The $70 Price Tag Is Actually Indefensible (The Jimquisition)

[Dreams-Visions]

Jim is correct, as per usual.

One thing he mentioned about "buyer's remorse" is something that I am keenly aware of and affects me in the sense of more conservative buying habits.

If prices go up on the front end, the number of purchases I will make will drop precipitously. Lower up front prices mean less risk, giving way to more impulse buying. Higher prices mean I need to wait for reviews, watch some YTers or Twitch streams of it. It means I'm less likely to try out a genre that I'm new to or only have a passing interest in. It means more GamePass and less retail. It means only games that I know I will love are going to be purchased at launch, while everything else waits a month or two for the inevitable sale.

I don't think I'm alone.

 

[HgS]

I don't think it really has to be defensible or not. It's a price for a non-essential item.

What I really don't understand is how it ends up working out for them. I'm a pretty core consumer, have lots of disposable income, spouse who games as well... so pretty close to best case scenario and the days of glibly buying up anything that looked remotely interesting on launch day are LONG dead.

Other than a dozen or so yearly well established franchises that basically exist off of causal purchasing muscle memory I don't see how anything else can get any space.

Years ago I'd have bought Immortals day 1 because it looks interesting and new to me. Now I'm thinking "it'll be 30% off within the first six months, I have a few things on Game Pass to finish off while I wait."

 

[Border]

Among US also exploded on phones, the trimmed down version of League of Legends is one of the most anticipated mobile games, Fortnite is a juggernaut on every device its available for.

Overwatch is a game that nearly everyone played until it got too repetitive and dropped by everyone. Just this Summer Fall Guys was a smash hit on PC and console. Nintendo dominated everyone's consciousness with Animal Crossing this Spring.

It really is not something exclusive to PC. Most videogame players want fun over graphics

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While not entirely reliably and still quite risky, the AAA formula is pretty staid and replicable across many genres.....it's a predictable way for making products that are more likely to be commercially successful.

One can point to League of Legends is this smashing success, but there's also 101 MOBAs that ate shit and died. There's 101 multiplayer party games that did not see the viral success of Fall Guys. I'm not sure why Overwatch keeps getting named as if its lootbox-driven progression system and massive multi-year development don't make it a part of the AAA space.

 

[Vexii]

Very easy to see the people who did watch the video vs. the "armchair economists" who didn't because... What? They enjoy exploitation? They have enough money to not give a fuck? They enjoy being poor?

 

[Deleted member 18944]

If you aren't looking for that AAA high then you can a) wait for the sale b) get into games that are smaller or less produced and c) (for our PC friends) stop chasing those insane graphics cards.

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Great post, and I really appreciate that you highlighted the dynamic of companies setting expectations with their output and marketing.

Even if people feel "Well at the end of the day, they can do what they want, it's their business", then they can at least appreciate Jim's (And many other's gripes) as saying that these decisions are actively harming the medium, the workers, and gaming as a whole.

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Thanks for the compliments!

What's funny is that Nepenthe's post is pretty much the more TLDR blunt version of what I said, and I absolutely 100000% agree with it. I'll be damned if I pay that shit.

They're upping the price just to line billionaires' pockets. That's it; that's literally it. That extra $10 ain't doing shit for the quality of games or for the developers who make 'em. I'll be damned if I pay that shit.

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[Zem]

The thought of paying £70 for the Sony games meant I didn't get a PS5. I'll get one when the games drop in price in a year or two.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

The thread is about the price hike. I'm interested in that. If somebody can post several times that "the answer's in the video" but can't repeat that answer or even point to the timestamp, then I don't think they are discussing in good faith.

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The thread is about the video by JIm Sterling, which is about the price hike but goes into the reasons why he thinks it's not justifiable. You're arguing against it with suppositions about his argument, then claiming the onus is on people rebutting you with perfectly reasonable advice to actually consult the actual source video the thread is about. Unbelievable.

 

[Sheepinator]

It's not going to go toward developers.

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This is a common misconception, repeated far too often here with zero basis. Before the Game Developer magazine shut down they ran annual salary surveys. Taking a look at game programmers e.g. in this survey that over 4,000 devs filled in:

77% receive income in addition to their salary
Of that:
46% annual bonus
17% project bonus
5% royalties
31% stock options/grants
14% profit sharing

If a company is making more profit and the share price goes up, many of their developers are seeing those gains. If the company is more stable as a result and doesn't do mass layoffs as used to be common in the industry whenever games shipped, that helps the devs. Another example is the EA bonus plan for their employees is relative to the company and business unit performance.

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2014/09/05/GAMA14_ACG_SalarySurvey_F.pdf

 

[Roxas]

Yup, he's 100% right on the money. For me 60 USD was a shit ton of money, but 70 just means I'll be buying less games than I would otherwise. If this meant that we'd kiss season passes and that sort of crap goodbye (As, let me remind you, they were introduced as a way to offset rising costs without increasing prices)

They're upping the price just to line billionaires' pockets. That's it; that's literally it. That extra $10 ain't doing shit for the quality of games or for the developers who make 'em. I'll be damned if I pay that shit.

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Yup, no lies detected

 

[Curufinwe]

The thought of paying £70 for the Sony games meant I didn't get a PS5. I'll get one when the games drop in price in a year or two.

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You probably wouldn't have been able to get one anyway, unless you went thru a scalper

 

[Spirited]

Damn this forum really loves to be abused by publishers, huh?

 

[Deleted member 49535]

Those article quotes are straight up Resetera comments.

 

[Elephant]

I honestly don't understand how anyone who buys and plays games as a hobby can praise/defend a price rise. "Please Mr Activision, charge me an extra $10. I know you're fucking me already, but why don't you put a chainsaw on the end of your cock as well? I know you're struggling to make ends meet for your fifth yacht, so let's just make the poor poorer, who cares right?"

This only benefits the leaders of major publishers and big hairy bollocks to those guys.

 

[Sheepinator]

And the costs of most things have gone above wages. That's something you have to take into account too

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OK? So, because healthcare companies raise their prices 10% every year, Disney raises their theme park prices 5% every year, Netflix has raised their prices by 75% since 2014, property prices have surged, food prices are up 3.9% in the last year, etc. etc. etc. are you suggesting video game companies shouldn't raise prices because people are putting more money into all those other companies who did raise prices? That doesn't hold up.

 

[Trigonometrize]

This is a common misconception, repeated far too often here with zero basis. Before the Game Developer magazine shut down they ran annual salary surveys. Taking a look at game programmers e.g. in this survey that over 4,000 devs filled in:

77% receive income in addition to their salary
Of that:
46% annual bonus
17% project bonus
5% royalties
31% stock options/grants
14% profit sharing

If a company is making more profit and the share price goes up, many of their developers are seeing those gains. If the company is more stable as a result and doesn't do mass layoffs as used to be common in the industry whenever games shipped, that helps the devs. Another example is the EA bonus plan for their employees is relative to the company and business unit performance.

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2014/09/05/GAMA14_ACG_SalarySurvey_F.pdf

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Sure, if the company is doing better than they otherwise would be doing, I'd expect the developers to be doing better as well. But it's not like Activion/Blizzard walked into the office one day, saw the sad state of their devs work-life balance, and decided they needed to up the price of games in order to pay for the fixes.

Developers being apart of companies that make sound financial decisions is good for them. But the $70 is not "for" them.

 

[gravitationsfeld]

Games are cheaper today than in 2009 even if they cost $70. It's nonsense.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

You've been active in this thread for 45 minutes. The video is 25 minutes. Please don't misuse words like "good faith" this badly.

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Not like this is the only thing I'm doing during this time.

 

[FoolsMilky]

They're upping the price just to line billionaires' pockets. That's it; that's literally it. That extra $10 ain't doing shit for the quality of games or for the developers who make 'em. I'll be damned if I pay that shit.

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Thanks for the compliments!

What's funny is that Nepenthe's post is pretty much the more TLDR blunt version of what I said, and I absolutely 100000% agree with it. I'll be damned if I pay that shit.

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Nepenthe doesn't suffer fools, it seems. And they're right. In fact, that real cogent point that should be driven home here is that this change really isn't helping developers, and most decisions don't. It isn't normal for people to be so burned out of their jobs and have their careers in their "dream jobs" be shortened by crunch, bad pay, and poor working conditions.

And to speak for myself, I only want one thing: For people to be more educated. I can respect differences in opinion and I'm trying to be more patient in my life, but please, even if you don't like Jim's opinions, at least take his facts with you. Gaming is not small, it hasn't been for many years. And although AAA games on their release date are "luxury", gaming as a whole has spread very far in the last few years.

If people care about this medium, they should care about the next in a long line of crappy decisions, even if "$70 games" isn't directly related to why workers are treated and payed poorly. In fact, if working conditions and pay were meaningfully improved because of $70 games, people would actually have a much better leg to stand on.

 

[Deleted member 49535]

He's not wrong.
Also with the price increase for the EU market... I'm going to buy exactly zero games for the day1 price of 70 EUR this gen, fuck that noise.

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My dear summer child, launch games are 80€ now, not 70€, because fuck Europe.

I got Demon's Souls for 70€ on Amazon, but the actual price is 80€ (on PSN for example). Yay, digital.

 

[Khanimus]

So don't buy them, or wait a week and the price is dropped.

He is wrong here. Game prices haven't increased in over a decade. It sucks but it makes sense at least for AAA. What we need to see is an emergence of a middle tier that sees good releases often, at a 30-50 dollar price range.

Jim would legit rather everything be free forever.

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Or, check this out....

What if CEOs paid their employees what they're fucking worth? Because practices of workplace abuse, exploitation, and crunch sure don't fucking make up for the insane margins their company heads are raking in for nowhere near the same effort. Game prices aren't going up because "they have to" in order to pay their employees, they're going up because publishers figure they just can'.

 

[Hero]

It's not indefensible because you don't like it. Games were this expensive before in the 90s and had a fraction of the content that modern games do.

This is a common misconception, repeated far too often here with zero basis. Before the Game Developer magazine shut down they ran annual salary surveys. Taking a look at game programmers e.g. in this survey that over 4,000 devs filled in:

77% receive income in addition to their salary
Of that:
46% annual bonus
17% project bonus
5% royalties
31% stock options/grants
14% profit sharing

If a company is making more profit and the share price goes up, many of their developers are seeing those gains. If the company is more stable as a result and doesn't do mass layoffs as used to be common in the industry whenever games shipped, that helps the devs. Another example is the EA bonus plan for their employees is relative to the company and business unit performance.

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2014/09/05/GAMA14_ACG_SalarySurvey_F.pdf

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Get out of here with your data. The outrage machine doesn't run on that.

 

[Lobster Roll]

Not like this is the only thing I'm doing during this time.

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Ok dude, whatever. Continue to be one of the more active voices in a thread about a video you don't seem interested in watching, I suppose.

 

[finalflame]

Amazing the extent people will go to in order to justify why they just don't feel like paying more for their video games despite the monumental leaps the industry has made in providing these experiences to players. As always, people will vote with their wallets. As always, I expect no impact to the companies (rightfully) raising their prices.

 

[braisbr1]

1: don't preorder
2: be more selective with your purchases
3: wait for sales
4: DO NOT BUY INTO MICRO TRANS.


Problem solved. If the majority of us don't treat every major release as DAY 0!!! HAVE TO HAVE!!! This price change wont effect us. Additionally, prices can be reduced if publishers see that sales go down in direct relation to the price hike. This isn't set in stone.

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I think that the problem with day-0 purchases is a difficult one to solve, because games offer few incentives beyond their novelty these days. It's very rare for me to care for something gaming wise as of late because there's a strong feeling of having experienced that already, and if it's happening to me I imagine that might also ring true in many others. Nowadays if a product gets me hyped even if just a bit chances are that I'll be getting it sooner rather than later, because it's the only thing I know will get me "the kick" in terms of the video game world.

I think in the end this is part of a larger problem, which I'm not sure I can point to. Maybe it's me getting older and finding it harder to find things that interest me as before, or maybe it's just that several industries are getting stale... Or maybe it's just that massive projects can only attract mainstream audiences and thus as you move onto other things later in life projects that interest you are just not readily available as each of us drifts towards different interests. Or maybe it's a combination of them all 🤣

Regardless of that, I found your reply to this post interesting, because I don't think that we can pretend to adjust mass market behaviour by just trying to convince people, I think there should be a bigger driving force... Maybe GamePass can be a good alternative?

 

[Sheepinator]

Get out of here with your data. The outrage machine doesn't run on that.

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Yes, I apologize for posting data from reputable sources to counter the misinformation.

 

[GungHo]

Not like this is the only thing I'm doing during this time.

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So, you'd like us to write a book report for you because you're too busy multitasking?

 

[Mass Effect]

The promise of no micro transactions for $70 is equivalent to trickle down economics. It's a lie told to the poor so that they don't scream while they are getting fucked. Capitalism in it's current form in the United States aims at infinite growth margins every year. Nothing is enough for people up top. It's a truly an insane system IMO.

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No one promised this. This is just a narrative some posters here (and elsewhere) came up with to justify the price hike to themselves.

But people ignore that on purpose cause it instantly breaks their narrative.

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Then they just fall back to the "luxury item" argument.

Which is fine I suppose, I don't necessarily disagree, but then they better not complain about anything price/market related. And, should for some reason the market contract, I don't want to hear anything about gamers being "entitled" with their money.

The thread is about the price hike. I'm interested in that. If somebody can post several times that "the answer's in the video" but can't repeat that answer or even point to the timestamp, then I don't think they are discussing in good faith.

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This is tiring. Here, now address the points or leave:

Tried to summarize mains points:
Tl;dr: Exploitation is easy when you have the mouthpiece that is games media. Corporations aren't your friend.

• Blames games media for going to bat on the $70 tag on corporations exploiting a company already raking in billions.
• Issue with the "$70 AAA price point, it's about time argument" is the piling on of retreads of franchises (plus all the below).
• People defending have one excuse. Price Points have been low for the entire decade...with bloating costs...higher customer demands...higher assets...pretty much just customer blaming.
• They blame gamers but it is the companies who are pushing graphics over everything else.
• Ubi trains everyone to expect a massive open-world, not consumers pushing the idea that they should develop massive open-world games..
• They make Ubi the most amount of money and are the most "sustainable" due to # of players.
• Goes on how the biggest games in the world aren't most graphically intensive: Fortnite, hearthstone, etc.
• Most of the massive budget goes to marketing, not graphics or employees.
• The issue is with the establishment media entirely Spotlights articles using false equivalency of number of hours/money vs movie ticket prices increasing/time.
• 60 FPS should be the norm, but publishers push graphics over fps.
• Says $60 is a shit-load of money for a lot of people out there.
• The argument assumes that we agree every AAA game is worth $60 to begin with, let alone $70.
• Can make a point if only comparing dev costs to game price. Issue is wages haven't risen in years. Huge pay disparity from people making the game vs profiting off of it.
  • Dev costs have risen, but so has the audience that buys the game. Revenue has also risen more than ever.
• $60-$70 is only the "starter price" chock full with manipulative transactions and other forms of monetization. This also makes their employee work to the bone.
• With increase in price means each edition (deluxe, super deluxe, etc.) is even more expensive.
• Base versions offering less content and usually included content has become DLC.
• Ironically they sell "complete editions" once all DLC is out showing that the edition you bought on launch wasn't feature complete.
• Most $ goes straight to execs not back to devs.
• Companies so focused on straight profit means they post record revenue, yet don't hesitate to lay off hundreds. Makes the point of being "ok with the increase to $70 to support devs" laughable since they get laid off anyway and don't see the profits.
• How Activision (among others) robs American people due to them getting tax refunds (from the state), which is literally profiting off of our money.
• Doesn't care where companies are coming from when they are happy to exploit their own devs and customers.
• Companies are happy to exploit gamers of any age, and feel confident in raising prices because of the ease of doing this.
• 2K first to charge with 2K having the worst MTX around. Not like MTX, DLC, season passes, deluxe editions, loot boxes are going away. Just an entry fee to the "overcharged theme park."
• Knows that some people use games media as a stepping stone to a cushy PR job, but those that don't shouldn't toe the company line and defend the price increase.

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[Cyclonesweep]

OK? So, because healthcare companies raise their prices 10% every year, Disney raises their theme park prices 5% every year, Netflix has raised their prices by 75% since 2014, property prices have surged, food prices are up 3.9% in the last year, etc. etc. etc. are you suggesting video game companies shouldn't raise prices because people are putting more money into all those other companies who did raise prices? That doesn't hold up.

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No. I'm saying use the "well wages are higher so companies should absolutely charge more money" is just ridiculous

 

[Conkerkid11]

Games are cheaper today than in 2009 even if they cost $70. It's nonsense.

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?

 

[Wolf]

Or, check this out....

What if CEOs paid their employees what they're fucking worth? Because practices of workplace abuse, exploitation, and crunch sure don't fucking make up for the insane margins their company heads are raking in for nowhere near the same effort. Game prices aren't going up because "they have to" in order to pay their employees, they're going up because publishers figure they just can'.

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Fair pay and reasonable rising costs for massive production value AAA games are not mutually exclusive

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

The thread is about the video by JIm Sterling, which is about the price hike but goes into the reasons why he thinks it's not justifiable. You're arguing against it with suppositions about his argument, then claiming the onus is on people rebutting you with perfectly reasonable advice to actually consult the actual source video the thread is about. Unbelievable.

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Timestamp? Is that so hard? I made my comment, you referred me to a 25 minute video that I started and abandoned instead of just replying.

 

[Deleted member 18944]

This is a common misconception, repeated far too often here with zero basis. Before the Game Developer magazine shut down they ran annual salary surveys. Taking a look at game programmers e.g. in this survey that over 4,000 devs filled in:

77% receive income in addition to their salary
Of that:
46% annual bonus
17% project bonus
5% royalties
31% stock options/grants
14% profit sharing

If a company is making more profit and the share price goes up, many of their developers are seeing those gains. If the company is more stable as a result and doesn't do mass layoffs as used to be common in the industry whenever games shipped, that helps the devs. Another example is the EA bonus plan for their employees is relative to the company and business unit performance.

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2014/09/05/GAMA14_ACG_SalarySurvey_F.pdf

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This is such a bad take. There are more benefits than just additional income that developers require so that they aren't burnt out. The idea that extra income from different avenues is in the long term beneficial to the overall health of the worker has been proven to be a fault time and time again.

Additionally, this is from 2014, and also doesn't address the working conditions that are shit, and the amount of developers who do not see any of this at all because they aren't in a position to see it. Lets not forget how many companies do this to subvert being expected to increase work environment health because people are trained that more money means exploitation is ok.

 

[Sheepinator]

No. I'm saying use the "well wages are higher so companies should absolutely charge more money" is just ridiculous

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I didn't say ""well wages are higher so companies should absolutely charge more money". I simply countered the false claim that wages have stagnated with actual data showing median household income and minimum wage were both recently at all-time highs.

 

[Cranster]

Games are cheaper today than in 2009 even if they cost $70. It's nonsense.

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Lmao, they are not cheaper in Canada.

 

[Deleted member 3017]

Amazing the extent people will go to in order to justify why they just don't feel like paying more for their video games despite the monumental leaps the industry has made in providing these experiences to players. As always, people will vote with their wallets. As always, I expect no impact to the companies (rightfully) raising their prices.

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Oh, there will absolutely be an impact on companies charging $70 - most will see record profits in the upcoming years. That's really the only justification they need to raise game prices: the shareholders will make more money.

 

[Cyclonesweep]

I didn't say ""well wages are higher so companies should absolutely charge more money". I simply countered the false claim that wages have stagnated with actual data showing median household income and minimum wage were both recently at all-time highs.

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Wages have stagnated though. Minimum wage has gone up, top end salaries have gone up, middle salaries have barely matched inflation.

 

[Deleted member 18944]

Amazing the extent people will go to in order to justify why they just don't feel like paying more for their video games despite the monumental leaps the industry has made in providing these experiences to players. As always, people will vote with their wallets. As always, I expect no impact to the companies (rightfully) raising their prices.

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What people don't understand about the point of "people are demanding more," Is that it's a point that doesn't actually start with the consumer.

The consumer isn't demanding bigger and better initially, it's the companies who tell the consumer through marketing that they can get bigger and better if they buy their product and in turn, when the next installment comes around, the consumer is demanding bigger and better because the company has created the expectation that they are owed more.

That's how this entire triple AAA industry operates. The companies create the demand, create the status quo, and use FOMO in the grossest way possible to manipulate people into these mindsets that if they don't get the latest and greatest, the bigger and better, they're missing out, so what's an extra $10 bucks if I can play the newest game? And that's the problem.

Video game companies aren't increasing the price of video games so that they can raise the wages of their workers, increase the health of their work environments, and use that money to fund innovative, long lasting titles. They want to exploit the worker and the consumer to increase profits year over year so that their stockholders get more money. So that the leadership gets more money.

And if you notice, all of these features that gaming companies are putting into their games to entice people to buy them are just novelty. They're not innovative. And that novelty is what drives people to spend their money on these games that are big and better, because its quick, easy, and in the moment very satisfying.

As a result, these games don't last as long as games that are innovative but don't look anything like these AAA titles. League of Legends, Fortnite , CSGO, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and numerous other games that aren't graphically intensive in the slightest all have higher player counts year over year than games that get regular installments.

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I feel like what I said is pretty relevant counter argument.

 

[Conkerkid11]

Amazing the extent people will go to in order to justify why they just don't feel like paying more for their video games despite the monumental leaps the industry has made in providing these experiences to players. As always, people will vote with their wallets. As always, I expect no impact to the companies (rightfully) raising their prices.

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Dunno if anybody's done it for Valhalla yet, but despite being a $60 game with a $40 season pass, there was about $400 worth of microtransactions in Odyssey at launch...

 

[freakybj]

$70 price just means that I won't be purchasing most games on day 1. The worst thing about the price increase is the fake reason of increasing development costs as the reason for it. The real reason is they just want more money and are using the transition to next-gen as cover to squeeze more from customers. With most sales coming from digital and all the money made from MTX, games should be getting cheaper. And at $70 we're not getting truly next-gen games...only last-gen games with prettier graphics. I'm still trying to understand what makes games like CoD Cold War worth the extra $10.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

Ok dude, whatever. Continue to be one of the more active voices in a thread about a video you don't seem interested in watching, I suppose.

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You could type a sentence, or I could watch a 25 minute video. Sounds even.

 

[Khanimus]

Fair pay and reasonable rising costs for massive production value AAA games are not mutually exclusive

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Well shit, good to know we won't be hearing stories of worker exploitation now right? Problem solved, right?

 

[Aaronrules380]

I didn't say ""well wages are higher so companies should absolutely charge more money". I simply countered the false claim that wages have stagnated with actual data showing median household income and minimum wage were both recently at all-time highs.

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wage stagnation doesn't mean that wages literally haven't gone up at all, it means that relative to the overall economic growth of the country in question the rise in wages is far lower

 

[Sheepinator]

This is such a bad take. There are more benefits than just additional income that developers require so that they aren't burnt out. The idea that extra income from different avenues is in the long term beneficial to the overall health of the worker has been proven to be a fault time and time again.

Additionally, this is from 2014, and also doesn't address the working conditions that are shit, and the amount of developers who do not see any of this at all because they aren't in a position to see it. Lets not forget how many companies do this to subvert being expected to increase work environment health because people are trained that more money means exploitation is ok.

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The argument repeated many times was that devs won't see any benefit. The data shows otherwise, and it sounds like you agree. I didn't say anything about the other QoL issues you bring up, which are valid. I think there has been improvement there since the EA Spouse days and the lawsuits against the big pubs.

 

[KanameYuuki]

I'm amazed how many gullible people are here who think this is nothing more than whats necessary so devs will finally be paid as they should, heck someone said that hopefully those exec get enough money that they finally share as if that was something possible.

We have record sales, profits, record MTX, record exec bonuses and somehow it isn't enough, the price increase is nothing more than rich wanting to get richer.

 

[oreomunsta]

If the extra money goes to the devs, then fine

But that isn't the case right now, so fuck the price hike

#sendtherevstothedevs

 

[Conkerkid11]

$70 price just means that I won't be purchasing most games on day 1. The worst thing about the price increase is the fake reason of increasing development costs as the reason for it. The real reason is they just want more money and are using the transition to next-gen as cover to squeeze more from customers. With most sales coming from digital and all the money made from MTX, games should be getting cheaper. And at $70 we're not getting truly next-gen games...only last-gen games with prettier graphics. I'm still trying to understand what makes games like CoD Cold War worth the extra $10.

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I bet publishers are really pissed they don't get to make people buy their game again for the next-gen version without there being some form of backlash due to all these games offering free upgrades.

Wondering how Rockstar and Bethesda are gonna spin it when they re-release some of the best-selling games of all-time for the 20th time.

I'm amazed how many gullible people are here who think this is nothing more than whats necessary so devs will finally be paid as they should, heck someone said that hopefully those exec get enough money that they finally share as if that was something possible.

We have record sales, profits, record MTX, record exec bonuses and somehow it isn't enough, the price increase is nothing more than rich wanting to get richer.

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Yuuuup

Reminding me of when EGS first came onto the scene and people were saying the 12% cut would mean the devs would get paid

 

[Famassu]

I can kind of understand the higher price for next gen exclusive games (especially single player offline games with very little in the way of microtransactions/other monetization potential) at the beginning of the generation. Relatively small install base, adjusting to new tech, rising dev costs etc. mean that there's not a whole lot of room for profits when they can't necessarily even sell the kinds of amounts of copies that games need to nowadays to be profitable. Cross gen games though? Nah, they aren't justifiable.

 

[Aaronrules380]

The argument repeated many times was that devs won't see any benefit. The data shows otherwise, and it sounds like you agree. I didn't say anything about the other QoL issues you bring up, which are valid. I think there has been improvement there since the EA Spouse days and the lawsuits against the big pubs.

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Truly wage stagnation does not exist because wages have very slightly gone up

 

[Skittles]

Are they though? Minecraft is the most popular game in the world, Among us has exploded, Fortnite an absolute machine, League Of Legends, Counter Strike GO, WoW still massive.

Are people demanding games be flashy with massive budgets or are we told and marketed to that we need the hottest latest shit?

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Yes, they are actually. This forum especially. Look at any thread about RE3 Remake's length or any thread complaining about an AA game's graphics. Gamers demand flashy graphics with bloated game length all the time.

 

[tmac456]

Amazing the extent people will go to in order to justify why they just don't feel like paying more for their video games despite the monumental leaps the industry has made in providing these experiences to players. As always, people will vote with their wallets. As always, I expect no impact to the companies (rightfully) raising their prices.

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This.

You have options and choices as a consumer. Buy used. Wait for sales. Split a game with a friend. Buy new, play it and then sell it. Gamefly still exist? I'll likely be buying way less on day 1 unless it's something I'm very hyped for/received incredible reviews. Obviously if you're digital only, you're a little more handcuffed on options, but there are often sales and ways to get digital $ cards for cheaper than retail.