I understand this seems very nitpicky and totally unnecessary for a large amount of people however I think it would be nice for an option to display the number of keys left for games in the store rather than a percentage of how many are already claimed, I think it’d add a bit more peace of mind and give people time to deliberate on whether or not to get a certain game without worrying when the percentage bar will suddenly zoom up to 100% and their chance would be gone.
just a thought but it would be pretty nice to have nonetheless!
Sure, I can give a high level overview of a couple:
Fraud. By somewhat obfuscating the number of copies in stock it makes it a slightly less attractive target for people trying to cheat the system with multiple accounts. We catch most of these accounts, but there’s always going to be some percentage that get by.
User behavior. We’ve found that people are more likely to buy when they don’t know exactly how many copies are left. That same worry that @minimodgamer mentioned makes people more likely to buy.
Questions. We’d almost certainly have people asking why one game has X copies and another game has Y, or why we didn’t get more copies of a certain game, etc. This is a situation where a little more mystery leads to less questions, which makes our lives easier.
These aren’t the only reasons, but they play a factor in our decision.
For an entirely different reason of my own, I like the percentage shown rather than the numbers cuz it’s mysterious and cool this way. Sets Chrono apart, makes it stand out in the crowd. Makes it more than just another “HURRRYYYYY! We’re graciously giving away 9999 keys of XYZ game on Steam with Overwhelmingly Negative Reviews. You don’t care? That’s fine! We’ll bomb your Inbox anyway! Die!” sort of a site.
Chrono is cool, well mannered and the community is nice
1 e-mail a day and an undisclosed number of keys available.
Going to be honest with you Ionin, for business and security reasons, I am VERY surprised at how frank your explanation was, despite it being a high level overview. I honestly didn’t expect an answer beyond, “we have internal reasons for being unable to share, but the mystery makes it more fun does it not?” Instead, we got a pretty straight answer and I can see you stepping right on the line before you give us too much info. So thank you. And to everyone else, remember that this is a common business practice not to give ALL the information to customers (and secret competitors) to exploit. I’m sure the publishers don’t really want to fully disclose how many keys were authorized for Chrono.gg’s use as well. The percentage is a pretty gray area as it is.
thank you for acknowledging it anyways!