We are raising prices for virtual goods today. I want to explain why we are raising prices.
- To increase growth for IMVU and Creators. Higher prices means more credits for you and us.
- To make pricing more fair. It is harder and more complex to create rooms and furniture products, so we want to ensure the reward for creating those products is higher.
How do we know that IMVU members will accept the higher prices? Because we did pricing tests with IMVU members, and these tests showed that demand for goods in the catalog will stay the same at these prices.
SUMMARY OF THE CHANGES:
- Base price for rooms will increase to 500 credits, if the current price is less than 500.
- Base price for furniture items will increase to 350 credits, if the current price is less than 350.
- Base price for all other items will increase by 10%.
- Creator profit for the first direct IMVU Inc. derivation will increase automatically by the same percentage as the base price increase for that product – as long as it is derivable.
- Profits for other items in the derivation chain will stay the same, and Creators can adjust them to suit their needs as necessary -only if the item has not been derived from.
- Creator profit for items that are non-derivable will not change automatically even if they are direct derivations of IMVU Inc products.
We cannot instantly change all the prices in the catalog, but they will all change within the next 2 days starting now
We have provided detailed examples of the price changes below. Please review and let us know if you have any questions.
These price changes will increase your business and profits, in most cases.
Sincerely,
Cary (“CaryJay”) Rosenzweig
IMVU Chief Executive Officer
EXAMPLES:
|
Profit/Price |
Change description |
||
|
Current |
New |
||
|
Red Shirt (Derivable) |
|||
| (IMVU) Female Avatar |
275 |
303 |
10% increase |
| (IMVU) Baby T Yellow IMVU |
1 |
1 |
No change |
| Blue shirt (derivable) |
250 |
275 |
10% increase for creator profit |
| Red shirt (derivable) |
100 |
100 |
No Change |
| Catalog price |
526 |
554 |
5% increase |
|
|
|
||
Blue Shirt (Non-derivable) |
|||
| (IMVU) Female Avatar |
275 |
303 |
10% increase in base price |
| (IMVU) Baby T Yellow IMVU |
1 |
1 |
No change |
| Blue shirt (non-derivable) |
250 |
250 |
No change – creator can alter |
| Catalog price |
626 |
679 |
8.5% increase |
|
|
|
||
Blue Couch (derivable) |
|||
| (IMVU) Couch Relaxed |
275 |
350 |
Increase to 350 for furniture |
| Red couch (derivable) |
250 |
318 |
7% increase for creator profit |
| Blue couch (derivable) |
100 |
100 |
No change |
| Catalog price |
625 |
768 |
23% increase |
|
|
|
||
Nightclub (derivable) |
|||
| (IMVU) Buckstars |
275 |
500 |
Increase to 500 for rooms |
| Beach Mansion (Derivable) |
250 |
455 |
82% increase for creator profit |
| Nightclub (derivable) |
100 |
100 |
No change |
| Catalog price |
625 |
1055 |
69% increase |
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try reading the forums, people are extremely pissed off, look at the suggestions and feed backs, people want the prices back and lowered. The economy we are in, in the real life. Is in a bad recession. You don’t raise prices in a recession, you lower the prices to encourage spending.
I am a creator in IMVU and have been since 2007. Sales were already down. Do you think this is going to encourage developers to create more? Do you IMVU EVER take a statistical review BEFORE you impose changes upon your community? This is utter BS. I wish I had a crystal ball. I would have never set foot in your virtual community. UTTERLY PISSED!!
There is nothing about flash furniture being raised for those that are over 500. Enyet there has been a great increase in the cost for those. Funny thing though…I still get the same amount from it as though it never increased.
IMVU, this is bad customer service. You may see a short term increase in profits due to the multitude of new people who don’t know better, but if you think developers believe this line of hogwash, you’re wrong. You’ve done nothing to increase profits for developers and everything to make it more difficult for developers to keep on developing. You should look at the feedback thread involving this and be ashamed of yourselves.
I don’t think the prices should go up because some people don’t have lots of credits like most the people on here do! And it’s not fair! Now for starters when you get that certain amount of credits for signing up you cant just get 5-6 things you have to spend more on things so now you only get like 3-4. I don’t think anyone will like this.
nice work؛)
How is rooms have become more difficult and expensive, when creators are deriving from the same OLD basic derivables. IMVU changed NOTHING, just provesjay cary or whatever the person is charges name is, has absolutely NO idea what he is talking about , just making decisions based on what someone with no common sense tells him or her.
Well, since the price of most everything has gone up beyond belief, I have decided to buy nothing else or just items that are still reasonably priced.
By the way, we can do Math, and what you announced is not what has happened….. 10% is not = 70% or 90%…..
So.. Was the focus group like ten people? One hundred? I’m thinking at the most fifty. I have yet to meet a single person out of the thousands I’ve come across that is happy with this price hike OTHER than IMVU staff. Funny how that works, isn’t it? I mean honestly, 70% price hikes on rooms and the like? It just seems to me that the IMVU staff wanted a big ol’ fat raise ’cause they’re getting greedy. IMVU does realize that greed is one of the seven deadly sins, no? Nah, probably not, they don’t seem the lot to care too much about who’s toes are step on.
IMVU is becoming more and more distant to the desires of the greater populace it seems. Because, to be honest, who really benefits from this OTHER than they? This requires that people purchase more and more credits to get the same amounts of stuff we could months ago. As for the Devs.. Since the prices raised they aren’t really getting an increase in profit either as the prices are higher even for them so they’re spending just as much, if not more, creds now than before. Again, who benefits other than they? No one.
Simply put the higher prices all around do NOT create more revenue because any more income than before is easily spent on less of anything that dev wants to actually purchase. Not to mention with these new increases Devs are encouraged even further to FLOOD the catalog with rooms. Yet if that occurs that means there will be many Devs will find that consumers are not buying their products, the reason? There are too many options.
Diversity can be nice in quite a few ways except in this case. It does not encourage more work be put into rooms, it encourages flooding of such as they know now if their room sells they’ll be getting quite a few creds. With the lower prices it was like a ‘quality check’. It meant that unless the room met a certain standard, it really would not sell well. Now with rooms being so horrifically priced they may sell a little, yet the quality of such things will likely reflect the prices much less unless said room is made explicitly for a request or a close friend and/ or family member or the Dev directly.
CaryJay,
re: Your second point
2. To make pricing more fair…
You have forced quite a significant price increase in some cases – in fact it’s a move that brings a lot of products on par in price that were previously priced differently. You have changed that edge that some businesses had with the claim that this edge was “unfair” yes?
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but now the lowest priced furniture/scene objects in the catalogue having a huge competative edge seem to be the IMVU products. If this is true, how do you justify forcing us to have higher prices, under the pretense of being more fair, when IMVU get’s a huge unfair competative benefit across the board?
Are my reasonings here right? Or flawed? Please explain if you can. If I am right and you can’t expplain, simply don’t answer this.
-Whystler