Why A Game About The Devil Couldn’t Sell For $6.66 On Steam

Why A Game About The Devil Couldn’t Sell For $6.66 On Steam

We Know The Devil is a game that involves, well, the devil. Obviously, it deserves to be sold at a price point of $US6.66 ($9). Unfortunately, that’s not something Steam allows.

We Know The Devil, a Really Quite Good visual novel about queerness, summer camp and religious horror, has been available on publisher Date Nighto’s website at a price of $US6.66 ($9) for a few months. Yesterday it came to Steam, and longtime fans noticed that its base price was $US7.99 ($11) — AKA Wrong. So, what happened? Turns out, We Know The Devil‘s developers wanted to sell the game for its original price, but Steam’s rigid settings barred the way.

“For pricing,” Date Nighto’s Jo Fu told me via email, “we were limited to certain price brackets and were unable to set our own price, and discounts only work in whole numbers.”

You might notice that the game’s price is currently $US6.63 ($9) on Steam. The extremely specific 17 per cent discount was an attempt at getting it as close as possible to $US6.66 ($9). “We tried to get close enough to the datenighto.com price for launch week,” Fu said, “but were confounded by maths.” Close enough, though, right?

The lesson here? Valve discriminates against Satan. Also, Steam is weirdly restrictive behind-the-scenes (despite Valve’s utopian vision of a fully open store where people can establish their own self-contained storefronts), disallowing not only custom pricing but also things like pay-what-you-want options. So now you know.


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