If you play/buy enough indie games on steam you start to get a feel for what they should be worth. I guess the same could be said for anything. And honestly, I understand the production cost side of things. But if you did not spend your resources correctly, and created a product that is not worth the money put into it, that does not justify you over charging for it. But like I said, that is not what is going on here.
The inflated release prices are part of the game they're forced to play on steam. Basically, they have a bottom line for the price of the game for X amount of time. They inflate that price a bit, offer a release week sale of 10%. Then down the line they go on sale to garner more attention for the game by getting on the front page and on the specials tab.
@ The price guessing. Yes this is essentially a guesstimate, but there are also a lot of cases where you know 1) This isn't worth what I paid, 2) This is worth more than I paid. You can also easily draw comparisons between similar games in similar genre's. And like I said, it doesn't matter how much money you put into the game if it's not worth it, that is on you.
There are also tiers of "indie" games ($10/15/20/25+). You basically know what to expect in each tier. **YES there are outliers, there always will be. That's what is awesome about steam and the indie scene. This is just a general guideline of what I've come to expect. It's totally just my opinion. I'm also talking about release prices, not sale or reduced prices.
A lot of $10(release price) games are low effort with low replay value. They generally have poor 3d texture quality, modeling, and/or meh 2d sprites/animations/art.
$15 games will usually have some replay value or more effort put into presentation/gameplay. But they are essentially the same as the $10 titles.
$20 titles are usually the pricepoint for "indie" games developed by big publishers whether they are good or not. They'll often have a slew of DLC, and may or may not have decent replay value. This is also the tier where some of the better true indie games exist. I believe Dungeon Defenders was a $20 title at release, and that is a great game. Axiom Verge/Ori and the blind forest are other examples of $20 worth their price. You generally expect a $20 title to be something you'll want to go back to at some point either to replay it, or because it has a ton of replay value. Torchlight 1/2 is another example, there are tons.
On the $25+ spectrum of indie games you would expect some decent 3d modeling, textures, and graphics. Unless the game has some sort of awesome replay value. And you don't expect to see 2d sprite based art unless it's awesomely done. You also expect a certain amount of replayability and complexity to the game. A great example of a $25+ title worth it's price tag is kerbal space program, the effort that has been put into that game is immense.
Then there are the $20+ survival games that get most of their sales based off of getting popular streamers to play their games regardless of the quality of the game. These are... special games. Some are high effort, while others are not. They generally don't follow the rule.
Don't kill me if I got some info wrong. I'm typing this up at work and am too lazy/hot/tired to make sure my examples are correct. But I believe for the most part it is.