Tabletop Simulator Clarifies Price Increase is Due to Leaving Early Access, Not Steam Summer Sales

Berserk Games, a small developer group that works on the Tabletop Simulator, almost suffered the wrath of the gaming community due to an unfortunate mistiming of leaving early access.

With the Steam Summer Sale in full swing (You can check out our coverage here), some developers have adjusted their prices right before the sale hits in order for the discount to look bigger. Such a practice is deemed undesirable in many countries and consumers may have a case against such misinformation. Although the exact details of the law may differ from country to country, the nature is roughly the same: Increases in prices and adding a % discount to the price tag must be sufficiently apart in timing, with 1 month being a common duration across different countries.

This year's Steam Summer Sale saw some developers adjusting their prices right before the sale period hits, causing some members of the gaming community to voice their objections against such suspicious practices and calling out companies who are undertaking such questionable practices by posting negative reviews and starting threads on forums to spread awareness.

Unfortunately for Tabletop Simulator, it was supposed to come out of Steam Early Access just before the Steam Summer Sale. Games that go on Early Access are usually sold at a slight discount as an incentive for early adopters to pick up the game and help iron out the bugs and kinks. As these games leave early access, the price is usually bumped up back to the original price by the developers.

This move was misinterpreted by some as trying to take advantage of the Steam Summer Sales by deliberately increasing the prices just before Summer Sale to take advantage of it, as Tabletop Simulator went on a 33% discount for the sale, and some called Berserk Games out for the questionable practice.

The developer of Tabletop Simulator then went on the /r/Steam subreddit to clarify things with the community, and from most of the comments which were relatively supportive of the company's predicament, all seems good now.

Here's the clarification from user kimikodesu, who's identified  himself as the developer of Tabletop Simulator:

I am a developer of Tabletop Simulator and we did NOT raise our price for the Steam Summer Sale.

We released OUT of Early Access on June 5, 2015. Here is an article on PC Gamer about it.

It clearly states the price would be increasing to $19.99. Besides that though, on our store page when it was still in Early Access, it also clearly stated that the price of the game would go up once we released. So it was never a secret that the price would be going up - we never mislead anyone. The only issue here is the timing. We launched out of Early Access a week ago, which is when we increased the price.

Please get facts straight before posting information that could potentially hurt our reputation when we did nothing wrong. We are a small indie development team of two and try to be as transparent as possible to our community.

Any questions, please ask ME here, send an email to berserkgames@gmail.com, post on our sub-reddit, Steam forums, whatever.

If you need more "proof", I'd be happy to provide it.

Thank you!

If you're interested in reading the comments, the full thread can be found here.

Tabletop Simulator looks to be relatively fun if you're a fan of board games and want to see it come alive in a computer simulation. There's also a passionate community producing mods on Steam Workshop to bring more board games and just plain wacky stuff into the tame, so be sure to check out the trailer for the game as well!

We're resisting the temptation to make any references about flipping the table for this particular story.