Remember last Christmas, when publisher QubicGames gave away 10 Switch titles for free? The kindly promotion – which meant you could claim 100% off the price of 10 of the publisher's titles, as long as you already owned another QubicGames release – propelled the free games to the top of the eShop charts, because Nintendo ranks downloads over 14 days, regardless of how much a game costs.
However, we won't be seeing this kind of promotion again, as it has transpired that Nintendo has closed the loophole which allows publishers to give away their games for free as long as the buyer already owns another one of their titles and still have them appear in the charts. The promotions can still be done, but the publishers won't benefit from an increased presence on the eShop – which basically makes such a promotion redundant.
While this clever way of "gaming" the eShop is no longer a valid option, the issue of companies applying deep discounts to their titles to boost them to the top of the eShop charts remains, and is unlikely to vanish as quickly. Games can still have their prices slashed by 90% and still be included in the charts.
[source mcvuk.com]
Comments 60
Still not interested by 100% discount eshop games as i still insist physical games.
Physical or no buy.
Some games had 99% off too recently.
@Anti-Matter They you are missing out on many good games.
I think the only real reason to do this is because a 30% cut of nothing is still nothing. Sucks to see because some of those free titles were actually quite entertaining and I wouldn't have played them otherwise.
That's a bummer. I've been picking up all of Qubic's free games to make sure that I'd be eligible in case they applied it to one that I actually want to play but I guess that was for nothing then.
Nintendo still wanting that money. lol
AWWWW man I loved picking up free switch games Bummer welp nothing to really cry about but I bet later the more I think about it the mader I will get. But at least you can do 99% its going to be like one cent.
@Joeynator3000 Like really.
For all the complaining about the eShop, I like it. It's fun to scroll through all the sales each week then look up games that catch my eye.
There are tons of Youtube channels that roundup all the best games on sale each week so if anyone feels bogged down it takes no more than 5 minutes of research to figure everything out.
This feels like a plaster on a gaping wound. It is not really addressing the actual problem that devs need to do big discounts like this in order to get noticed on the shop. Nintendo should really try and make the games more easy to discover.
If rankings were based on a mixture of revenue earned against the non-discounted listing price or something, this ranking exploitation could be avoided, maybe.
Some sort of weighted system anyway, as to not have $10 software compete with full price retail games.
Good. Nintendo should give me a raise! Aaaeghhhh!
Loophole closure having transpired when, exactly? I was picking up a planned bunch just last night, and went from S.N.I.P.E.R. page to Urban Flow one only to find I was no longer being charged for the latter...
taps source links
Aha. So basically, one internet paper is referencing (but not quoting or disclosing) one "gaming news agency newsletter", but even therein it says that 100% discounted items shall no longer contribute to the eShop charts of the respective period. Maybe @Damo is suggesting that this will doom all publishers' giveaway incentives by extension, but it's not like Qubic Games & Co don't have others, from other pages in Promotion 101. Including the whole "buy this/these game(s) to be [practically] gifted that/those ones over there".
That's unfortunate in a way. I had some solid fun with some of the free games offered by QubicGames last year. I understand that it has a negative effect on the current iteration of the eshop but I don't think the solution to this is to block developers from doing this but rather to redesign the eshop which is something many developers have asked for to begin with.
Nintendo needs a rating and comments on the eshop it would make it much easy'er to figure out witch games are good and bad, Idk why nintendo hasn't done this yet, it would be great if it worked like the steam store.
The discounts/charts on the eShop are ridiculous. But I understand that developers are just trying to pay their bills.
-if your game is worth it, I'll happily pay full price. I'm not buying something just because it's 99p.
I've never seen one of those 1 cent games on the eShop, did they stop doing that recently?
@Damo That's not what your source says. It says 100% discounted games are no longer eligible to go up in the charts, not that they can't be 100% off anymore.
@StefanN not as far as I've seen. QUByte Interactive in particular has been dropping stuff to as low as 7 rubles lately - which, going by a quick Google conversion, is literally 1 cent.
@nhSnork You're quite correct - I wasn't clear enough in the piece that this is simply preventing 100% discounted games from appearing in the eShop chart - the promotions can still take place, but given that 100% discounted games are no longer eligible for the charts, there's little motive to do so now.
I've updated the piece to reflect this. Cheers!
@RainbowGazelle See above.
I took advantage of the Qbic sale last year, and a few other freebies, but out of the 15 or so games I got for free I think I only really played 1 or 2 of them for any considerable length of time and that was mostly for variety or to play a quick 10minutes with the kids. I don't think this kind of thing would be missed.
If the game has been out a while, I don't see a big problem with deep discounts - developers get a nice spike of profit from people who probably would have never bought the game at full price. I rarely pay more than £5 for a game digitally, partly because I prefer physical and partly because I can't justify the cost when my backlog is so big and I have mouths to feed. Deep discounts mean I can enjoy games I'd never be able to consider otherwise, even if the game appeals to me. And a few pounds from me is better than no pounds for developers. I just always Google a few reviews first to avoid the shovelware!
That’ll end freebies.
Bye bye free games, it was fun while it lasted...
Nothing but good news from Nintendo today, right guys? Man, that one Youtube comment nailed it: "Sakurai's back must be in great pain after carrying Nintendo this hard".
Be interesting to see a Top Grossing chart with number of units sold and resultant average price per unit sold
This is fair enough. It's misleading for people to think loads of people have brought and paid for a certain game (which could make them assume it's good) when they've only got it free because they own a different game.
Remember unless you own the certain game which makes the other game free it will just look like a normal paid game for you when you see it in the charts.
@Anti-Matter Aye, I'm autistic too so I get the struggle with moving with the times and needing to collect things etc
Although I went digital a while ago and honestly It's so much more convenient to just be able to pick whatever game you want without swapping cartridges out etc, means I don't have to bring cartridges with me when I go out
I still get Pokemon physically though, that's the only game I care about owning physically aha
@Anti-Matter Please just stop sir. You embarrass yourself with every comment you make.
I think there is a secondary motive to free games. When you download a game, you are automatically subscribed to that game's news feed on the switch news page. So by getting at least one free game, you will forever get ads for all their future games directly on your switch. You can unsubscribe, but I bet most people don't bother unsubscribing. So the cost of a free game is worth the free advertising in the long run.
All they will do is instead of give the for free is offer them for 1 penny (or a 99% discount) to get round it.
@LilMuku
I don't like convenience like that.
I prefer swapping disc / cartridge to play.
I am dinosaur.
Having only two charts is crazy. Nintendo should have a lot more charts on Switch eshop.
@JokerCK His comment was fine. People enjoy different things, let him like what he likes and play how he prefers.
Hopefully Nintendo is still happy with their decision to let (some) indies self-publish, and letting publishers set discounts themselves.
@Lionyone
I personally think they should go back to having no charts at all.
@Snatcher I used to wonder the same thing. Or at least a star rating system. However I believe Nintendo hasn't done any of that yet is because they probably want to avoid any sort of "review bombing". It would just be one more thing to police. I see it all the time. Good games get rated 0/10 or whatever because "It's not 60fps!!! Game sucks!!". Regardless of how good a game is many out there straight up zero star it for the smallest and unimportant reasons like they don't agree with one thing about it. That would be so annoying to filter through by the thousands/millions.
Doesn't really solve the problem, IMO, since indies will still abuse the system to boost their games. And, really, why shouldn't they? Nintendo has done very little to address the discoverability problem on Switch.
The wonderful qubicgames' games🤭
Some of these games are only worth it at 90% off.
@RupeeClock honestly you basically summed up my occasional use of the search features to check best selling games only within specific price ranges since price is actually a filter setting you can use.
@Ralizah honestly the indie tab, with promotional illustrations of specific titles(like Shovel Knight) on the very button, is perhaps one of the thing I -REALLY- miss off the WiiU days.
I mean I don't miss the loading times. But specific categories(nintendo game, indies, action, multiplayer, etc games) having their specific button/tab on the very UI of the shop rather than hidden inside a search tab is a thing I miss.
Because -then- after clicking a tab i could set it display either best sellers or latest titles.
So I could look at the indie tab to check what were the latest titles and then change the sorting to best seller to see which ones were actually currently popular.
I kind of miss that. I mean the promo image on the buttons could be seen as nintendo "picking winners" by promoting them at the theorical expense of other titles but in term of discoverability/ finding what you actually wanted to find without having to dig into the search tool... it felt practical?
Of course it might only "feel" practical -because the WiiU had much less titles than the Switch to sift through and the same eshop on Switch might easily run through the same issues than the currently has with the ongoing loads of new releases. So it's easy to criticize the current eshop when it experiences situations that were different than the old eshop.
@RustedHero tbh I think I recall them attempting one on their website and they canned it exactly because it was already instantly getting used for review bombing back then
@Anti-Matter play the game not the cart
@Jester151
I'm games collector.
I play the games and also collect the games in physical.
That's my hobby.
That’s good that they did that but there goes the free games. Lol.
So, everybody gaming the system w/ free games is now going to game the system w/ 90% off games?
I actually prefer that. Since Switch still doesn't have folders for awhile there I had a huge swath of games I only played once b/c I didn't like them at all. But now w/ $9.99 games costing 99c I'll make sure I'll only get them if I'm at least a little bit interest. I picked up Aer for $1.99 from $19.99. Used gold coins. Play it a couple of nights a week for 30 minutes at a time, it's cute.
I'm guessing most people will just buy these cheap games w/ gold coins. If people know there are no free games they'll get the 90% off ones instead.
@Anti-Matter dinosaurs are cool so fair play
Heck I really couldn't imagine disliking convenience though
So now the devs will give away 5 games that are years old with a he purchase of a newer game. Thereby driving the newer game up the charts. Still to easy to game the system.
Publishers can still give games away for free or practically free if they want, they just won't be able to game the charts that way any more, which is fine. The charts are useless when they're full of shovelware.
@Anti-Matter
I mean I collect games and prefer physical over digital.
But I would never bypass a digital only release because of my preference (although I tend to give it 12 months to see if a physical is announced)
On a side note - to show how much of a collector I am. (I actually have two of the para para paradise controllers in your picture.)
I wonder if instead of a star rating system, nintendo could show average play time. You could filter out the games with a playtime of less than an hour, to get rid of the trash.
@Wargoose I don't know if that would be fair on shorter games like A Short Hike or Lydia that aren't particularly long or games you'd play over and over but nevertheless provide great experiences. It would probably just see long RPGs dominate, online games and stuff like Minecroft or Animal Crossing.
can they remove the .5 cent shovelware games from monopolizing the sale section yet?
@Snatcher they tried ratings and comments didn't work out so good people were abusing it to they disabled it might return one day who knows
So most Switch owners have bought 8 games....and $1 games count for how many of them?
I just don't get the average game buyer....who doesn't buy every game that comes out because it's there?
The solution is really very simple, even though Nintendo has no interest in putting any effort into getting it done.
Step 1: Put 1st Party games in their own sale category so I don't see Mario Kart 8 and Zelda BOTW as one of the 20 best sellers for the 4th year in a row.
Step 2: Allow games to be rated by avg time played and drastically cut back the spotlight on garbage that is put on sale. That way, when I impulse buy garbage that's cheap of steeply discounted but turns out to be trash (Looking at you WHIPSEEY AND THE LOST ATLAS) and can be beaten in 20 minutes, it still ends up in the junkheap.
Step 3: Highlight the best of the best Indie titles according to the people who actually play the games, not just the ones who buy them.
A shame Nintendo hates putting in effort into their user interfaces. I miss the way the Wii U and 3DS were. Convenient, organized and highlighted mostly good stuff.
This does not solve the problem at all since games are ranked by number of downloads, it's no secret and various articles have been published about methods to game the eShop system.
If they could just sort games by actual income, that would be a much better start.
The "issue" of developers slashing their games. I actually grab a lot of great games for a buck of two, thank you very much. Instead of stopping this practice, Nintendo should do a better job of highlighting games that aren't first party. The eshop is so bare bones that if I don't wishlist a game, chances are I'll never see it again if it isn't put up on sale.
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