Curious about seller's choice in pricing.

Listings - Buying
1

I am curious to ask the community about why some sellers choose to list their prices so high. If you are selling a steam game for example, why list it higher price then what the normal sale price is? When I am selling a game, I always try to make it at least 5 to 10% less then what the cheapest ever steam price is.

In my opinion it makes no sense for any person to want to buy a game from a 3rd party person on this website, when they could get it for cheaper on steam when it’s on sale. So why not give a person a discount to motivate the sale, instead of expecting them to pay more then what steam charges.

Maybe I’m just in the minority with this sentiment, what do other people think?

2

I probably have a listing or two that fits this description as I have a few Steam keys listed, but don’t really track their sale prices. Also, sometimes I just want to play a game with a friend right away and don’t want to wait for a sale. If I have a promo code for a few dollars off or 20% it might be cheaper for me to buy it here than on Steam.

As long as they are listing an actual key rather than just doing the 1 day send time and buying it after you buy their listing to send you I’m fine with it.

3

Yeah, I certainly understand the concept of wanting a game right then, and not wanting to wait for it to go on sale. But I see many games that people have listed that stay at the same price for a long, long time. Even when sales are currently running, they still are at full price. So why would anyone want to buy a game on here from a 3rd party person at full price, when they can get it on steam sale for a lot cheaper?

It just bothers me, because there are many games I’d like to buy and I have a big wallet here from selling games. But I don’t want to buy a game here for more then I can get it on sale from steam. I wish people would realize that if they want to actually move their products they have to do some discounts.

I have many keys I have extra from different bundles I get, and I hate sitting on them for a long time. So I always figure I got them at a great price as part of the bundle, then I am not gonna try to charge a ton of money for it. Cause you will never get rid of the key with that mentality.

4

You could buy steam code. Normally people sell them cheap on this site. Its better to buy a gift code then use it to buy a game.

Lucy :heart:

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I think the purpose of my post is being missed. What I mean is, I find it odd that people sell games on here for more then they are worth. If a games regular price is $10, but steam usually has it on sale for $5. Then why do I see some people posting the game for say $7.50. It makes no sense to me, if I’m gonna buy a game from someone on here, I want to get a better deal then I would get from steam. Otherwise why buy it if I can get it on steam for $5? The seller should be selling it for $4 at the most, cause we all know that most sellers get these keys in bulk from some bundle or other sale. So why not pass on the savings when trying to resale the key?

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I guess people who add funds to there account can’t withdraw them to there PayPal account so basically they are stuck with it. They can only buy things from Gameflip seller meaning they couldn’t use it to buy games on other sites so they take a losed by over paying for something they want.

I’m not a seller myself but if people are willing to pay extra buying it I can see why people sell it for higher plus they wouldn’t try selling it higher if they was not having people buy them.

Seller also have to pay fee when selling things and these fee could add up not saying its okay or not.

I would never pay for a item here if it cost more then I will get aka gift cards.

Lucy :heart:

7

Interesting topic, but answer is easy. Every price is okay if there is somebody who is willing to spend that much.

But let’s go into some details…

There are few pricing cases, I’ll list them here and how I’m handling prices in every of those cases:

  1. Price on Gameflip higher than Steam regular price (yes, this also happens)

I was always puzzled why Garry’s Mod was selling (not anymore) easily for price over $10 while it’s $9.99 on Steam as a regular price. But people were buying this game here and on other marketplaces anyway. I guess there are some people that are not aware of Steam price so $10 for popular game may look tempting at first. I’m still seeing some games sold for price higher than MSRP. Also, some people have wallet funds only here, others have discount codes. I personally never set price higher than Steam regular price.

  1. Price on Gameflip higher than Steam sale price

This actually is not so strange. First reason is - Steam sale will not last forever. At one point, if you price the game right, your item may become cheapest worldwide. If your logic is “I want to sell something immediately” you will price this game lower than sale price. If you’re not in a rush, there is no need to be cheapest. I like my games to be cheapest as possible, but there is no reason to price, let’s say, Stardew Valley below $7 sale price if I know I will sell that one easily for $10 after the sale is over. So, I’m in this zone with some of my games.

  1. Sale price on Gameflip below Steam (and any official) sale price

If you want to sell something fast, this is something you need to do. I have extension for Chrome, it’s called Enhaced Steam. It shows currently lowest price for wanted game on any official store, but it also shows historical low. For 90% of my games I tend to make them cheapest worldwide at the moment. I even check other marketplaces to make sure I’m cheapest anywhere. But I’m not doing this for most popular and exclusive (never bundled) games.

  1. Making the price historical low

If you want money fast and you have popular game, this is something you want to do, but I don’t think it’s smart. I mentioned Enhanced Steam as something you can always check when deciding the price for your item. There is also IsThereAnyDeal site which is also cool. I have bunch of games at their historical lows, but those are games that aren’t selling well.

I think that’s it…

P.S. I’m talking here about people who are selling instant delivery keys, like I do. There are bunch of shady sellers that sell as delayed delivery (1-3 day(s)). For them is perfectly reasonable to price something higher than sale price on any other official store, but other marketplaces, too. They wait for you to buy something, then they get that item for cheap end deliver it to buyer.

P.P.S. I forgot to add, when someone has over 100 items here, you cannot expect them to monitor every sale and change prices for their items accordingly :slight_smile:

1 Like
8

To continue from the shady sellers part, some of them would try to cover the whole page of a particular game theirs. I’ve seen a seller (not gonna name), spam the same listing at different prices. For example, the price of game ABC is $10, this seller will list about 2-3 pages worth of game ABC ranging from $7 to $11. Thus, it is very hard to find those keys that are instant delivered as the listing will be stacked under their listings.

2 Likes
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If you narrow your search to desired platform, delivery method option to see only instant delivery items becomes available.

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Oh wow, i didn’t know about that. Just checked and i found the function for it.

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I’m glad I could be of help faster than @CidxLucy :wink:

And feel free to name those sellers, but I’m sure I mentioned them bunch of times here. What is wrong about those sellers is not their non-instant method, but possibility to spam listings with something they don’t actually have, so they can have a bunch of AAA titles listed and make all of us look like amateurs. Gameflip really should limit those somehow before more and more sellers start doing the same thing.

I suggested once to limit every user to have no more than 5 non-instant delivery items at the time, at least for digital platform games, movies and every digital codes, because there is no reason not to deliver them instantly if somebody really has them.

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Already reported those sellers to support a few weeks ago but their listings are still up. I’ll pm dunn if it is not allowed, don’t want to waste his time on something this trivial. But if you’re still curious or already have a slightest idea on who it is, a quick search on Rocket League (the game, not in game items) and you can see it.

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Yup, I know. I like to call them “ONLINE” sellers :slight_smile:

You can search forum or my earlier topics to find mostly same names.

It’s constant problem and I wouldn’t bother @DunnBiscuit again with that. They are not breaking any rules, but that doesn’t mean rules don’t need to be changed a bit to prevent abusing of the system.

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The reason is because most sites for such cards require You to be from America. For example pcgamesupply, mmoga, walmart, gamestop. Your paypal has to be US one. On g2a is way over priced. Here You dont have that requirement

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Also reporting people for overpriced items wont get them banned. Anyone can price their items for as much as they want. So dont waste time reporting them

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@Vladislav_Todorov, nobody mentioned reporting for overpricing, but for spamming. We were in slight off-topic area for a moment :slight_smile:

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Hi @Vladislav_Todorov to start off, i wasn’t reporting them for overpricing their listings. I was simply reporting them for spam. I feel that there is no need to give a long rant about it after reading Pedja’s past thread for the past 15 minutes, and realise that nothing can be done about it. I too face similar problems. Before i listed a instant delivered Rocket League game, there were barely any listings about it. But the moment i listed it, listings were spammed and i had to constantly change the pricing of my own listing in hopes that someone buys the game. Ultimately, it took me 3 weeks to sell the game. I wouldn’t want to continue commenting on this post as it is starting to get out of topic, so good luck to you guys, and have a good one.

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Yea didnt read it

19

Thank you for your responses guys, that is some interesting info that I hadn’t considered.

But I have had some experience with some of those delayed sellers that you mentioned. One being named Captain Morgan or something, who I tried to buy a game from multiple times. He asked for my steam name to send me a friend request, and would send me the game as a gift. But he kept cancelling the order for some reason, and then just eventually banned me for some reason. So I’m done with trying those sales, I will only ever buy instant delivery now.

But I notice that a lot of those sellers are listed as region code RU, which I believe is russia. Which makes sense, because I see a lot of these less the reputable resale sites like G2A or instant-gaming that sell games for several dollars less then the historic low steam price. So I think most of those websites buy the codes from Russia, and then resell them to american costumers for cheap.

@Pedja_Erakovic I agree with the sentiment you said about people that aren’t in a hurry to sell the games not needing to price them low. I just feel like those games will never sell, unless someone is oblivious to steam sales comes a long. Which I find hard to believe they would ever stumble upon this site in that case.

But maybe I’m just too impatient when it comes to selling my own games, I just feel like all my keys are just going to waste sitting there not being used. So I’d rather just unload them as quickly as possible, and get money to spend on something else. But then often become disappointed when I can’t find any one else selling games at a good price, so then I end up just getting a ton of money in my wallet that I have nothing to spend it on.

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