Hello everyone, this may be an argumentative topic, but I wanted to weigh in on it, despite nobody really discussing it properly.
As many of us know, gifting shops used to be much more popular due to the minimum price being only 1T. And YES, Randomize changed it to 50T to try to prevent gifting shops since he hates them. And yes, I know gifting shops might not matter to you, but I think I have a good point. All this in consideration, I would like to present my argument as to why this was a big mistake on his part.
Back in the day, _Aria, Lucinda, RoughNightBro, Chic, JGoodies monopolized the competing shop slots. So, there were typically 4-5 new shops each week that wanted to gift. You see, gifting shops were desired by many people, which can be seen in how expensive they used to be. The competition used to be so intense to get a shop, driving up the prices to even open one. 3-4 years ago, before Randomize made this change, competing shops would cost over 5,500Ts each week. Compare that to the 1500Ts shops we have now, that is INSANE!
Gifting shops had such a high demand because of how convenient they were, to gift 35 people for around 5500 Ts. But when Randomize increased the price per gift to 50, the demand PLUMMETED. It was this action that made the overall value of a shop decrease as well, why would you want to spend so many Ts to buy the shop, and then spend hundreds of more Ts to gift?
So now you might be wondering, well why would Randomize care? Well, Tengaged is a business. The ONLY way Randomize makes money off of this site is from people buying Ts. Despite the decrease in shops prices, the price to purchase Ts has always remained the same. So I ask of you to think like a business man. Would you want someone to buy 1,500Ts, or spend 3.667 times that amount to buy 5,000? Higher shop prices results in more income going into Randomize鈥檚 bank account. But high shop prices are directly related to the demand of shops, mostly gifting shops. If randomize wants more money coming his way, he needs to make people want to buy Ts for shops, and what do people want? To gift their friends at a very low price.
One counter argument may be that the overall health of the TG economy and popularity of the site overall decreasing leads to people having less Ts, not shops. But, doesn鈥檛 that show that if randomize creates the incentive of cheap gifting shops, people will want to buy Ts to open their shops? People are playing games much less frequently and there are rarely any charities, so if people want to have a high bid for a shop, they need to buy Ts.
In conclusion, if the main goal of this website for Randomize is to earn money from it, he made a mistake by increasing the gifting minimum price. The overall demand and competition for shops has decreased dramatically, witnessing a drop from +5,500 T bids to now around 1,500T bids. With the prices of shops decreasing, the incentive to purchase Ts has also decreased. With people not wanting to purchase Ts due to shops not being worth it anymore, Randomize has hurt his business.
Good point. Although the decrease in shop price has a lot to do with change in auctions. Before 100$ of sold price could apply towards your shop. Now you only get 50% in the form of Ts.
Randomize should change the gifting price and allow the discount to function the way cswaggerr mentioned. It would encourage more uploading/spamming, which is MORE activity on the site, but also allows for a more competitive way to even own a shop.
Honestly. Isn't that why randomize changed the maximum price? To get rid of gift shops? What's the point of gift shops if people are just going to sit back and circlejerk each other instead of you know. Sending gifts?
Wait, if you buy a shop for 1500$ and then use 35 slots to gift people which would be 35 x 50 = 1750$ which is in total 3250$, how is that more expensive than 5000$ that you used to pay and then gift for 1$? smoothstalker12
Admir The 5000T$ used were not of equal amount to an actual 5000T$. Back before the update, we had to use something called 'discounts' which were T$ obtained through designs spammed into auction. The T$ given from each auction sale (to the user who uploaded the design) would receive the T$ through discounts, and it would only last around 30 days before expiring. Most of the T$ used for shops were not from the users' account, so the 1500T$ used these days has more worth to it and makes things these days more valuable. Also, you should consider how low the bids are on designs these days; it would take a lot of auctions to make up the money for a shop when someone back then could get three designs in auctions and get three bids each auction worth 1500T$, giving you enough for a shop.
Games take 2-5 days to fill, but yet we're bitching about the way shops work? This isn't a dress up your avatar website, it's a reality tv gaming site...and people wonder why TG is dying lol
