Is that not the opposite? Sure I get less buggy version, but you also have how many years to play compared to me. And you are getting the same game I am when I buy it. You eventually get that content, which one could say is added value to the 25 bucks vs the 35 I spend. You got 10 bucks of content from free essentially.
No, you’re forgetting the fact that when I bought it, I didn’t know what I’ll be getting in the future. I lucked out with Factorio, but it could happen that the devs just stopped working on it, I didn’t know at the time.
It’s not the publisher rewarding me. The reward comes from me waiting and getting a cheaper game then those who bought it earlier. As you state
Who do you think sets the price, if not the publisher?
the publishers lose, not me.
And yet, it’s not the publishers complaining about it online.
To me the issue is the inflation price increase that most recently happened. Typically when a digital good releases in a finished state, it tends to stay at a max price. 30 USD is what Factorio decided on. Then it’s up to 35. Sure its had updates since the full release but why should I have to pay more then the full release price because I waited?
Because when you buy it now for $35 right now, you get more for your money than what I got years ago for $25. Even ignoring the additional content and polishing, you’re also getting the benefit of all the testing and bug reporting by early adopters, as well as the bug fixing by the developers.
Typically sales are the reward for those who wait.
This is just the wrong mindset. Why would the developer, publisher, valve, or anyone else want to reward you for not buying their product?
(yes, I know software pricing is a clusterfuck. But the common theme is that the seller wants to extract as much value from every customer as possible, so ideally they would set the price individually for each customer based on the highest amount that customer is willing to pay. Sales after a while are a mechanism for this.)
Does the value you get of the game change depending on which time of the year you buy it?
Actually, the only change is up, as the game was improving and expanding pretty much constantly from the first early release to version 1.1. And it value is going up, when you buy in early access you’re only getting the current (unfinished but playable) state and a “promise” that it will get better in the future. When you buy the finished product you’re already certainly getting that better state, so it makes sense that it’s more expensive.