The $60/$70 price tag on video games from major makers is an entry fee, it doesn't get you the full game anymore. You have to pay for luxury editions, expansions, microtransactions of some sort, battle pass. It's cheaper to start a tabletop miniature army than play video games now.

I haven't spent more than $30ish bucks on a game since ... 2013?? I think the last game I paid full price for was gta5 on ps3

Do y'all not know about the bargain bin and steam sales...? Is everyone so up to date on their backlog you can't wait a few months for that price to drop to 50%

It doesn't take long, Doom the dark ages has already hit that discount a few times iirc

Games should be cheaper to make, too.

See, that's the conundrum: big companies make huge investments and want a ROI. They dump 100+ million dollars on a game with a team that's over 200 people and expect 10x money back.

Shit has ballooned out of control in the corporate world and Indies have to fight tooth and nail against each other, bigger players, shovelware and older titles

I haven't paid over £35 on a game in years. Quite a few games are free now too, though some have kinda scummy cash shops.

They become cheap if you're patient enough.

Become a patient gamer. This winter sale, I bought probably 25 games totaling around 30 dollars. It's enough to keep me busy for the next 5 years.

You can go AAA for cheap no problem, people just need to not get FOMO‘d out of their minds and half-resist the compulsion to jump on the next shiny thing immediately.

The newest DOOM is around 27 Euros rn and not even a year old. Buy on release - or worse yet, pre-order - and you‘ll get the worst deal (financially as well as technically).

Game prices are fine for me because I literally just wait until they‘re at a point where I don‘t see them as a waste of money anymore. In the meantime, there‘s 203 untouched games in my Steam library that had reached that price at some point in the past already. Not even mentioning the hundreds of games I got for free between GOG, Prime, and Epic.

That's what indie games are for, instead of these absurd-budget blockbusters that often aren't even fun, but also, the world just needs to be cheaper to live in. Games are first on the chopping block because disposable income for entertainment is always the first to collapse.

Great news!

They are!

... Just typically not the overproduced and overpriced corpo ones.

Wanna drive down AAA game prices?

Stop paying them!

Support your favorite indie or AA game today!

Don't like games with predatory microtransactions?

You'll never believe this, but you can also just stop playing games with them!

Get all your friends onboard with the plan, fight the man!

Have you met our lord and saviour, retro gaming?

Or live with AA and indie games like many of us do, at tell AAA publishers to get fucked by not spending money on their live-service crap.

Every time - every single time - I've purchased a major AAA game anywhere close to the release window in the past 10 years, it's been a mistake. Pay a shitload more for a half baked, buggy, unfinished mess.

At this point I just don't buy big time releases within 6 months of launch. Even when I'm certain of the game itself, it just ends up being a mistake.

Yeah but the IMPERATIVE IS ON US to make sure that the industry (AAA, AA & Indie) are on their best behaviour.

Like as an example, a game that looks like it would run on potato PC should run on one

Or do not allow a game to cross the recommended requirement of 8 GB ram etc...

Fuck $70+ games.

Just don't buy Triple A titles.

The last "AAA" title I bought was elden ring for 30$ (unless you count Silk Song)

There are plenty of indie style, A or AA studios that are in the 5-30$ range.

The more people who move over to that type of mindset and buy from small titles, the more apt that large companies are going to lower their prices.

Pricing is dictated by what someone is willing to pay for it.

For me, $70 USD is too much for the average game that is being sold at that price tag because those types of games(AAA/AAAA) are:

• Broken at launch
• Unoptimized/framegen crutch
• Basic features missing
• Nickle and dimed to all hell

Again, not all, but the average AAA slop title usually has one or more of the above points.

BUT, that doesn't mean that Indie games at $20 USD are a "steal" or "bargain" either. There are many Indie games I bought at their launch(Silksong), but others I have waited for a decent sale.

If everyone stopped buying games at $70 USD then prices would fall and/or projects going forward would be re-evaluated to either keep costs/expectations down. But people are paying the $70 USD so that price point is here to stay.

Aren't inflation-adjusted prices for video games quite low, comparatively? Charts like this comes up in a quick search: https://infographicsite.com/infographic/console-game-prices-inflation-adjusted/

No they don't. For every indie dev who made it there are 100s of software engineers doing some voodoo math 90 hours a week to make my triangle look cool getting paid literally half my salary. 

Y'all screech and bitch constantly about an absurdly healthy and competitive industry. It's tiresome.

There are plenty of cheaper games out there. Go on whatever virtual store and check out current sales, and simple games made by small studios.

Cult of the Lamb, Spiritfarer, My Time at Portia, The Last Campfire, Arise: A Simple Story and What Remains of Edith Finch are all worth checking out.

Check out ITAD then... lots of ways to make sure you get stuff super cheap.

https://isthereanydeal.com/