2D Boy's pay-what-you-like sale on World of Goo has ended, with statistics showing that Brazilians are generous, PC gamers are cheap, and posting mid-point results is an excellent way to up your price averages.
On October 13th, developer 2D Boy launched a birthday sale for World of Goo for the PC, Linux, and Mac, allowing customers to pay whatever amount they felt the game was worth, from $.01 on up. On the 20th they extended the sale through October 25th after delivering a set of sales statistics that delivered an important message: they were watching.
Once customers knew 2D Boy was keeping track of sales numbers, the average price-per-purchase jumped a small yet significant amount. 2D Boy attributes this leap to the fact that they let folks know that they received no money from purchases under $.30. I'd like to attribute it to the fact that people were suddenly more aware of how cheap they were being, adjusting their purchases accordingly.
The chart at the top of this post shows the average price paid for World of Goo per platform over the course of the sale, and as you can plainly see, PC gamers took full advantage of the developer's generosity. One could argue that there are a lot more of them, but that could also mean PC gamers had more of a chance to shine. The results don't surprise me though, as Mac users are so hip that people just hand them cash on the street, and Linux users passed along the money they saved on buying an operating system.
2D Boy's website also features a chart showing the average donation by country, which they calculated into the per-capita gross domestic product of each country to determine each country's generosity. While Switzerland paid the highest on average, their generosity was only a 3.23 compared to Brazil's 5.62.
And what of the United States, the country with the second highest GDP behind Norway? Our generosity is a 1.0, paying a measly $1.83 a copy. Way to represent, America!