Because there are enough people that will buy the game.
You also find some high quality "games" in that price range or above: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3895770/Clown_Madness/
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I have a hard time understanding people who are willing to shell out that kind of cash for something that is most likely not even worth 50$.
Shareholder profits is a winner I believe. Just look at xbox gamepass.
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Obviously we're all gamers here, most of us quite passionate about it, and I think we forget that most of the people playing video games on PC & console are just buying a literal handful of games per year. The big sports games, GTA, CoD, etc. Those are the people that will have no problem shelling out $100 per game, because what's $300-$500 a year to most first-worlders with credit cards?
You also have the FOMO types. I can't remember the specific CoD title, but there was one where a significant number of people signed a petition stating that they were boycotting the game, and I believe it was later found out that like 90% of them ended up buying the game anyway. Early on too, when it was still full price. "Speak with your wallet" always fails.
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Ok I see your point and can also see the mindset of people only buying a handful of games a year. With that being said I imagine most people would be out looking for the best deal. I have bought a game or 2 at 70$ That’s mostly because I made a bad decision. Out of all the years playing games I have only done that twice.
Lack of willpower on their part. That game wasn’t going anywhere. You cannot have a consensus if people cave that quickly. Look at Helldivers 2, Paystation tried to force pc gamers to make a PS account and they review bombed that game on steam with a couple hundred thousand bad reviews, only then did Paystation finally relent on that decision. That right there should show gamers if enough of get together and say NO things the community wants can and will be done. A man can dream right?
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That Helldivers 2 protest was pretty great. If any gamers are likely to take any kind of stand, it's PC gamers. Still, it's unfortunately just a drop in a bucket.
I want to state that ultimately I have no problem with people spending as much as they want on a game. If that's what they gotta do to have fun & relieve stress, then more power to them. Having said that, I wish they wouldn't, and I definitely won't be joining in.
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They clearly worth that much for them, or the "worth" is secondary to the enjoyment, and just buy it, while cursing the price tag. We don't know :)
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It helps a billionaire have more billions than their rivals.
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No but even if the base games don't cost much some have dlc that soon adds up
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You don't have to have it on release day, so what's the difference if the game costs $100 or even $200, as long as you can buy it later for $10.
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If you're buying COD for the single player campaign then it doesn't matter, you can wait and get it on a massive discount. Most people aren't buy COD for the single player though, they are buying it for the competitive online multiplayer. If a game like COD is down to like $10 it's likely dead/servers are shutdown.
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CS2 is free and it’s something that COD can never and will never be.
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What does CS2 have to do with anything I've mentioned above?
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it's a compare f2p shooter to Cod which is similar in many ways
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But were specifically talking about COD, a franchise that has a price tag on every game that is released, not a free 2 play game, as well a game with a single player campaign mode. My comment has to do with the game selling at a cheap price and the reason for it. Bringing up CS2 make no sense as it doesn't apply to anything I'm talking about.
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Competitive online multiplayer is why I bring it up.
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Is it worth buying COD for so much money just for multiplayer, which no one plays after a year or two simply because the next installment has been released? And all this happens only because players accept it, so what can you do?
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The Call of Duty franchise sold over 500 million copies so I imagine it's worth it to the people who buy it, otherwise they wouldn't be buying it.
If you're playing for at least 70 hours, I'd say that it's probably worth it. I think that $1 an hour for entertainment isn't a bad thing.
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COD as a franchise sold 500 milion copies, not BO6. As long as people are willing to pay for the same thing over and over again, the publisher will be able to raise the price. Imagine people playing one game for few thousand hours, then game should cost $1000 because when you devide it will be less then $1 per hours?
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The problem with these games is that they try to push for yearly releases, so the price will always remain high for these games.
The old COD games on steam are still being sold for like 20€ on sale or something, which is redicolous considering some of them are over a decade old.
The same issue occurs with sports games, i had friends IRL who bought FIFA every year and would get scammed big time. Literally pay like 60+€ with possible discounts, then sell the last year game for like 10-15€, they would be throwing away 40-50€ every year to rebuy the same old stuff, the worst part isn't even this, it is the rage behind the game, breaking controllers, TVs, small tables, TV controllers, walls, you name it. I've seen all of this happen. The most extreme case was the TV one, person raged and threw one of those marker pens at the TV, cracked the entire display, it worked but you couldn't make sense of what was going on with the screen. This is not to mention the possibility of spending real money into fifa points to open packs, which is also possible but something i wasn't aware of if people around me ended up doing or not.
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Yes, the 500 million it's the franchise, not a specific game. I updated my comment.
I didn't say or even imply a game should cost 1k, it's clear you're misunderstanding my comment.
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So while I agree that $100 is outrageous, and far beyond what I would be willing to pay for any game, there's two counter arguments to consider. One is inflation; a new NES game would often cost $40 in 1990, which is roughly $100 in today's dollars. And the budget for making that NES game was waaaay smaller than a AAA(a) game of today. Sure, the market is larger too, but so is the risk of flops, IMHO.
Beyond the arguments that the price is reasonable, there's the practical side. Consider that the price of most games is steeply discounted in just a few months. So that $100 price is really targeting people with too much impatience and money.
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Yeah I think you got it right there impatience. As though they are going to run out of digital copies.
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One is inflation; a new NES game would often cost $40 in 1990, which is roughly $100 in today's dollars
The argument I heard against that one is that wages have (or at least the minimum wage has) not gone up with inflation, so not as many people today have that $100 as 90s people had that $40.
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That's possible, for sure. But my sense is that hardware is far more affordable now than it was then, leaving much more money for software, even if the total amount of "fun money" is smaller.
IE when our family purchased it's first PC in 1989 the total bill was nearly $3000, and many families didn't even have a PC. 30 years later my daughter's first PC cost $100 (used, to be fair, but still).
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It's always the same. Costs are going up because of inflation (non human costs like energy, materials etc) so the response is a price increase so their investors get more money this year than they did last year because that's how they measure "successful investments".
Meanwhile the workers who actually make products get stiffed.
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Remember now these big tech companies are using AI to code for them and not only is it causing massive mistakes hurting the consumers, It’s also why everything goes up in price. Including utilities. So that 100$ is paid to a non sentient program.
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So that 100$ is paid to a non sentient program.
A non sentient program who is not a consumer and who doesn't participate in society. And we call it progress.
Every time we feel humanity has hit rock bottom, we managed to find room and keep going, don't we?
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Yes progress. AI messes up code who is to blame? Well no one of course the AI did it not me.
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As long as it's just code, we'll be fine but... hm maybe people should recognize it's not there yet before implementing it everywhere like it's 100% reliable.
We are replacing real people with algorithms because some genius called them "AI"...
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Burning question is: will AI be there ever? Can the alignment problem be solved convincingly or will a solution elude us forever?
Right now AI acts like an ultraconservative following the "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" mantra which could have something to do with the training data provided.
Maybe a change from binary to ternary computing will bring some constructive impulses.
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Can the alignment problem be solved convincingly or will a solution elude us forever?
It will elude us forever. I remember reading a conversation with someone (I thought for a moment it was Carl Sagan because it has a flavor of his philosophical scifi deep thinking but it's not apparently because I can't find it) who was discussing the possibility of AI, and the probability of it. And that person was saying we are not, as a species, smart enough to give birth to an intelligence superior to our own so technically if AI happens, it can only happen by accident or emerge on its own, which would suppose a pre-intelligence of some kind, which is a paradox.
Right now AI acts like an ultraconservative following the "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" mantra which could have something to do with the training data provided.
As long as the current "AI" relies on human data sets to "train", and learn, it'll remain a problem.
Maybe a change from binary to ternary computing will bring some constructive impulses.
It'll change computing for sure. As long as we're involved it will remain limited though.
And you know what? It's a good thing. But we really should acknowledge that fact instead of just pretending we invented AI.
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My favorite two games of all time cost about $3 each, though not at launch time.
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Why not? People spend way more money on other hobbies which grant less joy than some games do.
At the end of the day context matters. What can you afford, what are your alternatives.
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You mean like... not paying 100$ to play a game on day one? Yeah, it is an outlandish concept for sure.
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Your "argument" won't convince anyone playing only the new iterations of the very same 1-3 games every year.
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Oh, I don't want to convince anyone. I just wanted to mention that alternatives exist. Like waiting a few months. But I do like that you put argument in quotes.
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Because it's only an argument for those who buy more games and don't mind when they will play them. If the people I mentioned should wait "a few months" for some discount, the game already would have lost way more of its 12 month value to them than the discount is worth. That's why it's an "argument" in quotes only.
Did I mention that context matters? I thought I did.
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You could have said 'because people are willing to pay more'. Anyway time to head out of this "discussion". Have fun!
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I did.
At the end of the day context matters. What can you afford, what are your alternatives
How about that you properly read before you reply to a comment? Then neither of us will have reason to get annoyed by the following "discussion".
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people will pay that price. If a company can charge more and people will pay it they will, that's what happens when the only goal is ever increasing profit.
Also important is actually owning the games and devices you've payed for #bringBackPhysicalMedia!
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Do they even make physical media for PC games anymore? I know it’s big on consoles, well I say big it’s dying for sure. It would be nice to not have a license to play games but actually own the copy you have. I know you can own digital media such as websites, videos, apps, and so on.
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not really, on consoles discs are pretty much just a key nowadays, most of the time they dont even have the game installed :/ Not being able to pop a disk in your friends console is so sad.
With games having constant updates It doesn't make as much sense with the benefits of steam (free redownloads and cloud saves and no risk of loosing/damaging your copy) but I really miss it. Just gotta pray valve don't go pure evil one day and I hate having to trust in that.
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The new Call of Duty doesn't cost $100, it costs $70. If someone is paying $100 than it's for optional addition content they want.
I have a hard time understanding people who are willing to shell out that kind of cash for something that is most likely not even worth 50$.
You may think it's not worth $50, but that's you. The person who is buying it most of the time feels it is worth buying. There's plenty of people who go out to a bar, a club or do some other activity and blows more than $100 in 1 hour. I've done that more times than I can count. The game offers countless hours of entertainment, and you get to play it every day if you want. Compared to what I mentioned first, depending on what it is, the game can hold much more value.
Most of the games like COD aren't being bought for their single campaign modes which are normally only a few hours long, they are being bought for the online competitive multiplayer. Competitive online multiplayer games are big business and a lot of the time they have pro leagues and bring in massive amounts of money.
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Games used to be developed by a small group in just a few months and cost over $100 inflation adjusted.
Now they have huge teams and take years to develop. So it makes sense on paper.
But in reality there are so many good and cheap games to play, and everyone has hundreds and even thousands of games in their Steam library. And modern games take away features, turn off servers, push agendas, and jam content that used to be free into DLC. So I think it is hard to justify premium prices.
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Absolutely not. For just one game? Absurd and never gonna pay that. Never paid more than 20€ for anything. Not even removed games i have in library, its years old when it was cheap.
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there a some (very few) games that I would consider worth 100, but that’s AFTER having played them. I don’t think I’d have ever paid that money for them without knowing how much I’d actually end up liking them. Breath of the Wild, Expedition 33, or Elden Ring are the select few I would put in that category off the top of my head. Though, in my currency we’re technically paying 100 for some games already anyways
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Expedition 33 is definitely worth the full price. I just finished act 2, it's such an amazing game. I've been playing RPGs pretty much since the beginning and in my opinion it's one of the best ever made. I love the combat, it's easily one of the best turn based combat systems ever created as well. The story is amazing so far, can't wait to see how it all turns out.
I own Breath of the Wild on Switch, but haven't tackled it yet.
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Call of duty Black ops 7 is $70 in the United States. Give it 2 months and it'll be on sale for $50 or pay $30 for a month of Gamepass beat the short campaigns and play some multiplayer. Call of duty isn't $100
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Gamepass is honestly an amazing deal, you basically rent a full library of games every month. In away it's very similar to Steam, except the license rental for all the games you "purchase"(steam, HB, Fanatical etc.) stay in your library.
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Gamepass used to be an amazing deal, but since they raised the price by 50% they lost a significant amount of subscribers. Maybe it will even out with the price hike, but I do not condone that type of action.
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It still is a great deal even at the current price, it's just not as good of a deal as it once was.
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Not these days. Most AAA games are now either incredibly safe and/or chopped up at the planning stages for loot boxes / dlc. Indie games sometimes have cool concepts, but they never have much of a budget which limits what they can do.
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When you account for all DLCs I probably paid as much for some Paradox games (and I was taking advantage of sales) :x
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True that. And the same applies to other DLC-heavy games, like TW Warhammer 1-3.
Sadly seeing developers getting the funds to invest several years into making such games better isn't always a success story. :p
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It's that expensive because they can get away with it. If people are still buying it then they can increase the price to literally whatever they want.
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I don't think I would pay that much NOW, but I have to remind myself that I paid that much and more for certain games in the past, and that was in "many years ago" money. MMORPG monthly subscriptions anyone? If people are willing pay, companies are happy to charge. It is how it is.
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Yup, usually paying a subscription based MMORPG will cost quite a bit more, than $100 a year just in sub cost... and lets not forget about paid last 3 updates or so DLCs.
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As was said already: adjusted for inflation prices didn't change so much. Objectively you can call yourself lucky you can (still) buy anything with our monopoly money currencies.
Besides, the more patient part of potential buyers will buy AAA(+/AAAA) slop games at significant discounts not too long post-release. Best example I can think of right now: Borderlands 4.
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No game should cost more than $60, and given that almost all current AAA games has turned into unoptimized upscaled sterile AI-slop soap, it's not even worth that money.
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No, I don`t pay for games more than 8$. We need to remember that games are stealing not only our money but even more precious time of our life. It just not worth it.
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Most I paid was £40 for a base game and that was a limited run games copy of heart of the woods on Switch - so very different from normal games
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You youngsters obviously can't remember, but in the "good old days", when games were new and there was no internet, games also did cost between 80 to 100 USD.
There were hardly any shops that had games, and you had to see an advert in a gaming magazine, call the number in the ad and get the game shipped to your home.
With Steam and the invention of online shops, gaming prices dropped drastically. You grew up in the cheapest timeline for gaming. If games get more expensive now, they are just getting back to the prices they once were.
Pictures:
A) Advert in the german gaming magazine "PC Joker" from 1991. See the prices for "Wing Commander" in "Deutsche Mark" (Euro was introduced 21 years later).
B) Same Advert where you can see that you had to call a number to order.
Link 1:
US advert for Ultima 6, look at how to order.
Link 2:
Inflation adjusted pricing of gaming consoles.
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Even worse was the experience when you had to rely on your local shop. And the games they considered worthy enough to sell.
P.S. Your price list is a bit misleading, as that was in DM. Only half the value of the € or $.
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as that was in DM. Only half the value of the € or $.
True, in absolute numbers.
To have a more precise comparison, you have to take the old prices, transfer them with the old exchange value to USD, adjust that price for inflation from then to now and then compare both to the average salary then and the average salary now.
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Yep. The only reason I'm not willing to pay as much now is because I'm spoiled for choice and can either wait for something to go on sale or buy something else that is on sale (or chip into my already huge backlog which I wouldn't be able to finish in this lifetime). I wouldn't pay more when I can pay less, but I would pay more if I had no other choice. Gaming has a great $/hour entertainment value, even at $70-$80 per game, which seems to be where things are heading for headliners.
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Is there any reason a game should be 100$? COD cough cough
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