Dtg Has Raised The Prices For Dlcs Yet Again!

Dear TSW users!

Have a look at this post by OldVern, and click on the image at the top of the post.

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/th...-year-anniversary.72535/page-159#post-1144141

There you can see that DTG’s Alex writes that, in future, the prices for a track will be 32.99 pounds, 39.99 euros and 43.99 dollars.
Well, I can only agree with what OldVern wrote there.
The prices are slowly but surely becoming extortionate, and that’s just for DLCs – DTG, are you really serious about this?

Especially when you consider that a great many tracks are released in a rush, without having been properly tested, and sometimes containing a great many bugs.

So how much will the tracks from Just Train or TSG cost?

What do other users think about this? Feel free to post your thoughts in this thread.

 

I get costs are high.

But raising route prices now is absurd. especially when there is tensions over the state of the game, this only pours salt into a very deep and painful wound.

£32.99 should be a price reserved for the routes that offer the most, like Preston - Carlisle, the Czech route, TSG routes like mittenwaldbahn.

NOT as a standard route price.

Whoever is in charge of DTGs financial decisions has totally lost the plot, and is out of touch with the issues the game has.

 

No way, this is so pricey.
I wonder why this happened...

 

DLC was priced at that for TSW6. Wait until sales numbers drop because of how little has changed on console and they have to nudge them up to £35 to try and recoup losses.

 

It's expensive, and generally the pleasure I get from TSW doesn't justify the prices being asked.

But you don't have to pay these prices. Wait for a sale, or find a different hobby that does give you value for money.

 

£14.99 for is ok along as its done good. But 32.99 for route is crazy if it is a long route say 80 miles and then a short route at 15 miles both will cost 32.99 if so dtg are you crazy or just enjoy robbing your customers blind.

 

Apparently they started to compensate for the drop in sales from the console part of buyers. TSW 7 with blurry textures probably won't have good sales results.

 

Seems like TSW7 is going to be a LONG year

 

Wait for a sale? On XBox? Here comes another round of "Microsoft won't let us have a sale" while Microsoft say "all they have to do is tell us they want to do a sale".

 

TSW 7 offers nothing to console players. Most of the game's features are PC only and new features will come to consoles maybe later. Blurry textures not resolved and lots of bugs. Who would buy this at these prices?

 

However, routes in TSC and the early years of TSW were £25, so given the cumulative level of inflation over the last 5 years, a price of £32.95 isn’t unreasonable.

According to the Bank of England's inflation calculator, something costing £25 in 2020 should now cost £32.81, if it's risen exactly with inflation. DTG look bang on the money with their prices.

Whether you want to pay it is a personal matter.

 

If you don't like the price, you don't buy it. If you don't like the quality, you don't buy it. I don't see a problem. No one is forcing you to spend money and buy it on the first day with your last money.

 

And they have completely lost the Gen 8 income however small or large that was.

I rarely buy anything unless it is on sale anyway, Preston - Crewe is the only thing I bought full price on the TSW6 cycle and though I really like it despite the PS5 issues it wasn't worth the 33 quid it cost me. None of the announced TSW7 interests me enough to pay full price for so it will be a mid season sale if I decide to pick anything up anyway.

 

As the person who posted the initial image, I posted it in response to a question about the core routes. Whether this applies to all future routes is not certain. I honestly don't think it will apply to the shorter branch line routes.
Secondly, DTG need to work on their communication. This is not the first time I've had to find a comment in a Discord channel to clarify something or answer a question.
Honestly, I don't think it will change much in terms of what I buy. If I really think a route is worth it I'll happily spend an extra £3, otherwise I'll just wait for a sale, but I'll decide on a case by case basis as I always have.

 

Oh boy, its that phrase again...

 

I've slightly rearranged what you said, but that's a great saying which I will store away for use in everyday life.

And completely true.

 

Ran a quick check on www.inflationtool.com. Apparently £25 in 2018 would be equal to £33.74 in 2026.

In 2018 DLC cost £24.99. So £32.99 is a slight reduction in real terms.

Whether you think the quality of DLC has decreased in that time is a matter of opinion. Perhaps re-install and fire up TSW2020 and see how it compares to a TSW6 route?

 

In TSW3, the price of DLCs were silently increased to £30, but shorter routes like the Suffragette Line and Isle of Wight had their prices decreased from that mark slightly. I'm sure we'll see a similar setup for these new prices - hopefully to a little less than £30 though. I reckon £27.99 should be fine for a short route that is up to TSW7 standards.

That said, a price increase is a price increase and no customer (including me) is expected to be happy about that. That's how markets work.

 

What other phrase should I use for the latest whining about the game getting more expensive?

 

I already called it, Dovetail are dropping console support - i mean if they arent implicitly stopping development or patch support for the Xbox Series S or X and PlayStation 5 then offering no improvments to the game while also charging more going forward for routes (that may or may not have removed content) sure seems to be a massive step in the right direction.

If there is a DLC that has reduced layers or other content, will the price be reduced? of course not.
If Dovetail plan to offer improvments and updates in line/equal to the price increase then everything seems above board here

 

The thing is that if they do drop console support they're also dropping at least half their revenue stream, and it'll take more than a couple of quid on a DLC to make that up.

 

It is true that prices have been going up. They have been going up roughly in line with inflation. TSW2020 routes were generally £25 and in today’s money that is £33, so it’s to be expected.

 

theyre seemingly going out of there way to get rid of the console players.
a worse game experience, less updates, less beta and QA testing, more DLC with reduced content.

why would a company do this if they wanted to keep our custom? these are the actions of a company that knows we have no where else to go and doesnt need to care.

i remain to be proven wrong.

 

TSW3 DLCs were also £25 in 2022, which equates to only £29.32 nowadays.

 

To be honest, I don't mind the price of DLC. What bothers me is the quality of the DLC I buy. If I buy expensive DLC and discover a lot of bugs and blurry textures, I can't return it. I'll lose my money. Reviews help when choosing DLC, but they're not a guarantee!

 

Perhaps a suggestion… take a moment to check your income and see how much it has increased, and compare that to the few euros the price has gone up. You might be surprised by the difference.

 

You can also compare it to grocery store prices. The package still contains 10 eggs, and a piece of beef has the same nutritional value. How unfair! I should get 12 eggs for the current price of a dozen. And the quality of the beef should be such that this cut will satisfy me for a week.

 

Went to an exhibition followed by lunch at the weekend. Was finished in 2.5 hours. Cost 8chf more than a single DLC which even with my limited time, I'll get many more hours out of.

Can't get upset over this.

 

Exactly and in a supermarket do you do this price discussion also with the cashier when you try to pay.... You complaining and demanding for a lower price...

 

when you buy these hypothetical eggs or side of beef, has the supermaket also offered a portion of their customer base less eggs for the same price of a dozzen (10 eggs for the price of 12) or 500g of mince for the price of 1kg? is there a segment of this supermakets customer base that will buy and eat these hypothetical eggs and then get food poisoning, but the supermarket says "dang we know thats an issue and we are working on a fix, its coming"

i mean....

 

it’s an interesting debate for sure. on the one hand, it’s an understandable decision by dtg, as others have correctly pointed out, they’re only matching inflation. however, i think there’s a more important issue in that the quality of dlc does not merit such an increase. and i’m not talking about how good the scenery, timetable, or rolling stock of any given route is; the performance matters more to me. it would be absolutely ludicrous to say that the overall experience with the game- that being crashes, blurry textures, and stuttering, is worth paying £8 more for compared to the relatively stable game of a few years ago. okay, dlc in general was much less demanding, but the core of the game hasn’t kept up with the increasing strain that new dlc and so there’s no reason why we should be compensating for that

 

"ohhhh, you wanted the beef that complies with food safety standards, sorry thats not available to your segment but we hope to get it to you as soon as possible" type ish

 

And the cashier says that she doesn’t set the prices and, in general, young man, don’t hold up the line!

 

I didn't know games could cause health problems. Especially if they get more expensive or are broken.

 

I don’t get why you lot are even surprised like it was hinted at when routes started costing £32 the first time around

hopefully they actually qa these routes well this time (I would say more but I’m already very thin ice for saying my opinions which they didn’t like very much)

 

Well as I said in the Enough Is Enough thread, entertainment software is optional (and it will be at these price levels) and if you look at the price of physical media like DVD's, Blu-Rays etc. they are still pretty much the same price now as they were 10 or more years ago.

Didn't someone post a few days ago that DTG were lamenting declining sales of DLC? Three factors there (at least), falling quality, too much of the same and now the price for that experience. Putting the price up is hardly going to solve the issue.

And sorry, but they really do need to look at managing costs. Cheaper offices (maybe not a Portacabin! ) bearing in mind much content production seems to be outsourced these days. A review of the level of marketing staff, I mean really why do they need a "Customer Experience Manager" who has no input to QA and admitted on the Direct stream he knows little about the subject matter. Nothing against individuals, but wouldn't that salary be better spent on someone who knows their way around QA, or who is capable of programming more than one Save slot?

 

That´s shocking, not only for TSW add-ons

 

The problem is that games companies tend to cut costs by laying off staff, and less staff isn't going to fix the problem, unless the problem is the bottom line of the balance sheet.

 

Thats why the higher price isnt a bad choice. And again your'e income has also raised...

 

I find it a bit worrying that in nearly every thread you're active, you draw the attention to the save game issue, suggesting that this might be the most important thing to fix. While for me (and i am sure a lot of other people as well) this issue is next to completely irrelevant, because I don't use it at all. Also the rules prohibit "(r)epeatedly post(ing) the same content", so let's keep this on topic?

 

The price increase is for the addition of new bugs.

 

I don't hardly use it at all because it is bad and unreliable, if it was better I would consider using it more often. Maybe we would get less praise of short routes because people don't want to drive for an hour if they could have a bunch of partially completed runs saved and ready to go again when the mood takes them.

And as for the most important thing to fix, we are going to get AAS's next route before they put the Class 86/87 railtours back into Birmingham - Crewe. What a terrible precedent to set. Is it "the most important thing"? no, will I mention it at every opportunity? Yes.

 

I have a mixed view, it's a natural part of passing on increased costs. They are a business on the one hand. However, given the overall level of dissatisfaction with the company, the way it has operated until recently, and the way it has repeatedly failed a significant portion of its consumer base - it's a risky move. Many are right to question whether this is actually value for money. And before anybody says "but the sales...." that's irrelevant. It's the optics that matter, and this has clearly been noted.

But, the game has not been lifted enough to justify significant price increases, so while the current ones are probably a yellow cautionary aspect, any further increases while we await long overdue fixes for issues that go back years in some cases, and until there is a sufficient response to every query raised via this forum and others on technical issues, are a red, and the prices need to remain frozen until quality and consistency return to the game.

 

I wouldn't be adversed to paying more if the quality/performance had gone up. But you have to look at it case by case. DTG also shoot themselves in the foot by keeping old DLC on sale at full price in my opinion.

I personally haven't seen enough improvement in quality and DLC to warrant paying more for my content, especially with the issue of blurring and performance still just as prevalent.

Riviera is a great route which I got on sale, but I don't play it because the blurring is so frustrating.

 

Incomes don't tend to rise in line with inflation, though. I'm sure more than a few people will have been priced out of these price increases.

 

I'd be well up for your showcasing the work done behind the scenes and more recognition for these unsung heroes. It could also go a little way towards allaying concerns of console users etc
Apologies for the talk of layoffs etc, but far too often other publishers etc will just cut their numbers to fudge numbers and satisfy fhareholders by hitting certain fiscal targets.

 

Always a yes to more openness and transparency - not before time either

 

Not to be that person but most of the arguments were just debates that for some reason on the discord get treated harsher since I’m had other heated debates here without issue (others as well have managed more heated without as bad punishments)

there was also that other time that a mod deleted my posts for asking about a train class which was in the news which I think you can agree was a bit far

anyways hopefully you have put on the discord about punishments on forums counting towards the discord, because that would have been really useful information and same goes for actually sending a dm to the people that in trouble instead just saying to tone it down (like you can surely see how that confuses someone, it’s never worded like a proper warning unlike the forums)

(only even replying to this in the first place since you never responded to the last dm which suggested and pointed this out, for record this isn’t trying to start anything but really need some improvement on your rules and punishments because it comes off at times as censorship of issues, this is just reasoning and my opinion)

 

Lol maybe in the US with all the recalls lately.