This is something I thought about this evening due to the patch on Steam, and I thought it'd make a good discussion. Where would be the best place to buy Dredmor, both in terms of user-friendliness and support for GLG? I'm guessing Desura is, financially, but you're still tied to their patching system and there's no RotDG yet. Gamefly currently has a problem with RotDG, and again, tied to a client. Steam is... Steam. Controversial for some, great for others. I'm nonplussed. With no appearance on GamersGate or GOG, there's no client-free way to buy it (I think), which I find a little sad. It'd be good if there was a version where GLG had proper control over the patching (i.e. they release it themselves and also host it), and if something went wrong a hotfix could quickly be deployed. Also; what would support GLG more? A Dredmor t-shirt or a repurchase of the game?
The Desura standalone version is actually available now, on both windows and linux. No need to download the client anymore. I have absolutely no idea what kind of cut Desura takes out of those transactions though, compared to Steam. But that's probably the way I would go. (or buy gift copies for friends on Steam)
I see. Desura may be where I get it, but I might wait for RotDG first. I looked up the shirts. $37 shipping to the UK for one t-shirt (that's twice the price of the t-shirt itself). I'm laughing so hard right now, and I shouldn't be.
Shirts that cost two or even three times the price of the game they're promoting always rub me the wrong way. As much as I'd love a Dungeons of Dredmor shirt, I can't justify paying twenty-ish dollars for one. It's doubly distressing that there's really no way to know what kind of cut the devs get per shirt sale - do they make pennies or dollars per shirt?
Steam has the advantage that it shows when you are playing it and thus your steam friends get exposed to the game.
I can't find the citation but I remember Nicholas saying somewhere that Topatoco was a good company and that Gaslamp was getting a good return on the price.
Yeah, I read that post. But still, what is a "good return"? In order to be able to guesstimate that, you'd have to also know how much a "bad return" would be, and I'm willing to bet none of us know that, either. And they're not supposed to give absolute numbers... for some reason, saying, "we make about a buck fifty per shirt" is some sort of hush-hush-breaking, trade-secret-revealing, NDR-shattering no-no.
I don't mind that, I can't expect them to sell a shirt for $10. It's just the recommended shipping, for me, takes the price from $18.50 to something like $55, which for one t-shirt is absolutely ridiculous. Not the fault of Topatoco or GLG, of course, but for me it's prohibitive.
Yeah, TopatoCo are really, really great. There's a reason why we went with them as opposed to other shirt vendors. Basically, it's a dude who had a webcomic, and needed to sell shirts, and so he got a bunch of other webcomic people together and asked "Hey do you want to sell shirts" and now it's a thing. So they're creator-owned, and as a result they work really hard to be attractive to the little guy. Also, their mascot is a potato made out of poison, and if that's not Dredmor-y, what is? In terms of revenue streams: we make the same amount of money on everything, really. So it doesn't matter where you buy things from.
It just makes me wish I had more disposable income atm; I'd love a Dredmor shirt or mug or diggle plushie or somesuch, but really can't afford any of it (much less with shipping) right now.
So you won't judge me if I buy a second copy of DoD/RotDG from Desura? Out of curiosity, if I use their standalone version(s), do they still distribute the patches?
