Limited Run Games Thread - Nothing is Limited, We Make Everything Now!

Squarehard

Squarehard

CAGiversary!
Feedback
182 (100%)
Please move all off-topic and non-game related discussion (such as reselling, or he who shall not be named) to the other thread below,

LRG Off-Topic Discussion Thread

---------------------------------------------------------

LRG is on Amazon now!

LRG Trading Thread - Miss a release? Trade with someone who might need a release you have.


Limited Run Games Store Fronthttps://limitedrungames.com/videogamedeals

Limited Run Games at Best Buyhttps://shop-links.co/chgcByJn9wg

Holiday 2022 LRG Releases at Best Buyhttps://cag.vg/lrg

Props to Cheapy for keeping the OP updated. :3
 
Last edited:
Upvote 3 Downvote
I've been holding off on several recent releases. But today I had to dive back in. Really wanted a standard copy of Rogue Legacy for the Switch. Went ahead and snagged a standard copy of Transistor for the Switch. And I went ahead and got a copy of Red Matter as well. The reviews for that one are pretty good, and I did recently get a PS4 Pro to bolster my VR games.

 
I haven't caved on a game in a long time. The only pending one I have left is Celeste. I'm proud of myself, and also just totally uninterested in selection they've been offering lately.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
315Retro said:
I haven't caved on a game in a long time. The only pending one I have left is Celeste. I'm proud of myself, and also just totally uninterested in selection they've been offering lately.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I've been buying less as well. Mostly just VIta titles, PS4 FMV games, and indie darlings (Freedom Planet, Transistor). A lot of what they're selling anymore seem to be ports from other platforms (i.e. PS4/Vita to Switch) and retro games like Star Wars that I just don't have interest in.

When they first started there was a huge backlog of games that deserved a physical and didn't have one. Now that backlog is much smaller, they're competing with 10+ limited companies for each one, and a lot of the list is already crossed off from devs not being willing to take the time (for example, the Atelier folks shut the door pretty hard on LRG).

 
Last edited by a moderator:
So what is the longest time that anyone has been contacted for a game on a waiting list from when they filled out the form?

I recently got an, what I assume to be automated, email and it's been probably 8 months since I filled out the form. Also, I saw they put up remaining supply without almost no heads up earlier this year and it sold out within the day. 

 
mr_top_hat said:
So what is the longest time that anyone has been contacted for a game on a waiting list from when they filled out the form?

I recently got an, what I assume to be automated, email and it's been probably 8 months since I filled out the form. Also, I saw they put up remaining supply without almost no heads up earlier this year and it sold out within the day.
Click to expand...
They're still waiting to send out Iconoclasts waiting lists because a lot of those are tied up in Celeste pre-orders (so 7 months and counting). I'm guessing that's going to be the longest.

There is some method to their madness for the waiting lists but I have no clue what it is. Best to ask one of their support folks if there's a specific game whose waitlist you're interested in.

 
Tothoro said:
They're still waiting to send out Iconoclasts waiting lists because a lot of those are tied up in Celeste pre-orders (so 7 months and counting). I'm guessing that's going to be the longest.

There is some method to their madness for the waiting lists but I have no clue what it is. Best to ask one of their support folks if there's a specific game whose waitlist you're interested in.
Click to expand...
I forgot about pre orders, that may be why then. I was on a Rabi Ribi list, but it was sold back in November and whatever stock remained was sold sometime this year, but maybe not everything? Here's hoping...

 
mr_top_hat said:
I forgot about pre orders, that may be why then. I was on a Rabi Ribi list, but it was sold back in November and whatever stock remained was sold sometime this year, but maybe not everything? Here's hoping...
Click to expand...
They mentioned last week that they were testing a new notification system for the wait list and that some test e-mails had gone out not linked to a particular wait list, so unless it stated that a copy of a specific game was available, it's likely just that test.

 
Destro14 said:
LRG stated that they will always say whether or not any outside retailer will be stocking their games on the product information page. This announcement was made after best buy started picking up their games to sell in store. The first game best buy picked up was not announced and LRG allowed cancellations on orders if people wanted to try and get it through best buy. Ever since, they have listed them on the product page. Transistor was the first that they forgot to put this on when the game went on sale, but I did not see any backlash because Josh had announced the game being picked up by best buy on twitter.

I do wish that they would show the best buy cover, because some of the LRG covers have been substantially better. But since I still have GCU, it is hard to justify the extra money for a card and a cover.
Click to expand...
Any title BB gets you can just wait on. They dont even sell out. Every title they have received through LRG they still have in stock. Any of those titles you can essentially pick up whenever.
 
Jiles001 said:
Any title BB gets you can just wait on. They dont even sell out. Every title they have received through LRG they still have in stock. Any of those titles you can essentially pick up whenever.
Click to expand...
Yeah I just picked up Curse of the Moon from BB because it was the last one in stock at my local store, but now I’m having buyer’s remorse. It’s still available to purchase online and I dont know if a 4-6 hour game is worth $30 just to have it physically.
 
Batto47 said:
Yeah I just picked up Curse of the Moon from BB because it was the last one in stock at my local store, but now I’m having buyer’s remorse. It’s still available to purchase online and I dont know if a 4-6 hour game is worth $30 just to have it physically.
Click to expand...
I really liked it and feel it's way better than the full bloodstained game which I paid a similar amount for.
 
Batto47 said:
Yeah I just picked up Curse of the Moon from BB because it was the last one in stock at my local store, but now I’m having buyer’s remorse. It’s still available to purchase online and I dont know if a 4-6 hour game is worth $30 just to have it physically.
Click to expand...
I've found with these smaller games it's better to just buy digital (or play a free demo) and let my passion for the game predicate the decision to add an expensive physical copy to the collection. I wish I had done that with Golf Story. That was my last slip up.

Curse of the Moon I bought digitally first and while it gets a lot of praise for some reason it ended up feeling like a half-assed NES Castlevania 3 wannabe to me. The enemy layout and level design was lazy in the design department even though they did a few cool things with action sequences. It's not the worst game I've ever played, but it made passing on the physical easy and helped me opt out of RotN (on Switch) as well since I figured if they can't wow me with an 8bit looking game (which I'm a huge fan of 8 bit Castlevania), then they probably won't wow me with a generic modern looking cv game either.

 
342f55ddf7f7b7e8da0b73cab96fa4e4.jpg
 
If they had AT LEAST had these carts in boxes that mimic the original release, then I can understand on some level why it would make sense since so many people threw out Nintendo boxes (especially N64 boxes). However, the original carts are a dime a dozen, and if I personally had to choose, I'd choose the original release every time.

So yeah...money.

 
I hope this is all that they release this week. If so it will be an easy skip.

Knowing LRG though...They may announce 5 new PS4 releases tomorrow. You know that My Name is Mayo still needs to get onto disk. Still upset that didn’t get a physical Vita release. I bet the mega bundle this week is going to be $599.
 
4tygames said:
I hope this is all that they release this week. If so it will be an easy skip.

Knowing LRG though...They may announce 5 new PS4 releases tomorrow. You know that My Name is Mayo still needs to get onto disk. Still upset that didn’t get a physical Vita release. I bet the mega bundle this week is going to be $599.
Click to expand...
The plan as of this morning according to Douglas on Discord is that it will be an all-Star Wars Friday. Hover is pushed to next week and will likely be joined by Atari Flashback for the Vita and maybe something else. Douglas explained that the audience for these Star Wars releases is almost completely separate from their regular buyers which makes a lot of sense.

 
bojay1997 said:
The plan as of this morning according to Douglas on Discord is that it will be an all-Star Wars Friday. Hover is pushed to next week and will likely be joined by Atari Flashback for the Vita and maybe something else. Douglas explained that the audience for these Star Wars releases is almost completely separate from their regular buyers which makes a lot of sense.
Click to expand...
Awesome, good to hear! I’ll be on vacation as well so being able to skip this week is pretty great.
 
blueweltall said:
Why release games that already exist in physical form?
Click to expand...
If it's a game I really enjoy and something I want to play over and over then I want a physical one because it may not be available digitally in 10 years when I pull out an old system.

But really your question begs another question, why bother releasing any games physically at all since you could just put them out there digitally instead?

 
On the topic of money, I decided to do some math today based on what I know of LRG.

Profit on physical games is about 55%. LRG shares (or at one time shared) profit 70/30 favoring the developer. Assuming this is still true, LRG gets 30% of 45% of every game sold, which is 13.5%. On a $30 game that's about $5. The numbers are different for Switch (and I don't think that's public knowledge), and CEs will obviously vary greatly but would tend to be more profitable based on most of their contents.

For shipping, they've admitted that they upcharge in order to offset the cost of the shipping team but I don't know what the actual cost-per-item to ship is. I'm guessing around $3.50, leaving them with ~$2 on the shipping charge for domestic packages (I'm not going to try with international logistics).

LRG has ~10 employees as of a few years ago (it's probably higher now), and they've mentioned they pay their employees $15 an hour plus good benefits. Assuming a standard work year (2080 hours) that's $31,200, and "good" benefits usually cost another 40%. So that's $43,680 per employee (though I assume Josh and Doug probably get more than the shipping and support minions). Brings payroll for the year to around $450,000 conservatively.

With quick and dirty math, that means their breakeven point is about 65,000 $30 units sold in a year. Do note, though, that that discounts a lot of their day-to-day business expenses (marketing, office costs, conventions, tax). While I do think they've sold far more than that the past few years, I do think it may be contributing to the frenzy of releases. With the backlog of stuff to ship out it kind of makes me think they have a cash flow issue, but asserting that requires far more evidence than I have.

Keep in mind, this is all speculation and rough guesses. I don't know any kind of secret info about the company, I just did math based on publicly available numbers. Not trying to make any accusations or anything of that nature, I just think data is cool.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I think remember the deal they have in place is the Dev gets the digital price times the number of units sold after expenses are covered. This is where the digital price plus $15 to determine the sale price comes from (it was digital price plus $10 pre ESRB) and is base on when the game was signed. That is why some releases are 10 over and some are 15. I think the pre ESRB minimum was $24.99 and post is $29.99.
They used to discuss stuff like this here before they started getting openly attacked over petty crap.
 
Tothoro said:
On the topic of money, I decided to do some math today based on what I know of LRG.

Profit on physical games is about 55%. LRG shares (or at one time shared) profit 70/30 favoring the developer. Assuming this is still true, LRG gets 30% of 45% of every game sold, which is 13.5%. On a $30 game that's about $5. The numbers are different for Switch (and I don't think that's public knowledge), and CEs will obviously vary greatly but would tend to be more profitable based on most of their contents.

For shipping, they've admitted that they upcharge in order to offset the cost of the shipping team but I don't know what the actual cost-per-item to ship is. I'm guessing around $3.50, leaving them with ~$2 on the shipping charge for domestic packages (I'm not going to try with international logistics).

LRG has ~10 employees as of a few years ago (it's probably higher now), and they've mentioned they pay their employees $15 an hour plus good benefits. Assuming a standard work year (2080 hours) that's $31,200, and "good" benefits usually cost another 40%. So that's $43,680 per employee (though I assume Josh and Doug probably get more than the shipping and support minions). Brings payroll for the year to around $450,000 conservatively.

With quick and dirty math, that means their breakeven point is about 65,000 $30 units sold in a year. Do note, though, that that discounts a lot of their day-to-day business expenses (marketing, office costs, conventions, tax). While I do think they've sold far more than that the past few years, I do think it may be contributing to the frenzy of releases. With the backlog of stuff to ship out it kind of makes me think they have a cash flow issue, but asserting that requires far more evidence than I have.

Keep in mind, this is all speculation and rough guesses. I don't know any kind of secret info about the company, I just did math based on publicly available numbers. Not trying to make any accusations or anything of that nature, I just think data is cool.
Click to expand...
I've crunched some numbers before on this. Since we don't know what the numbers are on releases anymore with most being preorders, it's hard to really gauge. But speculation is fun, and I speculate they sell at least 10K of most big switch games. So 7 switch games alone clears 70K units which covers their payroll for the year. A few more switch releases clears their business operations. Since everything is preorder/pre-manufacture, they are paid upfront for everything sold. If there is a cash flow issue it's because of complete incompetence managing the money.

 
I think you are underestimating the number of current employees at LRG.  I vaguely remember them saying they have 25 employees as of a month or two ago.  I'm also guessing a lot of them get paid more than $15 an hour (that's probably just the lowest few on the payroll).  It's because of this I believe there never will be a significant decrease in the number of releases per month.  They need to support all these paid employees now and their benefits.  A true decrease in releases would only happen if they lay off staff, or have a tremendous amount of money in the bank to support it. 

They will keep pumping out a large number of releases each month until people stop buying and the limited games market goes under (which may never truly happen).  Though there were a huge amount of full set LRG collectors in the early years.  Check out the sales numbers for a game like Octodad for the PS4, or the early sales numbers for their first Kemco RPGs.  Those games would probably not sell half as many nowadays.

It will also be interesting to see what they will do to pick up the lost sales from the rabid Vita fanbase in several months as Vita releases dry up and disappear.  PS4 releases are pretty much at a maximum now and I can see Switch collectors giving some push back if they increase the 2 to 3 Switch releases each month.  That leaves stuff for the retro systems and the big wildcard - Microsoft - if they work out a deal to publish on the XBox platforms.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
That's a good point about their number of employees.  They also moved locations quite a few times.  The current location has to be a bit pricey.   Anyway, without knowing actual sales numbers it's all speculation, but you could very well be right that they can never slow down because the ship would start to sink.   But as long as they are raking in the money to pay for production in advance of production, they pretty much can't fully fail.  Especially when they just cut the production size of something that undersells like the Power Rangers CE's.

 
nightc1 said:
I've crunched some numbers before on this. Since we don't know what the numbers are on releases anymore with most being preorders, it's hard to really gauge. But speculation is fun, and I speculate they sell at least 10K of most big switch games. So 7 switch games alone clears 70K units which covers their payroll for the year. A few more switch releases clears their business operations. Since everything is preorder/pre-manufacture, they are paid upfront for everything sold. If there is a cash flow issue it's because of complete incompetence managing the money.
Click to expand...
Most of the early releases had no problem clearing 10K copies, but the newer ones aren't quite making it there. Obviously big names sell more copies so it wavers a bit. Someone on their Discord maintains a running list of quantities sourced primarily from Josh/Doug and I took a look at it out of curiousity a few days ago.

In terms of cash flow, if that's a problem it's likely a symptom of the long pre-order times. You're waiting for manufacturing/shipping while the money you got for that item goes out the door in shipping for previous orders, payroll for who-knows-how-many employees, and other expenses chip away at money you need to fulfill those placed orders. Have to keep selling stuff or it will run dry. Think of it like using a credit card - it's okay if you can pay it off in a reasonable time, but if your cards are maxed out, accounts are empty, and rent is due then you're screwed.

Josef said:
I think you are underestimating the number of current employees at LRG. I vaguely remember them saying they have 25 employees as of a month or two ago. I'm also guessing a lot of them get paid more than $15 an hour (that's probably just the lowest few on the payroll). It's because of this I believe there never will be a significant decrease in the number of releases per month. They need to support all these paid employees now and their benefits. A true decrease in releases would only happen if they lay off staff, or have a tremendous amount of money in the bank to support it.

They will keep pumping out a large number of releases each month until people stop buying and the limited games market goes under (which may never truly happen). Though there were a huge amount of full set LRG collectors in the early years. Check out the sales numbers for a game like Octodad for the PS4, or the early sales numbers for their first Kemco RPGs. Those games would probably not sell half as many nowadays.

It will also be interesting to see what they will do to pick up the lost sales from the rabid Vita fanbase in several months as Vita releases dry up and disappear. PS4 releases are pretty much at a maximum now and I can see Switch collectors giving some push back if they increase the 2 to 3 Switch releases each month. That leaves stuff for the retro systems and the big wildcard - Microsoft - if they work out a deal to publish on the XBox platforms.
Click to expand...
Oh, I'm absolutely underestimating their number of employees and likely the pay of those employees. The most recent numbers for employee counts I could find were from 2017 and Josh/Doug/etc. don't exactly publish their salaries. If it's really 25 employees at this point then I think it really is necessary for them to publish this many games to keep everyone's paychecks coming.

That said, I don't think this is sustainable forever. There aren't that many games left that will really sell huge numbers of copies and they're competing against 10 other companies for each of those releases. Quantities in general of pre-orders have been decreasing, and I think if a recession hits and leaves people with less disposable income it really could capsize the market.

Again, all speculation, but there's enough risk involved at this point and enough people depending on the company that I wouldn't want to be in their shoes.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Tothoro said:
Most of the early releases had no problem clearing 10K copies, but the newer ones aren't quite making it there. Obviously big names sell more copies so it wavers a bit. Someone on their Discord maintains a running list of quantities sourced primarily from Josh/Doug and I took a look at it out of curiousity a few days ago.

In terms of cash flow, if that's a problem it's likely a symptom of the long pre-order times. You're waiting for manufacturing/shipping while the money you got for that item goes out the door in shipping for previous orders, payroll for who-knows-how-many employees, and other expenses chip away at money you need to fulfill those placed orders. Have to keep selling stuff or it will run dry. Think of it like using a credit card - it's okay if you can pay it off in a reasonable time, but if your cards are maxed out, accounts are empty, and rent is due then you're screwed.

Oh, I'm absolutely underestimating their number of employees and likely the pay of those employees. The most recent numbers for employee counts I could find were from 2017 and Josh/Doug/etc. don't exactly publish their salaries. If it's really 25 employees at this point then I think it really is necessary for them to publish this many games to keep everyone's paychecks coming.

That said, I don't think this is sustainable forever. There aren't that many games left that will really sell huge numbers of copies and they're competing against 10 other companies for each of those releases. Quantities in general of pre-orders have been decreasing, and I think if a recession hits and leaves people with less disposable income it really could capsize the market.

Again, all speculation, but there's enough risk involved at this point and enough people depending on the company that I wouldn't want to be in their shoes.
Click to expand...
I doubt all of those employees are full time or salary, probably minimum wage trying to have a foot in the door with a publisher. They are not a little man player in this industry anymore and people need to stop giving them a pass as if they are
 
I just remembered where I heard they had 25 employees - its in this Prime Day tweet by them:

https://twitter.com/LimitedRunGames/status/1150858694621458432

We have about 25 employees (that includes shipping, ops, marketing, dev, etc.).
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Jurai said:
I doubt all of those employees are full time or salary, probably minimum wage trying to have a foot in the door with a publisher. They are not a little man player in this industry anymore and people need to stop giving them a pass as if they are
Click to expand...
They have stated repeatedly that everyone makes a living wage and gets benefits. I suppose they could be lying, but that seems like an easy thing to get caught lying about considering all it would take is just one disgruntled former employee to spill the beans. Also, nobody has given them a "pass" since virtually the beginning. Certainly not in the last couple of years and certainly not now. It's part of the reason they don't interact here and a lot of other places anymore, preferring their own more controlled environment.

Personally, I treat them like every other company and judge them by their products and how they transact business with me individually as a customer. I don't care about how much profit they make or whether they interact with me on a forum or anything else. I also don't care if they release a million games a week or none. I buy what interests me and don't buy what doesn't, just like every other business I deal with.

You on the other hand seem downright obsessed with them. Weren't you the one demanding that this thread be closed a while back? Why continue to come here anyway? Is this still about your "daddy issues" and your need for love and validation from a company that owes you nothing and has no means of providing what you are desperately seeking? Honestly, please consider getting some help as your posts seem to be doing a lot more damage to your own fragile psyche than they will ever do to Limited Run Games.

 
I'm a little confused as to why the amount of profit LRG makes is under such scrutiny. If you like physical productions of digital games, wouldn't you want their business model to be successful, as that makes it more likely that you will see more physical games? Why would anyone be resentful of them selling more titles and making more money? And why would they ever have to justify doing well and turning a profit? Isn't that kind of the point? Isn't that exactly what they should be striving for as a business entity? Don't most businesses try to turn as healthy a profit as possible?

 
Dr_dreadful said:
If it's a game I really enjoy and something I want to play over and over then I want a physical one because it may not be available digitally in 10 years when I pull out an old system.

But really your question begs another question, why bother releasing any games physically at all since you could just put them out there digitally instead?
Click to expand...
Yeah, but these games has physical copies already. These games were never digital only copies. The NES or SNES never have the ability to download and play digital only games. These are just old roms release in a fancy case for the same system it originally appeared on.

It would be better if these release were for systems that never saw a physical release to it.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Richard Kain said:
I'm a little confused as to why the amount of profit LRG makes is under such scrutiny. If you like physical productions of digital games, wouldn't you want their business model to be successful, as that makes it more likely that you will see more physical games? Why would anyone be resentful of them selling more titles and making more money? And why would they ever have to justify doing well and turning a profit? Isn't that kind of the point? Isn't that exactly what they should be striving for as a business entity? Don't most businesses try to turn as healthy a profit as possible?
Click to expand...
It's a bizarre obsession by a few participants here who feel that LRG never gave them the personal attention they wanted in the beginning and have spent the past four years bashing away at LRG at every opportunity. I think they are trying to continually make some kind of "sell out" argument that LRG at one point was pure in their estimation but has been sullied by success and profitability. The whole thing is stupid. I want LRG to be around just like I want all of their competitors to be around so that all of us have maximum choice in what we can purchase. Beyond that, their financials don't matter to me one iota.

 
blueweltall said:
Yeah, but these games has physical copies already. These games were never digital only copies. The NES or SNES never have the ability to download and play digital only games. These are just old roms release in a fancy case for the same system it originally appeared on.

It would be better if these release were for systems that never saw a physical release to it.
Click to expand...
So don't buy them. Why does it matter if LRG or any company sells a product you don't care about but others obviously do? Do you spend time obsessing about Iam8Bit or the other companies that do re-releases of games that are widely available in their original physical release format?

 
Jurai said:
I doubt all of those employees are full time or salary, probably minimum wage trying to have a foot in the door with a publisher. They are not a little man player in this industry anymore and people need to stop giving them a pass as if they are
Click to expand...
Josh has gone on record saying they pay $15 + benefits. The only assumption I made was 2080 hours, which is standard full-time hours in America. I do agree that they're not a small player in the industry anymore, though. I wouldn't be surprised if they sold half a million units across all of their titles in FY2019.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
bojay1997 said:
So don't buy them. Why does it matter if LRG or any company sells a product you don't care about but others obviously do? Do you spend time obsessing about Iam8Bit or the other companies that do re-releases of games that are widely available in their original physical release format?
Click to expand...
Why are you so obsess and get so work up when anyone make any kind of comment about LRG? Is this thread not titled Limited Run Games Thread? Didn't LRG said, "We focus on bringing games that were previously only available in a digital format to a physical." So is it wrong for me to question why they are focusing on releasing games that already have a physical format?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
blueweltall said:
Why are you so obsess and get so work up when anyone make any kind of comment about LRG? Is this thread not titled Limited Run Games Thread? Didn't LRG said, "We focus on bringing games that were previously only available in a digital format to a physical." So is it wrong for me to question why they are focusing on releasing games that already have a physical format?
Click to expand...
Well, since you asked, my main concern has always been that this thread was once a good place to share information and there was a separate thread for all the speculation and criticism and other off-topic stuff. Unfortunately, at some point, the thread was derailed by a handful of people who never liked Limited Run from the beginning and have essentially driven away anyone that had helpful information to share, including the founders of LRG who used to post occasionally. Rather than post in that other thread that they know most people don't care about, they insist on continuing to post here so they have an audience for their criticisms, all the while contributing nothing of value. Here's the link - https://www.cheapassgamer.com/topic/364154-limited-run-games-youre-limited-no-youre-limited-discussion-thread/. Feel free to take it over there.

With regard to your other point, LRG has said a lot of things over the four years they have been in business. Josh mentioned recently that his goal is to release as much cool stuff for collectors as possible. Businesses change and evolve and LRG has as well. Trying to hold them to a statement of purpose they shared at one point several years ago is a pointless exercise. Like I said, if you don't like the direction they are taking, feel free not to buy from them. If enough customers share your beliefs, maybe that pressure will change their course. As it stands, they seem to have found a ready audience for their product lines outside of physical indie games, so I suspect they will be fine with or without your patronage.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top