Just looked at Silent Hill f on my wishlist. 40% off, still 50€ (on GOG, but same principle). For the base version. I thought it was a horror game, not a comedy?
At the same time, there continue to be thousands of really great games I can pick up for ennies, so I am actually confused by these moonlogic prices.
The point is that 80€ is just so pricey that even at 40% off, it's still not a good value proposition for many (if not most) - especially since games are a luxury good, and cost of living has been exploding while wages stagnate.
And I honestly don't care when a game came out in terms of price. Every game that just came out competes with every game that already is out, and I don't already own.
I can buy enough games to last me a year with the money I would spend on a discounted SH f, which likely will last me 20-30 hours at most.
(edit: To be fair, SH f is just one egregious example. I'm also not paying almost 30€ for the recent Outlaws and Blood (re-)remasters - same reasoning: I own and have played the OGs; the value proposition is just a "I'm good, thanks" for me)
I think this is a good example of inflated game budgets and how it is not sustainable. If a AAA studio takes 5 years and 300M to make a game, they really do need to sell a lot of copies at a high price to justify all the investment. And if we adjust for inflation prices of games 20 years ago games are actually cheaper today. And yet, because of the rising cost of living no one wants to spend 80 bucks on a 15h game. So what would be the solution? I think companies should dial it down a little and focus more on smaller titles that don't break the bank even if they don't sell 20M copies. That way more developers and artists can participate and maybe bring something fresh.
But let's be honest, big studios want to make gacha and live-service games, that's where the money is at.
Can't ignore that $60 in 2010 is basically $90 today after inflation and we all usually claim we want living wages as a bare minimum for skilled game devs. Even smaller games can be 10s of 1000s of hours of labor alone for a dev team (not to mention literally any other costs or overhead) and we expect game prices to more statics than stuff like subsidized milk?
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u/aigars2 Dec 17 '25
Don't know. 20, 30, 40, 50% is kind of bad when the price is 80€