SemioNerd

When Mistakes make Bestsellers.

Two days ago a friend of mine wrote me: “check The Red Solstice on Steam, it seems interesting”. I did and it was: an early-access indie co-op game, created by Croatian developer Ironward. And the price is good: $19.99 with a 40% early access discount that makes it $14.99. For two copies. The price is really good. Maybe too good...

Apparently the price was intended for one copy, and a mistake on Steam made it the price for two! The news circulated quickly, also because the mistake was to be corrected the very next day. Many hungry gamers rushed to buy the underpriced game, and the developers had to give new extra keys to their supporters on Kickstarter to make up for the mistake.

Good day for gamers, bad day for developers? Not really: El Oschuro, one of the developers made an announcement on steam, saying that The Red Solstice had been on the Steam Top ten the all week and had 1,000 current players all the weekend. Not bad at all, even less for an indie!

Maybe it could seem that the mistake meant a big loss of money for the developers, but I'm convinced that all the buzz around the game will end up as a very big advertising campaign, and that having a huge lot of people playing a co-op game (that is actually pretty good) will result in a lot more potential buyers in the future.

If so, Ironward will have to thank Steam for the happy mistake...