this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
892 points (98.5% liked)

Games

46017 readers
1777 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 75 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

This is a really basic business concept; business 101 stuff. They definitely didn't make it up, they're just using it.

It works against the general population, if this particular one doesn't, don't get too busy strutting, there is almost certainly something else that does work on you.

Buy shit because you need/want it, not because it's a deal.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 39 minutes ago

The $8 tier has been around for a decade, for exactly this reason. MMO subscriptions, bargain games, podcasts, delivery fees. People love charging you $8

[–] Mniot@programming.dev 5 points 5 hours ago

It works against the general population, if this particular one doesn’t, don’t get too busy strutting, there is almost certainly something else that does work on you.

That is very well put! I feel like I've talked to so many people who see one ad that doesn't land and say, "ads don't work on me."

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 31 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Same reason that shit on TV is five easy payments of 29.95.

I'm willing g to spend $29. I'll even spend $29 five times. But not $150.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 17 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I had my sewer line backing up into my basement a couple of months ago. My regular plumber was busy so I had to call in a company that I knew was an overpriced scam ("Dream Team" lol) but I had no choice since I had guests in the house for my father's funeral. They came and of course they couldn't clear the line and said they had to dig up and replace the whole thing. The guy had a special tablet that he showed me the three options and the prices on and it initially showed them all in dollars per month with "zero-interest financing". I was like dude just show me the total cost. The three options were $17K, $22K and $36K total but the monthly payments actually decreased with increasing total price (naturally the payment option didn't show how many total payments you would have to make).

Fortunately I called my regular plumber and he was so outraged at these motherfuckers that he came out that afternoon and cleared my line for me. Total cost $850.

[–] Blumpkinhead@lemmy.world 6 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Holy shit. Hold on to that plumber, lol.

He does like to launch into racist rants, but sometimes you just gotta hold your nose and swallow.

[–] AlecSadler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The only time this breaks down for me though is that I still struggle to pay $0.99 for a mobile app I use often sometimes. Really not sure what it is.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It's wild, I released a shareware music creation app for Windows back in 2000 and it was easy to get people to pay $29.95 for it. I now have a vastly superior iOS version and nobody's willing to pay a dollar for it. It's a very depressing situation for an independent developer.

[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah. I used to have a $20 shareware product back when kagi was a payment processor. Apple introduced $1 pricing as a dick waving contest and fucked the entire indy developer community.

I originally sold my app on Beyond.com (which was originally software.net). They took 10% which didn't seem too bad. One day they contacted me about giving my app a "freebate" -- basically the app was still $29.95 but buyers could fill out a form and send it in and eventually (like months later) get their $29.95 back. Per their data only about half of buyers ever bothered to do this so it was effectively a 50% off deal. Beyond.com was supposed to give me about $10 per copy sold instead of the normal $27 to cover the freebate and they would make $5 per copy instead of their normal $3.

I said OK and they featured my app on their front page and sales went up like 100X and I was of course pretty happy. The funny part was that their accounting system was all fucked up and I kept getting $27 per copy sold even though the freebate was still in place. I actually tried contacting them multiple times about this to get the situation corrected and I could never get through to anybody who had any clue about what was going on. Eventually they went bankrupt and shut down and years later I got one of those class-action settlement checks in the mail without any explanation of what it was for. Maybe sales of my app were even better than they were telling me, I dunno. I've never once met a person in the real world who has ever even heard of the app so that doesn't seem very likely.