No, Bone Lab is Not Available for Free – Here‘s a Deep Dive into the Pricing
I know you‘re excited about the new VR game Bone Lab. But before you ask – nope, it‘s not available for free right now. Bone Lab costs $39.99 on both Steam and the Quest store.
Now I know, we‘d all love to get amazing VR games for free! But let‘s take a deeper look at the costs involved in developing and publishing VR titles, so you can understand why Bone Lab has its $39.99 price tag.
A Typical Price Point for Premium VR Games
While not free, $39.99 is pretty standard pricing for a top-tier, non-bundle VR game these days. Here are some examples of other popular VR titles that launched around the $40 price range:
- Boneworks (2019) – $29.99
- Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (2020) – $39.99
- Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond (2020) – $49.99
- After the Fall (2021) – $39.99
- Resident Evil 4 VR (2021) – $39.99
And here are the average sales prices for VR games in some popular genres, according to the SteamVR Index for June 2022:
- Shooters – $25.40
- Action – $29.68
- Adventure – $29.23
- RPG – 9.93
- Simulation – $22.02
- Puzzle – $14.90
So with a price of $39.99, Bone Lab sits right within the average price range for high quality VR action/shooter games nowadays.
The Costs Behind Developing a VR Game Like Bone Lab
You might be wondering – why don‘t more VR games follow the free-to-play or freemium model?
Well, developing a made-for-VR game like Bone Lab takes a massive investment of time and money. The dev team at Stress Level Zero has been working on this game for years.
- VR development requires specialized knowledge and experience working with VR game engines.
- VR games need top-notch graphics, physics, and sound design to be truly immersive.
- Creating intricate VR interactions like real-life hand presence takes tons of coding work.
- VR games have much smaller potential audiences than flatscreen games, due to the need for a headset.
- Even "simple" VR ports take thousands of hours of development time.
Add this all up, and you‘re looking at millions of dollars invested to build a game like Bone Lab from scratch for virtual reality.
Selling at full price is the only way most VR devs can hope to recover their costs and fund future projects.
Free-to-Play Approaches in VR
That said, there are some examples of VR developers finding success with free-to-play or freemium approaches:
- Rec Room – social VR world with microtransactions for cosmetics
- VRChat – social platform funded by investments and grants
- PokerStars VR – free poker game with paid avatar items
- Beat Saber – base game is paid, but additional song packs are paid DLC
But these tend to work for social apps and games-as-a-service titles, not really big narrative games like Bone Lab. And even these free gamescost millions to develop and maintain.
The Value Proposition of Bone Lab at $39.99
When you consider that AAA flatscreen games cost $60-$70 now, I think Bone Lab offers an amazing value at just $39.99. Here‘s just some of what you get for your money:
- 15+ hours of story gameplay, plus unlimited sandbox modes
- Groundbreaking VR physics and interaction systems
- Gorgeous graphics built from scratch for VR
- Hand-crafted levels and puzzles to solve
- Avatar customization and weekly challenges
- Active mod community with player-created content
You‘d be hard pressed to find this level of quality and content in VR for cheaper. In my opinion, Bone Lab more than justifies its $40 asking price with the sheer amount of gameplay and replayability it offers.
It Will Go on Sale Eventually!
I know, I know, paying nearly $40 hurts the wallet. The good news is new VR games tend to get discounts fairly quickly these days. We could see Bone Lab go on sale for 25-50% off in just a few months during a big Steam or Oculus sale.
So if you aren‘t in a rush to play, waiting for a discount could pay off. But you may be waiting 6 months or more for that first price cut.
Is Bone Lab Priced Fairly? My Verdict
Considering how much work clearly went into Bone Lab‘s physics systems, interactions, graphics, level design, and more…I believe $39.99 is a very fair launch price point. This isn‘t some rushed VR port – it‘s a true cutting-edge VR experience that pushes the boundaries of the medium.
The team at Stress Level Zero deserves to be compensated for the years of intense work it took to make this VR masterpiece. And as an enthusiastic VR gamer, I‘m happy to pay a premium price to enjoy their creation and support the future of VR game development.
In closing, could Bone Lab maybe have launched at $29.99 or $34.99? Perhaps. But I have no problem with the $40 pricing, and I encourage other VR fans to pay the developers for their hard work bringing us the gift of Bone Lab. This game will be added to my all-time VR favorites list, right alongside Half-Life: Alyx.
Whew, thanks for sticking with me through this epic deep dive into VR game pricing! Let me know if you have any other questions. And hopefully I‘ll see you in Bone Lab soon – we need to squad up and cause some physics chaos.