Dtg, Are These The New Route Prices: £32.99/€39.99/€44.99?

Hello DTG
DTG Alex, DTG Harry, DTG Matt, dtg_jan
I’ve got a question for DTG.
Are these the new track DLC prices of £32.99/€39.99/€44.99, which will now apply to every new track?

Because if that’s the case, it would be great if someone from DTG could confirm it.

I also have a small request for DTG.
Because if this €44.99 were to become the standard price for every track DLC from now on, that would cost 41 Swiss francs here in Switzerland.
However, as the game developers don’t ask Steam to adjust the exchange rates, this would mean that we in Switzerland would then have to pay 50 Swiss francs for every track DLC.

So if that is to be the price of the new tracks DLC, I would ask DTG to contact Steam to ensure that Steam calculates the correct exchange rates for us too, and that we in Switzerland and Poland do not have to pay an average of 12% to 33% more for a DLC.

I’d also be interested to hear what all users think – whether you agree with this new price for track DLCs, or what your thoughts are on the matter.

 

at least the class 90 price has been reconsidered

 

I totally agree. Fed up paying up to 33% over the UK price for the same product here in Switzerland. Steam seems to think everyone here is a millionaire which sadly isn't true.

I believe Poland also suffers from steams failure to regulate the exchange rates.

The difference to the Playstation price demonstrates the issue (Playstation do update exchange rates) :

Playstation price for NEC Metro North : 39.90
Steam Price for the same route : 49.99

Quite often in Switzerland, even sale prices are higher than the original UK price.

 

At least on Steam you can wait a month and it’ll be discounted by 30%. You’re never more than a week away from a sale on Steam.

 

Still, early enthusiast sales also still matter way more than those distance discount ones. Big reason the initial pricing does matter so much is that most of your money's made off launch. Most games are considered failures if they can't meet early sales goals, DTG should be taking this stuff seriously, not relying on auto-pricing from Steam if they're pricing stuff above console pricing.

 

Yeah thats not true at all.
Steam does allow way more sales, but this doesnt mean routes are instantly discounted first sale after release.
I have waited a year before buying the E94 and this thing never went on sale until half a year later. Likely due to its deserved success.
I bought it anyways because i dont want to wait 2 years just to safe 10 bucks.

 

Yeah, some third party stuff doesn’t get discounted for quite a while, so you can only save on the ones that are, unless you want to endure xbox levels of waiting for a discount.

I don’t know if they’ll look at it again but last time I saw this brought up and answered they were quite sure they would be keeping the auto pricing. I have no idea why the Steam pricing is so far off though, I’ve always found that to be odd.

 

Medway Valley will be £29.99.

But I agree the pricing trend is a little concerning. £33 not a problem if we get a long or super detailed route with accurate performing and sounding trains, minimal issues on launch and rapid fixes to any problems which do occur. Sadly that is now rarely the case, though the Czech route bucked the trend and MV looks as if it will be brilliant. But more and more I’m keeping my hand in my pocket and not shelling out for what is too often mediocre product and even worse after sales service.

 

Personally for me it's an easier pill to swallow when you get more rolling stock for a higher price. Liberec - Stara Paka has the 750 and 843, Spoorlijn Zwolle Groningen had the Koploper and the Sprinter. Meanhile, NEC NY-Stamford has one piece of new rolling stock, and so had Mittenwaldbahn. Despite WCML Over Shap also having only one piece of rolling stock at least it had outstanding length, which NEC Metro North doesn't have.

In short - I will swallow the price if there is something that shows going above and beyond on the part of the developer - more than one piece of new rolling stock, a brand new country with assets made from scratch, a particularly impressive length and attention to detail - something that justifies it. I am not sure NEC Metro North falls in any of these categories.

 

Yeah something or someone went wild with the new NEC pricing. How that has released for more than Medway will is hilarious.

It had to be because A) they had to fix something before release and the customers paid for that, or B) they included the freight loco with it for the sake of the PS mounting issue.

Of course everyone who just bought it has now opened up the potential for it to become the new standard cost & see the actual worthwhile routes go even higher above that.

 

That's kind of my concern - before the year is out we will see £35 as the standard price for more upmarket routes such as those from JT or the forthcoming (at some point) TSG German steam route. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't try and push the latter even higher.

Well global issues and inflation notwithstanding, £33 is my yellow line for buying a route DLC ands anything over that crosses a red line so even if they came out tomorrow and said, we have done Inverness to Perth in 1978 with a Class 26 and full Mark One fleet, but it's £38.99, I would have to say goodnight and wait for a sale.

 

£24.99 was a good price point for a route or £19.99 for shorter routes.

 

The way I look at it is, yes inflation is a thing & prices go up, but DTG have long been cutting costs in other ways since TSW 2, from multiple new rolling stock per route to one, TSW 3 saw a 20% price increase for routes, then to less new stock altogether with train variants being leaned on instead etc. Then there’s QA obviously being cut & dev time has clearly been cut back too. It’s one thing to put less ‘new’ into the content, another to cut back on making sure it’s actually fit for release & then another to do all that and charge more for it.

£33 for a route that’s got missing OLE, timetable blockages & reused tiles from as far back as 2015 is beyond poor, especially when that price point has come to reflect much higher quality & to make up for the fact that third parties are losing out on profit cuts to DTG.

£3 is very little, but it’s 10% more than the usual, and the usual is already 20% more than it was - as above that’s with content that’s clearly come out the door way before it should have, more so with every year seeing March being DTG’s Groundhog Day for releases, despite the fact they clearly don’t have the capacity to handle the output.

 

Doesn’t bother me if I like the look of a route and deem it worthy of a price I will buy it on release. I tend to wait a day or two for reviews and actual users to put reviews or content out then make a decision based on that. (Never take ambassadors reviews seriously as they get the content for free)

we get plenty of sales over a year on steam (not as many as consoles granted) so if I feel something isn’t worth the release price I wait for a sale.

 

First-worlders are faced with a nasty thing called inflation. Let me tell you, as a third-world citizen, what inflation is. Yesterday you bought something for the price of 10 leaves from a tree, and today you go to the store and the price is already 12 leaves from a tree.What's changed about the product? Nothing. Has it gotten better? No, nothing has changed. You're just paying more today. Or you look for another product or job that will allow you to buy goods and not look at the price. With all due respect, why can't games become more expensive?

 

Yes but providers of entertainment software need to understand it is entirely optional to purchase it. That’s why CD’s, Blu-rays etc. are pretty much the same price now as they were 10 or more years ago. And DTG are not only cutting costs (by outsourcing and relying on second and third parties) and also corners by pushing some of the stuff out in a broken state (in a Sim that already has a huge tech debt) then choosing what they fix or indeed ignoring the majority of issues that get reported. That approach IMHO is not worth gracing them with £33 or potentially more for a route DLC.

 

DTG understands this perfectly, which is why the game has regional pricing. You can check prices by region on SteamDB. In some regions it is always a 50% discount on the European price.

I'm certainly not young anymore, but I'm not old enough to remember the prices of CDs and Blu-rays. It somehow passed me by, and then everything moved to digital copies on digital platforms and all sorts of subscription models for content distribution. But I think this is a bad example. Disc editions are no longer a mass-market product. I, like many others, have forgotten what a disc is and don't have the equipment to read it. It's likely that disc releases, if released at all, currently generate little or no profit. They are subsidized by other digital content platforms. Raising prices on disc editions to the level of profits of the mid-2000s is akin to raising prices on compact cassettes - no one will buy them (I remembered how I used to rewind cassettes with my finger/any available tools to save battery power in my Walkman).

This is the only way to influence things. Content will become more expensive because of inflation. You either pay more or don't pay at all. There's no middle ground.

 

This is the crux though, whilst most people with common sense understand inflation, it’s shrinkflation that’s become the issue & DTG are putting far too much emphasis on the ‘shrink’.

 

this!
if the NEC-MNRR route went all the way to new haven, I would easily pay $44.99 (I think I'd even pay more)
the routes at this price are from new countries: zwolle-groningen and liberec-stará paka
a standard US route costing the same as these rarities is outrageous
I would even pay more than $44.99 on the tadami line because it will be a rarity among rarities (and with the added bonus of having the KiHa 40, a diesel railcar, yes, I have an inexplicable weakness for diesel engines)

 

This is classic shrinkflation: less product for the same or higher price. Exactly the same inflation, only from the side view.

 

Even though the price is the same in my Steam region, I have absolutely no desire to buy it. I would have had a great time with the SD40-2 controller, but DTG has cut corners again. There's no cabin alarm. Is it really that hard to add? Especially if you're charging a premium price for a route in premium regions. These little details are just annoying.

 

I would happily pay a little bit more if it seemed like the game was heading in the right direction in terms of bug fixes, quality control and honest communication.

But for now, they have lost me as a customer and it will be hard (if not impossible) to get me back.

They already got plenty of money out of me though, so it may be that I already served my purpose!!

 

I lived in Zurich a couple of years ago, a Big Mac Meal was 25 CHF, so 50 CHF for a new route seems like a bargain to me.

 

The price increase for add-ons is understandable, everything increases.
However, they must include all the expected features, such as suspension, Raildriver support, etc.
It's unacceptable and scandalous that at these prices, standards won't be met by the release date.
Will patches arrive?
But when?
What kind of business is it to announce that a product will be released incomplete in the first instance?
Have they lost all sense of decency?

 

This explains why there is little obesity in Switzerland.

 

What I find a little annoying and maybe its not for this topic but since we are on pricing, I want to compare to other type games/sims, is that despite some eventual update to address Bugs there is no update to DLC once released for Cosmetic things like scenery upgrades etc..to compare is that many scenery developers for Flightsim (looking at most of the majors in this space) constantly update their airports with slight changes to scenery from time to time to either add something that was missed or keep them current as well as updates to help reduce the memory or improve FPS to models/assets used.. only if a major upgrade is required do they go to a V2..its real value for $$ IMO here generally once a DLC comes out its hands dusted and that's it....

 

Silly logic.

 

but it is not wrong and may others say the same on here.

 

It absolutely is wrong, others saying the same doesn’t make it true.

 

Opinions are like noses to put it politely we all have one they are all different. Not my problem if you disagree i am entitled to my opinion the same as you are. Have a nice weekend

 

You can point at a can of blue paint and say “in my opinion that can has red paint” and would be equally as wrong.

 

i couldn't really care less if you agree or not quit trying to get the last word. I have my opinion you have your opinion doesn't me you are right because you think mine is wrong and vice versa. If you dont agree with my opinion guess what i couldn't care less. Rather than replying to get the last word may i suggest you go and read the forum rules as any further reply from you making a pointless comment to bait will be reported along with the above,

 

How about evaluating the completeness of the route?

 

Yes, Polish prices were adjusted at the point where PLN was in the worst state in the recent years, and Steam never actually corrected this, as a result we have lower awerage income than most of EU, but if we want to buy games on Steam we pay much more than most of EU, which is infuriating by now. It is like that for about 3 - 4 years already iirc.

 

Another part of the problem is to some extent the game is getting stale, to the point where you do start to question whether £30+ for another route which you’ll likely run a few times in each direction with the same old A to B gameplay is really worth it. That’s why I reinstalled Railroader the other evening, having great fun and really looking forward to TF3 and CoS. TSW needs a new act…

 

If everything worked and DLC wasn't released in a raw, often unfinished state, textures weren't blurry, and the game didn't have a lot of other problems and bugs, we as users would probably perceive it a little differently, but the current state of affairs doesn't help that.

 

DTG have 170 employee wages to pay….that’s the reason for the higher release prices. We don’t have an answer as to why the 10% pre-order discount was removed and never re-instated.
DTG love to swerve ‘difficult’ questions….

 

Doesn’t Switzerland have a very high standard of living?
Anyway, unless you purchase everything in US $ then most of the world gets stitched up by the exchange rate. I know the UK does - Apple products come to mind…

 

The game isn't getting stale for me. I just don't like being ripped off by Steam - especially when publishers can do something about it.

I just don't like the fact that due to Steams pricing policy that was set some years ago, I have to pay 25% more than the same thing on playstation. Just because Playstation adjust prices based on the current exchange rate and Steam set theirs years ago with a promise to review regularly (which they don't).

 

Certainly isn’t….heard the phrase ‘never bite the hand that feeds you’?

 

Complain to Steam then. Nothing gonna change complaining about it on this forum sadly.

 

Yes, and also a very high cost of living to go with it. Don't see why I should pay more on Steam than on Playstation because of where I live.

And I have complained to Steam but the answer is that the publisher sets the price and if they don't, set it for a currency, Steam do

 

Not to mention their expensive offices in Chatham! Maybe time to downsize to a portacabin on a brown field site…

 

Yup, going back to my above point with dependency of MU/loco variants rather than new classes.

Modern UK content has just become IET’s and desiros, train add ons have been Turbostars & now we’re climbing back on the Electrostar horse.

Medway Valley looks great don’t get me wrong, finally a non WCML route & certainly looking high quality, but man the 375 is not an interesting unit regardless of any enhancements it gets, and again it’s a set we’ve had at least twice already, being a variant of a train we’ve had even more times.

The 90 & 70 will be a breath of genuine fresh air for rolling stock, but even there we see caveats with very little utilisation, even after the games been filled with routes one of those locos run on.

Don’t get me wrong, there are good things within most of these DLC’s that are slowly pushing TSW forward, but they still don’t really mesh with the core of the game, and most of the content is focused around the same era, regions & gameplay experiences.

Theres just far too much of the same, too many issues mounting up & so many caveats lately, to be justifying price increases on content like Stamford. A route in which perfectly encapsulates my above points with regards to locales & rolling stock,

 

They literally have a weekly Q&A on Discord. Feel free to join and ask Matt directly any question. Doesn't exactly tell me they "swerve" difficult questions if you can directly speak to them?

 

Damn the price difference in different regions is big. Because I have My location for steam set as Ukraine and when I look at EU and czechia prices it's often a 20 euro difference (well it actually might not be that big of a difference. I think...)

 

Theyve not done that for a few weeks now.

 

Ukraine, Russia, and India are the cheapest regions. Permanent 50% discount

 

I watched the showcase video for New York- Stamford. There are lots of reasons to buy, plenty of AI, freight component,, expanded GCS etc.

However, there are some deficits. To get all that AI traffic, you need a host of other dlc. Similarly for the freight runs. There's not much in the way of new rolling stock to justify the higher price.

Plus, despite modeling both levels of GCS they didn't bother to include the station concourse. And they also didn't include somethings as simple but essential as an expressway overpass and, once again, no Yankee Stadium ( I wonder if the ballpark station will be as quiet on game days as it was in the Harlem line. )

So why the premium price? At a regular price, this might have been an immediate purchase for me. But I'm reluctant to encourage a premium price for something that is a good but not a premium offering.

I will not cross the $50 red line for anything but the absolute best that DTG and its 3Ps can produce. This route falls a bit short of that.