BLOOD WOLF, on 16 July 2014 - 09:27 AM, said:
Even if there was a delay, to give you more than what you paid for(bonus) is a bit of a stretch Quineg?
No, not really.
This is generally a common practice among well run businesses.
Giving your customers more than you are absolutely required to builds good will, and then results in those customers coming back to you.
You see it with companies like Apple... They'll often go well beyond what would be absolutely required by their legal obligations in terms of support, but doing so earns them a huge amount of almost fanatical dedication from many of their customers.
For instance, a friend of mine had an iPhone (I'm an Android guy myself, but whatever) which he totally broke, and it was TOTALLY his own fault. And he was totally up front about this with the Apple folks. And yet they just replaced the unit for him, free of charge. They certainly didn't HAVE to do that.
That exchange actually cost Apple some money.. a few hundred bucks that they could have charged the guy for a new phone. And yet, in the long run, it was absolutely the right investment, because that guy thinks Apple freaking walks on water now. He is a life-long customer. He will NEVER buy an Android phone at this point. He continues to buy Apple products, and he now serves as a spokesperson for the company. He tells everyone about how awesome Apple is, and how they took care of him even when he was an idiot. So for a hundred bucks in phone hardware, they got a permanent advertisement that walks around and sings their praises, and continually gives them more money year after year.
And that guy isn't alone. His story is repeated by THOUSANDS of people.
And that was a case where it actually cost Apple something. They actually gave the customer hardware which cost money to produce.
For a case like PGI, the stuff being given out costs them nothing. It's purely digital content.
The potential for earning good-will from existing customers (who have already demonstrated a capacity and willingness to spend money on the game) is worth far more money in the long-run than they could ever possibly get by forcing those players to directly purchase whatever content it was that they'd be giving them for free (especially since most of those players won't actually purchase it anyway if they have to).
By giving those users something for free, you make them like you and erode the notion that you are looking at them purely as revenue sources, which in turn actually makes them into BETTER revenue sources in the long term.