Did you ever own a lemonade stand where customers didn’t always want to pay full price? Maybe you wanted to sell your product for as low as $1, but customers still wouldn’t bite. There were those reluctant customers who only wanted to try it if they could get a great deal. For those people “Pay what you want” was music to their ears. When it comes to video games I am one of those people. If you are anything like me then IndieGameStand might be your new favourite game service.
IndieGameStand is a “Pay what you want” game service which highlights a new indie game every four days. The service lets you buy individual games and game bundles at the low-cost of whatever price you feel like. One can only assume that you could get away with paying significantly less than $1 for games, but there are some incentives to avoid being shamefully cheap. What are these incentives you may ask?
For starters, many of these game come with Steam and Desura keys. Every game has a suggested price and if you pay less than $1 you won’t be getting Steam keys with your game. Another incentive is that 10% of proceeds for every purchase will go towards charities such as Child’s Play. So in theory you could pay 10 cents, not get a Steam key, and only have a penny go towards charity, but isn’t the alternative much better?
One small final thing to point out. If cheap Steam codes and giving to Charity aren’t your thing then it should be noted that every game you buy from IndieGameStand is DRM-free. This means that any game you purchase can be downloaded anytime and to multiple computers and I think that is pretty sweet.
IndieGameStand doesn’t go live until September 26th, but it seems like another option for indie games to get a chance at popularity.There is currently a Pre-launch promotion. Anyone who creates an account before launch will get a free game. The site also offers a game submissions program. So if you like either playing or making indie game than this might be something to keep an eye on. For more info check out https://indiegamestand.com/ .
