Jd Smith1
Hero
I download free stuff all the time on DriveThru. Usually 6 or more items at a time. I dump 'em in a folder. Occasionally I'll poke through it.
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DriveThruRPG numbers for 2022
- Thread starter robconley
- Start date
Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
I think DTRPG has always had free downloads. Unless we think there is proportinately more or less sales of free titles, I'd say "free" does not have a material impact on the overall sales number represented in the OP
darjr
I crit!
The order number looks to be the same number incremented for free and for cost items. That’s the essential first discovery part of the OP.
Jd Smith1
Hero
Really?
Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
Yes, over the course of time, assuming the free downloads proportion is the same compared to not-free, then free items don't have an impact on the numbers and can be ignored. (big assumption, but do we have the data to separate free from paid? No, not as discussed in OP)
Basically, what this chart shows us is that RPG sales via DriveThruRPG has been increasing year over year, and an interesting bump during the pandemic. And, IF free downloads are the same proportion over that time, then we can say that the increase in RPG sales is not due to the number of free downloads - since that's proportional to paid downloads.
IF someone has numbers showing that at some point there was a new injection of free content - and it showed a direct increase in the overall sales, then we can say free content has an impact on sales. But I don't see it in these numbers - and again that's because no one has provided any sort of event where all of a sudden there were more free downloads happening.
aramis erak
Legend
There are a great many things free on DTRPG that I grab solely because they are free; it there were a limited budget, I'd not get them. Let's take the preview of Blood & Doom... I only grabbed it because it was free, and only noticed it because of a cat walking on the keyboard and adding it to cart. (Trackpad is on the keyboard.) the 5 minutes spent skimming? well worth the time to DL it as a free product, and plenty to find it not worth me participating in the KS.
If I'm browsing DTRPG, I often grab a freebie or two, and have done so since about the turn of the century. my digital horde is hundreds of "purchases" and several thousands of items...
Most of which get skimmed once and filed. The better ones get reread and/or played.
There is, however, a lot of stuff that I'd never have even looked at save for it being free. Much more that was bought as part of bundles, where i bought the bundle because it was cheaper than buying the one book in it I really wanted. (WFRP 2E, for example, had the first legal PDF of the WFRP1E PDF. 7th sea 2E had all of 1E in it, and I wanted to read the rest of 1e...)
Free item sales do affect total orders, and the proportion of PWYW is increasing from what it was. Especially since an order of nothing but free content is still an order number.
Rob's excellent tracking is, however, lacking a bunch of details.
It's probably not the actual DTRPG numbers; my Wargames Vault library is the same 539 orders and 1500+ entries as my DTRPG one. While I don't have any Drive Thru Comics nor Drive Thru Cards orders, I suspect the number Rob is tracking is total OBS sales across storefronts, not just DTRPG.
(and my first showing order? I paid $8 but it doesn't show what... order number just shy of #150,000 No product listed in it! 23 jan 2003)
If I'm browsing DTRPG, I often grab a freebie or two, and have done so since about the turn of the century. my digital horde is hundreds of "purchases" and several thousands of items...
Most of which get skimmed once and filed. The better ones get reread and/or played.
There is, however, a lot of stuff that I'd never have even looked at save for it being free. Much more that was bought as part of bundles, where i bought the bundle because it was cheaper than buying the one book in it I really wanted. (WFRP 2E, for example, had the first legal PDF of the WFRP1E PDF. 7th sea 2E had all of 1E in it, and I wanted to read the rest of 1e...)
Free item sales do affect total orders, and the proportion of PWYW is increasing from what it was. Especially since an order of nothing but free content is still an order number.
Rob's excellent tracking is, however, lacking a bunch of details.
It's probably not the actual DTRPG numbers; my Wargames Vault library is the same 539 orders and 1500+ entries as my DTRPG one. While I don't have any Drive Thru Comics nor Drive Thru Cards orders, I suspect the number Rob is tracking is total OBS sales across storefronts, not just DTRPG.
(and my first showing order? I paid $8 but it doesn't show what... order number just shy of #150,000 No product listed in it! 23 jan 2003)
robconley
Hero
That would be a good bet as the order number undoubtedly relates to their internal accounting shared across all sites. You could get a sense of the proportion between the different sites by looking at their respective metal levels.
robconley
Hero
The Internet Archive is your friend
The total number of free products in 2015
In 2018
In 2021
And now currently
As for PWYW
It grew from 506 in 2015
To 3.103 today
Out of 140,000+ products
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