So the up to 65% for Black Friday.. and some sellers doubling prices... CGTrader should monitor this!
Discussion started by wing688
CGTrader should lock the prices so sellers don't cheat when there is a sale like the time limited Black Friday day.
I had many models in my wish list. I managed buying some thanks to the sale from honest sellers that didn't raise the price. But I had to avoid buying others from sellers that more than raised the price for their models.. some really doubled so the actual price is like when there isn't even the usual 30% off.
Why CGTrader didn't lock prices preventing sellers from cheating ? They should not allow dishonest sellers to do that.
Answers
1
according to me, blocking seller's ability to adjust the prices of their models , even during the promotional period, wouldn't be an honest approach. However, CGT will should decrease products visibility for sellers who played to increase theirs prices during this period, it would be more cunning ;)
1
I don't think this statistic is a good idea.
Why it need anyway? Make statistics, decrease products visibility...
If some want change price it is on him, sad thing is that is someone was waiting for discount to buy it, but later realize that price increaed.
I change prices time by time to understand correct price for model.
Btw i changed some model prices UP some DOWN, so i hope i'm not that cheater in this post :)
I didn't have any of your models in my wish list to check for buying during the Black Friday sale. But CGTrader should absolutely lock any seller from changing the price of any model even 1 week before a sale starts. What I saw is some sellers raising price during the sale from like $60 to $100 or from $40 to $90 and so on .. So even with 60% discount the "discounted" price ended up being the same or higher than with the usual 30% discount. And of course I skipped those. While I spent $250 buying from sellers models that were at $50 and dropped down to $25 or from $70 down to $35.
It is just a shame if any seller uses the sales time to cheat by raising prices so that the actual price becomes not discounted at all, not even with the usual 30% that CGTrader does.
A buyer that doesn't know the previous actual price for the model gets ripped off by the seller this way. And that shouldn't be allowed. A seller that raises any product price during the sale should get banned and fined by CGTrader, in many countries it is a legal crime to raise price during sales.
this can be done optionally in the control panel. Personally I have nothing to hide from the buyer.
Same here, i constantly change my prices up and down (usually UP :] ), trying to find optimal ones. Not sure how it would look in the statistics and what message average buyer could read by looking at it.
1
CG Trader is making discounts almost every week. It is chaotic and i never know how much they will devalue the price of my work. So, i need to see and adjust the price accordingly every time. Another option would be to simply set lower price here and disable all discounts. That is something i would definitely do if CG Trader would lock my ability to change price like you suggest.
2
Sorry but 65% discount is ridiculous in my opinion. I agree with tomislavveg that it is very chaotic with all this discount promotions week by week. And beside this every new account get 30% off. I can't remember when I have sell a 3D model for full price I've set. In general I think discounts are a good thing for sellers and buyer but not every week. Second: 30% discount is more than fair in my opinion. There is no need for 65%. A good 3D model MUST have a good price. There are a lot of idiots out there which undercut them self. This will poisoned the whole market and community. I agree that increasing the prices while a discount action is not very charming but that's an cause and effect thing. Before I've wrote this post I've seen that currently a 65% discount is running and have decide to turn off the 'Participate in Sale offs' button in my account settings for the next 9 hours. I think my prices are more than fair and most of the time buyers get 30% off. But 65% off is close to give away.
Don't you think that CGTrader makes the discount continously because sales are too low and most buyers just don't buy at full price ?
The main customers for 3D models on online shops like this one are indie developers and very small software houses. The big software houses and any other big engineering or architecture business usually has its own employees that can make as many 3D models as they wish, they have expensive motion capture hardware, they hire actors and so on...
The small and very small ones can't afford that.
Prices fell since Steam and Apple's App Store became a reality and single freelancers as well as very small software houses got a chance to grow.
Most assets on the Unity Assets Store are pretty cheap too. (And prices on Unreal Engine 4 Marketplace as well as the CryEngine online shop usually aren't high either)
Expecting to sell 3D Engine assets and models to the expensive prices that were set before by big businesses and software houses on the market that were paying and mostly are still paying even $1million+ for premium support and custom releases of 3D Engines to make games is just something that is not true anymore. And these big businesses rarely buy anything on these online shops even when they could.
Just like indie developers are clearly forced to sell their games at very cheap prices (mostly from $1.99 to $15.99 on mobile and desktop) or almost no customers would buy.. 3D artists and 3D Engine assets developers shouldn't raise their products prices much thinking that a few copies at an high price would make a bigger profit.. it just won't work that way... Although it is true that for selling games on Steam there are obviously millions or potential customers.. most indie games end up selling from just 5,000 to 150,000 copies and few get the higher numbers. And of course for code plugin assets and 3D models the potential customers would be some thousands worldwide instead of millions but few can afford buying at high prices because few manage making a lot of money out of their games (and the lucky ones would then become average sized software houses so hiring their own employees including 3D artists...)
If I create a new model only for selling or rework an existing model for selling, it costs me time and time is money. If I have an effort of 1 or 2 days to finish a product (modeling, texturing, shading, rendering etc.) and sell it for 20$ I have to sell it 10 to 20 times (better 20 to 40 times) to break even. But I can't sure I will it sell much often. Because I don't know how big is the buying power on the market place and how high the interests in this kind of 3D model. If I decide to lower the price I need more sales. If I increase the price I need less sales. Sure I could extreme lower the price in hope to reach very high sale counts. But if there is no market and buying power, it is useless.
I truly understand that small enterprises and Indy developers haven't big budgets to sell lots of high quality 3D model for full price. But it can't be the solution to force the whole market with low prices. And promote sales after sales wouldn't solve the problem of low sales in long term. That's not how economics work.
I sell 3D models on CGT since few years. I've decide to participate in sale offs in 2015 and see this works. But I don't think it would work much better if there is every week another sales off or discounts up to 65%. This is rubbish in my opinion.
Totally agree with you Sixam... wing688 if you are cheap developer, don't assume others are same as you. This is not Walmart where you buy food and daily necessities. You need 3D models to make money with them. And you get them for 10 times lower price and less then what you would need to pay professional artist with experience to do custom work for you. Buy or don't buy, it's that simple. You act as if 3D models here are some mass produced products form factory, made by factory machines or AI. Individuals are behind every and each of them, years of study and practice and hard work. Sleepless nights, frustrations, enthusiasm, energy and love, all of that is behind every 3D model which is on sale here. Made by individuals who need to pay bills and buy food. Some have families they need to take care of. By complaining about price for something which is 10 times lower then it's value, you are simply being cheap and disrespectful.
0
It is quite silly that 3D artists think to be working harder than indie developers coding games with 3D Engines ... Seriously?
And indie developers can't sell their games at $60+ like big software houses do. Then what? Should indie developers cry wolf and blame Steam or Apple App Store for too low market prices ?
Where i said 3D artists work harder then developers? I didn't said that. We all work hard, but we need to respect each other. When you go to store to buy, i don't know, new phone. Do you come and say: "oh, im indie developer and i don't have money, so can you please give me this new iphone for xx instead of xxxx"? Of course you don't say, that would be crazy right. But why you think it is normal and ok to do such things here? Market and competition has driven prices of 3D models to rock bottom. I don't see how this can possibly go any lower without this industry to become non viable option to make a living.
What are you babbling about? Really? Don' t make me say things I didn't say.
So you are telling me that shops don't make sales and expensive products don't get discounted to the general public, uh? In which reality ?
You and other 3D artists are complaining about the current state of the whole market since Steam and the Apple App Store changed everything... Sorry but that is pretty childish to whine about that.
So indie developers like me should whine and claim that on Steam any game should be priced at $90+ and people should obey and buy it and that's it ? Same goes for Android and Apple App Store too ?
That is not going to happen. It won't happen. It's a free market and yes products prices fell even too much but then what ?
An indie developer as well as small software houses can't dare selling their games at $50+ like big software houses do. Same goes for apps and any software... Autodesk, Microsoft, Adobe and other big corporations can set very high insane prices and get away with it, small software houses and freelancers can't do that for sure.. they would end up with just a few customers.
So if you and others enjoy selling just a few copies of your products to some rich people with money to waste and that's it you are surely free to do that BUT the market works otherwise. 3D models on online shops can't be priced the same as expensive copyrights models like the CGI ones of Lord Of The Rings or Transformers or Star Wars franchises... I really doubt that either here or on competing shops very expensive $500+ 3D models have sold so many copies, I doubt that big corporations would bother looking on these shops buying assets when they have their own employees, their own 3D artists making hundreds or thousands of 3D models every single year.. which is far cheaper in the long run.
So yes an indie developer might act against the current market state and price a game on Steam at $90 and maybe on Android and Apple App Store the mobile version at $30 ... how many copies would be sold? A few hundreds? Maybe. Maybe a few thousands with a bit of luck with rich people buying? Maybe. But surely there would be no chance selling 100,000+ copies like the $9.99 or $12.99 or $15.99 indie games that manage making a good profit... despite being millions of potential customers and many buying expensive AAA $60+ games published by big software houses.
The indie products can even be better than many AAA titles but most customers expect them to be cheaper regardless of the effort that was put into making them. Whining and complaining won't chance that or anything. The market won't raise the prices just because some people would enjoy selling few copies at very high prices. That is not going to happen. Customers would just stop buying, the market would freeze. That is the way it is. Was it better before Steam and Apple App Store changed the market? Surely for the few that were dominating the market before and selling at very high prices yes, indeed their point of view says that it was easier for them with a almost no real competition and closed market in which for becoming a 3D artist or a game developer the only way really was being hired by big software houses and even the shareware market required quite some money to develop anything to sell. The market was tiny with few competitors before.. and that would be just a decade away although really hard competition started 5-6 years ago.
3
Indie developer just need to contact the artist, explain his financial situation, show his project. In most cases, I make concessions, I do a price reduction.
But it's stupid to make a discount to everyone. I have customers who offer 1000$ for the model that I usually sell for 100$
You can describe many situations when there is a need to buy a model even having your own 3D artist at the firm.
But we deviated from the essence of the question. It's about honest actions, and not about inflated prices on the model.
That is why I vote for the introduction of price statistics.
Let it be optionally activated from the panel of each artist.
Whoever is willing to be honest will use this system.
+1 Really a good idea.
0
Yeah really, cgtrader should ban every seller that's daring to set their prices at will, because that's a crime in MANY countries (probably Iran and North Korea)... LOL.
If you already monitoring prices of products that you plan to purchace, then what is your problem? If you see that certain seller's discount is a fake one, then simply don't buy from him. At least you have a choise. In my country all the food items are selling at discounted prices all the time, yet food prices are biggest in the whole freaking EU. Every person is aware that most discounts are fake, yet many rigorously hunts for biggest discount, like it was Olympic games. It's a free economics you know, if you don't like it, you don't buy it.
Hello @lemonadeCG
Lol, I didn't notice that in my country, food products were particularly expensive (??)
Perhaps you should also consider the purchasing power of the of the EU residents and your country ?
On the other hand in my country,false discounts are prohibited the service of the frauds
repression controls that the origin price was not artificially increased.
So you can add France in your list with Iran and North Korea :)))
but I agree with your point of view about the free market, and about the relevance
of a buyer when he has to make a choice
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