specifically mention in a link under paypal to use a credit card or bank account so they are not gimped by the fees.

They do not want to use paypal except paying through paypal with a credit card so do it.

another interesting pay-what-you-want:

www.paythegame.net :>

almost an indie game itself.

(well, actually, the whole life is a game and paythegame is just the highscore list)

"The harsh part of it all..."

They have made 100,000 in one week and have now actually extended the same offer.

Oh, how harsh... terrible... I have to cry. :(

I love how everyone hones in on the .01 cent thing while ignoring the big picture--2Dboy MADE money over all. They're extending the deal for Pete's sake!!! I don't think they're looking at this as a failure or as proof that people are terrible and should go hang themselves.

Hell, this deal even increased their sales on Steam where the game wasn't even ON sale. The word of mouth alone was probably worth the paypal transaction fees.

If you offer something for .01 cent how can you be upset when they take you up on your offer?!? They could have set the price so that it started where they made a profit. THEY chose not to and they CONTINUE to chose not to.

P.S. For the record, I bought two copies during the sale. One for five dollars and then a second copy for three dollars (I sent the second copy to my bro). This is on top of already buying it for my Wii.

I have to say that this article is very disingenuous. From the chart posted above these guys clearly made a ton of money -- and that's not counting the other sources such as Steam. At the same time they benefited from a lot of free advertising (such as this post) and word of mouth buzz. So, really, what was the downside to this "experiment" (read marketing stunt)?

Wow, that's a lot of copies 'sold' in a week. I'm actually surprised how the sales on steam and wiiware went up while the game was available for free.

Great marketing move, but a 25 cent minimum could've helped to pay the paypal fees. I wonder if that would've affected the 16k copies sold for a cent.

25 cents? I think they should have made it a buck minimum. Come on, if you don't have a buck... And how many of those 17000 penny payers could they have gotten 99 more cents out of.

Still, not bad. Not bad at all.

If the minimum had been $1, and half the people that paid less than that had paid a full $1, they would have had only an additional 5% profit.

But then they couldn't have called it a "pay whatever you want" sale. They'd have to call it a "Pay a dollar or more sale", which may have actually made some people pay less.

Also, the publicity around it being truly "pay what you want" was huge.

yeah... while it's a good idea, people are cheap bastards.. $0.01 ? COME ON!

Cheap bastards! They deserve more for their hard solid work.

What's more disgusting is I just went and searched the mainstream blog sites and saw a couple of people complaining about how they wasted one cent on a boring crap game. Damn those people, it might not appeal to you, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a solid title.

Well after seeing this post and ranting, I'm off and buying the Wii version on my GF's machine just to support these guys.

Haha! 2DBoy already made their money. This event had less to do with selling the game, and more to do with challenging the people who still wanted it. There's no way around it! If you paid a penny for this game you ARE cheeeaaap! Don't even try to justify it with "Well, they still made money" or "If they didn't want me to pay that little, they shouldn't have offered it." Haha, maaan. It's like watching people explain why they just ate a cheeseburger out of the garbage. "Well, it was still kinda tasty, and it's not like I was stealing it from anybody!" Heh, no kiddin'?

Meanwhile, I'm sure this shows the developers that next time they hear people complain about the price of their games, they can just chuckle and put their headphones back on. No point sweating over e-mails from a bunch of angry pennies.

well, i paid more than 0.01 dollars. i thought the game was pretty enjoyable. i like the stage with the gravity/orbit elements involved. although, some stages were not intuitive hehe.

I've seen a few people doing these experiments lately, it's rather interesting. I'm curious as to how much the sales would lower if the minimum price was set to 50 cents rather than 1 cent, I'm willing to bet it would drop a lot. Interesting concept none the less. I'm also surprised Paypal allows a transaction in which they lose out on, seems like they would want to avoid that. Thanks for sharing the article, I'll have to check out the game, for more than 1 cent.