New Years, Valentine’s Day Biggest Virtual Goods Holidays

Today the payment services provider Social Gold released data regarding sales of virtual goods during various holiday periods. The holidays that boost virtual goods sales the most appear to be New Year's Day, which drove 65% increases in virtual goods revenue, and Valentine's Day, which drove 48% increases. 

Social Gold's data was based on total volume of virtual goods purchases made in 1000 different games that use its payment services. Surprisingly, the consumer-oriented Christmas holidays do not seem to drive lift in virtual goods spending at all.

"Christmas is low primarily because there is usually also a lull in traffic for games around Christmas," said Social Gold CEO and co-founder Vikas Gupta, in statements made to the Wall Street Journal. "We also suspect that pre-Christmas, there could also be a spending crunch for virtual goods. The rebound in traffic as well as freer spending on New Years does correspond to this."  

The Thanksgiving and Halloween holidays also drive significant boosts of virtual goods purchases, of 40% and 38% (respectively). All of the holidays drove boosts in purchasing both on the day of the holiday and during the week of the holiday in question. The only substantial weekly boost was for New Year's Day, with purchases up 50%. The other holidays drove more modest weekly boosts in the range of 12% to 20%. 

The Social Gold data also revealed that discounts of virtual currency will boost virtual goods purchases better than discounts on the prices of the actual items will. The size of the boost varies by application and by how deep the discount is, but can be anywhere from over 50% higher to 1000% higher. During currency discounts players will essentially hoard large amounts of currency they can spend later. Discounting individual virtual items drives impulse purchasing, but for very brief periods of time. 

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