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Which publication of Inside a Star-Filled Sky should I get?
For $1.99, I can get this game from Steam. This produces an instance that has Steam's wrapper DRM and is Windows-only.
For $7.99, I can get this game from Playism. This produces an instance that is DRM-free and has Windows and Mac versions.
For $12, I can get this game directly from the dev. This produces an instance that is DRM-free; has Windows, Mac, and Linux versions; comes with the source code; and doesn't go through a middleman.
Discuss.
Comments
You were the one who posted a thread with the title "DRM-free is better than Steam" or something to that effect.
Yes, I know. Obviously, when the Steam version costs less, there is an economic trade-off involved. I'm most curious about how to value the DRM-free status of a product.
DRM-free status of software is a non-market good. One could apply a contingent valuation method and ask me how much I'd be willing to pay for DRM-free status, by itself. However, that would be a hard question for me to answer, especially since I know too much and can't give you a simple answer.
You could try a revealed-preference method such as hedonic valuation to try to figure out how much I'm willing to pay. Unfortunately the data you might find, despite my record-keeping of my digital game purchase records, is quite mixed, and muddled by the availability of bundles. Besides them, there is probably a correlation between lower prices and more DRM, but that's partly because Steam puts everything into massive sales, and one could argue that the correlation is unrelated to causation and has more to do with Steam's ability for bulk sales.
Google also seems to suggest I check this out but I think at this point I'm getting too far in over my head.
For me the positive of being able to easily organize all my games in one place outweighs the negative of Steam's relatively benign DRM. So I'd obviously pick the Steam version.
In other news, I recently heard that Valve hired an in-house economist.
Ten bucks cheaper plus organization? Unless I were to use the source code for something important (or don't use Windows, of course), I'd pick Steam long before I'd pick the other.
Organization?
Oh, do you mean the idea of making Steam your one-stop shop for accessing your games? Fair enough, I guess, though my utility function differs because I organize my games by myself by default anyway.
Anyhow, Inside a Star-Filled Sky, DRM-free, Windows/Mac, from Playism, will be $3.99 tomorrow on Playism. I might get that.