98% of the shit we deal with. Not just game shit, but everything…all boils down to these folks with power being utter rotten puss filled cunts.
Like honestly. Fuck disc. I hate em. I love digital. But fuck me. Let it be mine. Let me mod it (without cheating in it) let me play it on any console I want. Let it be my $80 of the game to do with as I want.
Like stop being such assholes. Why do these folks gotta turn into hateful cunts cause they got money or they made a game or media or whatever the fuck.
Consumers wouldn’t be as pissed if they weren’t being fisted constantly.
True, but ain’t that a bit unfair for you to say?
Do you not play games? Or watch stuff?
Isn’t this a “you complain yet you live in a society.” Or whatever.
I also grew up playing games. I won’t stop. And yes, while getting fisted, I’ll complain. You wouldn’t tell someone not to scream when getting attacked.
My solution is to not have/buy a console (and the DS screen starts to be too small) and I’m on Linux.
Which means I don’t buy 80€ games.
That’s people’s problem, they must consume this new branded thing, again and again. Think about it, you have a million people buying whatever shit you make just because of brand/publicity, it will become more important to have the brand going, making the right publicity, than making an extraordinary game.
That said, I’d kill for a sweet semi turnbased “nineties” rpg. I do not play many games, they are rare on linux 😔.
the things they were complaining about in the top comment go beyond consoles, they are a problem with PC games too. even on steam and linux. you’d have to buy exclusively from DRM free platforms like GOG.
also games are not that rare in linux, most work well via steam.
In a bubble, I’d agree with you on Steam vs. Sony vs. GOG.
But you can’t just analyze purely based on principles and logic, there are real life precedents for Sony removing content people purchased with no refund nor any form of customer outreach.
This has never happened on Steam, so in my view you can’t equate Sony and Steam. I would say GOG is better than Steam if GOG didn’t send nazi shit to people.
No it’s not unfair. What I said was factual. People aren’t willing to give up their comforts in order to make real, meaningful change. It’s one of those truths that gets argued against anytime it’s said with people unwilling to admit it to themselves.
I mean i quit playing games in 2020ish because im sick of getting ripped the fuck off. I don’t watch tv or movies, either, anymore because it’s all sequels and garbage.
I don’t buy enough games to really be impacted. Bf6 and Helldivers have been the most recent.
I also use bf6 and HD to play with my best friend who is 4 states away.
But like I said…I literally was playing bf1 and titanfall all the way to bf6 with no other games bought. I don’t got a lot of time. I play 1 or 2 games a year and be content with that.
But really good for you. More power to you. I’ll try to fight it in another way.
Isn’t this literally victim-shaming? It’s not just game companies doing it, after all. What’s the alternative, to go live alone in the wilderness and not participate in society at all??
That’s why I love gog, and it’s the only store that gets my gaming money. The games are mine, as long as I keep a backup of the installer. I can do with them what I want.
I see why the newest AAA games are a must have for younger gamers, but as an older one I now have the patience to simply wait until it releases on gog if I actually have the urge to play it.
Digital is fantastic, I miss the boxes and handbooks and feelies, but I don’t miss the discs.
Other stores have DRM free games too. For example Cyberpunk 2077 is DRM free on Steam. DRM, for the most part, is forced by publishers rather than stores.
Well can you see beforehand which game uses Steam DRM? And I still need the client installed to download anything, and even then I only archive the actual game, not any dependency.
The steam store itself doesn’t show if a game uses Steam-DRM (which is a buncha bullshit if you ask me) but the PCGamingWiki usually has that information.
But for me, while I love old games, I need my new shit lol.
Like bf6 has been a gem for me. Some bugs and bullshit, but I do like it.
Which, call me stupid for this but bf6 and modern battle/war games are a bit of therapy for me.
I joined the Marines, got to last week of basic training, came back from team(?) Week and was told to get my shit on the front deck or whatever.
Ended up I had hep c. Paperwork fell through and it wasn’t caught till I was almost done
And grant you, I wanted to “fight for America and the people in it” since I was like 7. I was 20 just outta h.s. It tore my world apart. Had to do meds and all that. Pills and injection.
Anyways. Games like battlefield or even the more serious ones like Insurgency helped me use some of the stuff I learned on my own over the years and stuff in basic to not feel like it was all a huge waste of my life.
Tl"dr I enjoy modern fps games because they help me deal with my trauma in life.
99% of games will never release on GoG no matter how old they get though, because once they’re on GoG they’re essentially free.
GoG is great, but GoG is fundamentally never going to be a competitive storefront. It will always be niche and missing most games people want to buy.
Also people don’t seem to realize but you can “back up” digital Xbox and (I believe) PS5 games too. Download them, transfer them to an external HDD or 10 if you want, and then at any stage you can plug them back in to your console, transfer them over to the internal drive, and they work. Even without internet. It just has to be on your console that is marked as “home console”.
Unlike all the ones on Steam that never get pirated? Steam DRM is so easy to bypass it may as well not exist. Also, unlike GoG, you can add your pirated game to Steam and play multiplayer.
There’s no way Steam don’t know this is happening which means there’s no way it’s not intended (especially given Gaben’s stance on piracy).
transfer them over to the internal drive, and they work. Even without internet.
That might work for some games, but there’s an increasing number of games requiring you to establish some sort of connection to the internet even for single player or mostly single player games (Lego Horizon for instance).
Try to transfer one of those and load it up on a new console without an internet connection.
Sure, your “home console” might work for some games for now. But in 10-15 years when Sony is trying to sell you the PS8, they’re going to be cutting off service to the PS5. What happens when you have to take that device in for maintenance and they need to do a factory reset? You need to log in again to activate it, except now it’s a brick that might only be able to play a few games on physical media. Anything downloaded/backed up would likely require that specific account.
By that time I’d be more worried about finding a working PS5 than their auth servers being taken down. That’s also assuming that they have completely removed backwards compatibility, which in an x86 world is highly unlikely.
The fact is that to preserve games forever, digital distribution is actually much better. These consoles will be emulated at some stage, and they won’t be playing physical games.
More games release on GOG when customers show there’s money to be made there. If you make it important to you that your games are DRM-free and spend more money on GOG than Steam, you help tip those scales. It’s not fundamental. If DRM is poison for making money, then fewer games will employ it.
But the games people want to buy on steam aren’t on GoG, and there’s no Steam vs GoG sales charts for people to point publishers to and say “look! Look how much money we will spend if you go drm free on GoG!”.
Also there’s just no denying it, and even trying is disingenuous - a game like GTA 6 releasing on GoG without DRM would sell significantly less than it would on a platform with DRM. It’s just the truth. It would be on torrents and every download site the minute it’s released, and millions and millions and millions of people who were going to buy it would get it for free instead.
In the terrible state that the video game industry is in for developers, releasing a big AAA game DRM-free would be the last game they ever release.
Last I looked into it video game piracy actually had a net benefit on sales. Any advantage DRM has from a sales point of view is null after about 3 months post launch anyway. It can and does kill small indie devs but any big boy in the industry, piracy usually benefits sales.
Don’t be so sure. Apparently they publishers don’t make hard numbers publicly available anymore so there’s no good data but there was a survey of denuvo games.
A Denuvo-protected game cracked in the first week after release can expect to make about 20 percent less revenue than if the DRM had remained in place, according to the study, while a crack six weeks after a game’s release only costs an estimated 5 percent of theoretical total revenue. After 12 weeks, new sales are so negligible that “developers could eventually remove unpopular DRM schemes with minimal losses (and possible gains from strongly DRM-averse consumers)
Unfortunately that still doesn’t answer the question but until publishers post honest numbers we’ll never have the proper metrics to measure the actual impact piracy has. But in the day freeware like Doom basically relied entirely on piracy for sales so it’s not an out of pocket take that piracy could benefit sales. It is an old take though. I’m old.
That right there says that piracy hurts gaming. A game with drm cracked in the first week can expect to lose 20% of total revenue. That’s a gigantic loss.
Software sales are heavily front loaded. Releasing with no DRM would absolutely annihilate game sales.
Plenty of the games people want to buy are on GOG. Definitely not all of them, but you can find GOTY winners like Clair Obscur and Baldur’s Gate 3, games that should have won more awards like Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and The Alters, awesome indie games like Mina the Hollower and Escape from Ever After, plus the old stuff that GOG restores like Dino Crisis and Alpha Protocol that had pent-up demand. There’s no chart to compare sales, but developers talk, and they know their own sales data. Firms like Circana buy sales data and then sell the analysis back to help companies figure out what will help them make more money, including where people are buying video games.
Also there’s just no denying it, and even trying is disingenuous - a game like GTA 6 releasing on GoG without DRM would sell significantly less than it would in a platform with DRM. It’s just the truth.
That’s easy to claim and impossible to prove. Baldur’s Gate 3 released day 1 without DRM and still went on to sell over 20M copies; how many people do you think pirated it? Millions and millions? There are some people who are always going to pirate, but I think most prefer the experience of just buying the damn thing and getting better service out of it, not the least of which is quick and easy patching. We also now live in a world where Denuvo is fully broken open. There’s no difference in one’s ability to pirate once the game has been cracked at all. Piracy is going to happen one way or another, and GTA6 is basically guaranteed to make more money than any other video game that came before it.
In the terrible state that the video game industry is in for developers, releasing a big AAA game DRM-free would be the last game they ever release.
This is demonstrably false, given the AAA games that release on GOG all the time.
They were also complicated circuit boards with full color manuals and box graphics, none of which is in digital nor the overhead of the creation thereof.
Yeah fair it is arbitrary, but the line in the sand must be drawn somewhere. So coming from PC platform and 59,99 being the agreed upon number for probably decade or more is a good enough arbitrary point to use as a line in the sand.
There shouldn’t be an arbitrary “line in the sand” for games. Just like there shouldn’t be for any other product. Because products are not all the same. Some games might take an hour to beat and others have endless replayability and it shouldn’t be expected that these all cost the same.
No, there most definitely should, there should be a line or set point for everything. A point from which onward one no longer accepts any further abuse.
Yes sure we can have discussion on where that line stands with gaming, like “no preorders” or “no p2w”, but there most definitely should be one or even multiple different ones and that should be upheld or else we do get current climate of AAA games riddled with mtx, psychological manipulation,
getting more expensive yearly, no longer any long term guarantees either, while gameplay, story and performance quality dropping as well.
Without a set point or line, corporations wil keep on pushing the boundaries every single year as we keep allowing it.
A point from which onward one no longer accepts any further abuse.
A higher price does not mean abuse. It very well could just mean its a higher quality game with more content.
or else we do get current climate of AAA games riddled with mtx, psychological manipulation, getting more expensive yearly, no longer any long term guarantees either, while gameplay, story and performance quality dropping as well.
How does a low price stop that from happening? If anything it’s the opposite.
I wouldn’t really use 60$ as a low price, but that’s beside the point.
Your missing the trees for the forest.
It’s not the low price, but setting a line which one does not cross.
Not having that line and constantly accepting every subsequent new mechanic to extract more profit from us has resulted in the current state of AAA gaming industry.
As i said we can discuss where that line runs, 60$ is just my own personal line, but that line, not specifically price, should exist and should not be crossed. Id agree with the “no pre-orders” as well as games should be only bought after independent thrid party reviews have gone out. Just that this line doesn’t fit into current context, this one fits better under a post of a releasing of a new highly anticipated game.
The line is shitty unfinished fucking games that force you to download the entire game when you already have the discs and nickle and dime on dlc. That lines been crossed these developers actively laugh at you now.
I wouldn’t really use 60$ as a low price, but that’s beside the point.
You’re talking about capping game prices at a relatively “low” price, and I think you knew what I meant.
Your missing the trees for the forest. It’s not the low price, but setting a line which one does not cross.
I’m not missing anything. I’m saying setting a line makes no sense because not every game has the same amount of content.
Not having that line and constantly accepting every subsequent new mechanic to extract more profit from us has resulted in the current state of AAA gaming industry.
The gaming industry pricing has been virtually unchanged since inception. If anything, it’s because consumers refuse to pay more that games suck now, because publishers rely on DLCs and relentlessly harassing consumers to buy mtx.
Though where would you draw the line?
I don’t draw a line anywhere. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you. As I said, it’s entirely dependent on the content of the game.
If they launch Control Resonant for $100 I would pay it because it’s my favorite franchise of all time and I’ve gotten hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of it.
I’d pay $150 for a great finished game. They don’t make that anymore, and you can’t make anything good and sell it for $60. So I’m not sure what you people want?! You want these companies to spend 3 billion making a game, making it perfect, and charging only $60 for it. Insane. No wonder why gamers get treated like entitled complainers.
Dude, really. Therer are uncountable numbers of good indy games way below 60. So it is possible to produce good games sven below that price point.
What i want is AAA games to stop implementing predatory tactics to squeeze out as much cash from consumers as possible while making games even more expensive. Once they do that we can start discussing price again.
Are you aware of how much gaming has increased in popularity?
Already this should cover the difference inflation makes over the years.
When we add in profit form micro transactions and the only reason left to increase prices is greed.
The perceived value back then was not having to pluck down 25c every time you played at the arcade. So even if the price was high it seemed cheap in the long run.
Editt : reading it again I’ve missed my point by a decade, this applies mostly to the late 80s
Indeed… and I never understood the stand against prices set by publishers, developers, artists, or people… for monetary support calculated for the human time, work, and effort done for a mirracle to share and support in hope…
If the game is honestly updated with effort and hard work I will pay $80.
I clean air bnbs, houses, condos, and all that for a living. I don’t do shit for less than $100.
I get folks gotta eat. But if you want my money for your product, it better be that good dick shit. It better be high quality and ducking finished.
Not this “oh here’s we got updates coming, the game is has a roadmap.”
Like motherfucker the game can’t drive it doesn’t need a road map, it’s need to be finished.
Wanna release the unfinished version?
$20. But give me user support, working graphics, good multi if it’s that game, all the bells and whistles and I’ll pay $80 if you show me you goddamn actually care for the thing you are making.
Show me the love for your product/art/work and I will gladly give you money to support you for doing something you care about.
And I mean even the ceos. Have some goddamn integrity and humility for fucking once.
Yeah, but it suffices as a line in the sand. We could probably use horse armor as well, but that’s even more arbitrary and there are few publisher who have managed to keep mtx based market under control and run a free successful game for years, ex POE.
Yes, but that’s just finding justifications for publisher who use every possible opportunity to screw us over at every opportunity while delivering shittier products every year.
No need to run free PR for them, corpos have whole departments for that.
Fuck em, use the same mentality corpos use towards us, show them no mercy or forgiveness. Treat corpos with the contempt they deserve.
We are the ones who have to exert the counter force, not just accept whatever they throw at us.
On console, digital only means the only market is them. That’s why this is happening, and it’s the real issue. The ownership thing is an issue too, but that’s been dead for a while, even with physical disks. Very few games worked with only the disk install and no internet, so the disk doesn’t let you play without their support anyway.
I’ve been PC only for a long time now, so I’m fine with digital only. On PC we have some choice of marketplace. Sure, (I’m probably going to get flammed for pointing this out) Valve has used their market dominance to force price parity, but it’s still better than consoles. Console players are about to get fucked, and they’re probably going to turn around and thank them for it.
Because people with money have the time and patience to arrange an eloquent argument to legislators.
Easy, and correct, to say “But a lot of those guys are bought and paid for.” They are, but they also need to convince the gullible representatives; the ones that want to think they’re doing the right thing, and will vote yes anytime a bill has “For Children” in the name.
But senators aren’t convinced by “Like stop being such assholes.” They need a mature, well-arranged argument that demonstrates unfairness and harm. SKG showed when it’s well-described, it can have effects.
I just wanna say this is my opinion.
98% of the shit we deal with. Not just game shit, but everything…all boils down to these folks with power being utter rotten puss filled cunts.
Like honestly. Fuck disc. I hate em. I love digital. But fuck me. Let it be mine. Let me mod it (without cheating in it) let me play it on any console I want. Let it be my $80 of the game to do with as I want.
Like stop being such assholes. Why do these folks gotta turn into hateful cunts cause they got money or they made a game or media or whatever the fuck.
Consumers wouldn’t be as pissed if they weren’t being fisted constantly.
Yep, that’s absolutely it and it doesn’t matter how it’s handled the will always be assholes. So we should go back to public measures.
Baby, you keep giving them the money they use to fist you.
True, but ain’t that a bit unfair for you to say? Do you not play games? Or watch stuff?
Isn’t this a “you complain yet you live in a society.” Or whatever.
I also grew up playing games. I won’t stop. And yes, while getting fisted, I’ll complain. You wouldn’t tell someone not to scream when getting attacked.
My solution is to not have/buy a console (and the DS screen starts to be too small) and I’m on Linux.
Which means I don’t buy 80€ games.
That’s people’s problem, they must consume this new branded thing, again and again. Think about it, you have a million people buying whatever shit you make just because of brand/publicity, it will become more important to have the brand going, making the right publicity, than making an extraordinary game.
That said, I’d kill for a sweet semi turnbased “nineties” rpg. I do not play many games, they are rare on linux 😔.
Expedition 33 might scratch your itch.
Well said
the things they were complaining about in the top comment go beyond consoles, they are a problem with PC games too. even on steam and linux. you’d have to buy exclusively from DRM free platforms like GOG.
also games are not that rare in linux, most work well via steam.
In a bubble, I’d agree with you on Steam vs. Sony vs. GOG.
But you can’t just analyze purely based on principles and logic, there are real life precedents for Sony removing content people purchased with no refund nor any form of customer outreach.
This has never happened on Steam, so in my view you can’t equate Sony and Steam. I would say GOG is better than Steam if GOG didn’t send nazi shit to people.
Or just pirate them, ezpz, especially if you already don’t morally agree with the publisher.
I don’t AAA game, but haven’t run into a single issue with a game running on Linux…
I tried to run Desperados, no go. Red alert/C&C too.
I’m no guru when it comes to all this luti/vm(the graphics never works well or fast)/bottle/ other stuff.
Steam is good though.
No it’s not unfair. What I said was factual. People aren’t willing to give up their comforts in order to make real, meaningful change. It’s one of those truths that gets argued against anytime it’s said with people unwilling to admit it to themselves.
deleted by creator
I mean i quit playing games in 2020ish because im sick of getting ripped the fuck off. I don’t watch tv or movies, either, anymore because it’s all sequels and garbage.
Join me and let these industries suffer.
Good for you. And I mean that.
I don’t buy enough games to really be impacted. Bf6 and Helldivers have been the most recent. I also use bf6 and HD to play with my best friend who is 4 states away.
But like I said…I literally was playing bf1 and titanfall all the way to bf6 with no other games bought. I don’t got a lot of time. I play 1 or 2 games a year and be content with that.
But really good for you. More power to you. I’ll try to fight it in another way.
Isn’t this literally victim-shaming? It’s not just game companies doing it, after all. What’s the alternative, to go live alone in the wilderness and not participate in society at all??
You can have change or your can have comfort.
That’s why I love gog, and it’s the only store that gets my gaming money. The games are mine, as long as I keep a backup of the installer. I can do with them what I want.
I see why the newest AAA games are a must have for younger gamers, but as an older one I now have the patience to simply wait until it releases on gog if I actually have the urge to play it.
Digital is fantastic, I miss the boxes and handbooks and feelies, but I don’t miss the discs.
Other stores have DRM free games too. For example Cyberpunk 2077 is DRM free on Steam. DRM, for the most part, is forced by publishers rather than stores.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games
You can do that with Steam games too. The ones without DRM.
And it’s the developer that chooses if they want DRM.
Well can you see beforehand which game uses Steam DRM? And I still need the client installed to download anything, and even then I only archive the actual game, not any dependency.
The steam store itself doesn’t show if a game uses Steam-DRM (which is a buncha bullshit if you ask me) but the PCGamingWiki usually has that information.
You are sufficiently old. Good job.
I always wanted Wishbringer SO BAD because it came with that damn rock.
Hell yeah. Love GOG.
But for me, while I love old games, I need my new shit lol.
Like bf6 has been a gem for me. Some bugs and bullshit, but I do like it. Which, call me stupid for this but bf6 and modern battle/war games are a bit of therapy for me. I joined the Marines, got to last week of basic training, came back from team(?) Week and was told to get my shit on the front deck or whatever. Ended up I had hep c. Paperwork fell through and it wasn’t caught till I was almost done
And grant you, I wanted to “fight for America and the people in it” since I was like 7. I was 20 just outta h.s. It tore my world apart. Had to do meds and all that. Pills and injection.
Anyways. Games like battlefield or even the more serious ones like Insurgency helped me use some of the stuff I learned on my own over the years and stuff in basic to not feel like it was all a huge waste of my life.
Tl"dr I enjoy modern fps games because they help me deal with my trauma in life.
99% of games will never release on GoG no matter how old they get though, because once they’re on GoG they’re essentially free.
GoG is great, but GoG is fundamentally never going to be a competitive storefront. It will always be niche and missing most games people want to buy.
Also people don’t seem to realize but you can “back up” digital Xbox and (I believe) PS5 games too. Download them, transfer them to an external HDD or 10 if you want, and then at any stage you can plug them back in to your console, transfer them over to the internal drive, and they work. Even without internet. It just has to be on your console that is marked as “home console”.
Unlike all the ones on Steam that never get pirated? Steam DRM is so easy to bypass it may as well not exist. Also, unlike GoG, you can add your pirated game to Steam and play multiplayer.
There’s no way Steam don’t know this is happening which means there’s no way it’s not intended (especially given Gaben’s stance on piracy).
There’s a huge difference between no drm and “easily” bypassed drm.
That might work for some games, but there’s an increasing number of games requiring you to establish some sort of connection to the internet even for single player or mostly single player games (Lego Horizon for instance).
Try to transfer one of those and load it up on a new console without an internet connection.
Sure, your “home console” might work for some games for now. But in 10-15 years when Sony is trying to sell you the PS8, they’re going to be cutting off service to the PS5. What happens when you have to take that device in for maintenance and they need to do a factory reset? You need to log in again to activate it, except now it’s a brick that might only be able to play a few games on physical media. Anything downloaded/backed up would likely require that specific account.
By that time I’d be more worried about finding a working PS5 than their auth servers being taken down. That’s also assuming that they have completely removed backwards compatibility, which in an x86 world is highly unlikely.
The fact is that to preserve games forever, digital distribution is actually much better. These consoles will be emulated at some stage, and they won’t be playing physical games.
More games release on GOG when customers show there’s money to be made there. If you make it important to you that your games are DRM-free and spend more money on GOG than Steam, you help tip those scales. It’s not fundamental. If DRM is poison for making money, then fewer games will employ it.
But the games people want to buy on steam aren’t on GoG, and there’s no Steam vs GoG sales charts for people to point publishers to and say “look! Look how much money we will spend if you go drm free on GoG!”.
Also there’s just no denying it, and even trying is disingenuous - a game like GTA 6 releasing on GoG without DRM would sell significantly less than it would on a platform with DRM. It’s just the truth. It would be on torrents and every download site the minute it’s released, and millions and millions and millions of people who were going to buy it would get it for free instead.
In the terrible state that the video game industry is in for developers, releasing a big AAA game DRM-free would be the last game they ever release.
Last I looked into it video game piracy actually had a net benefit on sales. Any advantage DRM has from a sales point of view is null after about 3 months post launch anyway. It can and does kill small indie devs but any big boy in the industry, piracy usually benefits sales.
Piracy never has a benefit on sales. Where are you getting that from?
Don’t be so sure. Apparently they publishers don’t make hard numbers publicly available anymore so there’s no good data but there was a survey of denuvo games.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/the-true-cost-of-game-piracy-20-percent-of-revenue-according-to-a-new-study/
Unfortunately that still doesn’t answer the question but until publishers post honest numbers we’ll never have the proper metrics to measure the actual impact piracy has. But in the day freeware like Doom basically relied entirely on piracy for sales so it’s not an out of pocket take that piracy could benefit sales. It is an old take though. I’m old.
Edit - Also found this which looks at how piracy can help outside of direct sale conversions: https://jier.org/index.php/journal/article/view/3453/2764
That right there says that piracy hurts gaming. A game with drm cracked in the first week can expect to lose 20% of total revenue. That’s a gigantic loss.
Software sales are heavily front loaded. Releasing with no DRM would absolutely annihilate game sales.
Plenty of the games people want to buy are on GOG. Definitely not all of them, but you can find GOTY winners like Clair Obscur and Baldur’s Gate 3, games that should have won more awards like Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and The Alters, awesome indie games like Mina the Hollower and Escape from Ever After, plus the old stuff that GOG restores like Dino Crisis and Alpha Protocol that had pent-up demand. There’s no chart to compare sales, but developers talk, and they know their own sales data. Firms like Circana buy sales data and then sell the analysis back to help companies figure out what will help them make more money, including where people are buying video games.
That’s easy to claim and impossible to prove. Baldur’s Gate 3 released day 1 without DRM and still went on to sell over 20M copies; how many people do you think pirated it? Millions and millions? There are some people who are always going to pirate, but I think most prefer the experience of just buying the damn thing and getting better service out of it, not the least of which is quick and easy patching. We also now live in a world where Denuvo is fully broken open. There’s no difference in one’s ability to pirate once the game has been cracked at all. Piracy is going to happen one way or another, and GTA6 is basically guaranteed to make more money than any other video game that came before it.
This is demonstrably false, given the AAA games that release on GOG all the time.
Why could you only name like 3 then? Which 2026 AAA games have released on GOG?
Which GOG release bankrupted a company by way of piracy?
Which AAA developers released their AAA game on GOG day 1 in 2026?
Never forget, never forgive.
Nintendo 64 games cost like $60-$80 back in the late 90s.
They were also complicated circuit boards with full color manuals and box graphics, none of which is in digital nor the overhead of the creation thereof.
And they could not be patched later, so the testing was absolutely bonkers.
and today they sell like 10x as many copies.
The big blockbusters do. Most games don’t make back their development cost.
Yeah fair it is arbitrary, but the line in the sand must be drawn somewhere. So coming from PC platform and 59,99 being the agreed upon number for probably decade or more is a good enough arbitrary point to use as a line in the sand.
There shouldn’t be an arbitrary “line in the sand” for games. Just like there shouldn’t be for any other product. Because products are not all the same. Some games might take an hour to beat and others have endless replayability and it shouldn’t be expected that these all cost the same.
No, there most definitely should, there should be a line or set point for everything. A point from which onward one no longer accepts any further abuse.
Yes sure we can have discussion on where that line stands with gaming, like “no preorders” or “no p2w”, but there most definitely should be one or even multiple different ones and that should be upheld or else we do get current climate of AAA games riddled with mtx, psychological manipulation, getting more expensive yearly, no longer any long term guarantees either, while gameplay, story and performance quality dropping as well.
Without a set point or line, corporations wil keep on pushing the boundaries every single year as we keep allowing it.
A higher price does not mean abuse. It very well could just mean its a higher quality game with more content.
How does a low price stop that from happening? If anything it’s the opposite.
I wouldn’t really use 60$ as a low price, but that’s beside the point.
Your missing the trees for the forest. It’s not the low price, but setting a line which one does not cross.
Not having that line and constantly accepting every subsequent new mechanic to extract more profit from us has resulted in the current state of AAA gaming industry.
As i said we can discuss where that line runs, 60$ is just my own personal line, but that line, not specifically price, should exist and should not be crossed. Id agree with the “no pre-orders” as well as games should be only bought after independent thrid party reviews have gone out. Just that this line doesn’t fit into current context, this one fits better under a post of a releasing of a new highly anticipated game.
Though where would you draw the line?
The line is shitty unfinished fucking games that force you to download the entire game when you already have the discs and nickle and dime on dlc. That lines been crossed these developers actively laugh at you now.
Quit. Fucking. Buying. Them.
You’re talking about capping game prices at a relatively “low” price, and I think you knew what I meant.
I’m not missing anything. I’m saying setting a line makes no sense because not every game has the same amount of content.
The gaming industry pricing has been virtually unchanged since inception. If anything, it’s because consumers refuse to pay more that games suck now, because publishers rely on DLCs and relentlessly harassing consumers to buy mtx.
I don’t draw a line anywhere. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you. As I said, it’s entirely dependent on the content of the game.
If they launch Control Resonant for $100 I would pay it because it’s my favorite franchise of all time and I’ve gotten hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of it.
I’d pay $150 for a great finished game. They don’t make that anymore, and you can’t make anything good and sell it for $60. So I’m not sure what you people want?! You want these companies to spend 3 billion making a game, making it perfect, and charging only $60 for it. Insane. No wonder why gamers get treated like entitled complainers.
Dude, really. Therer are uncountable numbers of good indy games way below 60. So it is possible to produce good games sven below that price point.
What i want is AAA games to stop implementing predatory tactics to squeeze out as much cash from consumers as possible while making games even more expensive. Once they do that we can start discussing price again.
You’re aware of the concept of inflation, no?
Are you aware of how much gaming has increased in popularity? Already this should cover the difference inflation makes over the years. When we add in profit form micro transactions and the only reason left to increase prices is greed.
Are you saying that gaming increasing in popularity is a reason for companies to decrease the price? I’m not sure you know how this works.
I’m saying that inflammation cant be used as a good justification for increased prices when the profit has increased significantly.
Especially if it’s done by the biggest companies who are the main drivers of everything wrong with gaming.
My business has increased in popularity, too. I’m raising prices.
As is you’re right, I’m still not going to buy.
The perceived value back then was not having to pluck down 25c every time you played at the arcade. So even if the price was high it seemed cheap in the long run.
Editt : reading it again I’ve missed my point by a decade, this applies mostly to the late 80s
Indeed… and I never understood the stand against prices set by publishers, developers, artists, or people… for monetary support calculated for the human time, work, and effort done for a mirracle to share and support in hope…
If the game is honestly updated with effort and hard work I will pay $80.
I clean air bnbs, houses, condos, and all that for a living. I don’t do shit for less than $100.
I get folks gotta eat. But if you want my money for your product, it better be that good dick shit. It better be high quality and ducking finished. Not this “oh here’s we got updates coming, the game is has a roadmap.”
Like motherfucker the game can’t drive it doesn’t need a road map, it’s need to be finished.
Wanna release the unfinished version? $20. But give me user support, working graphics, good multi if it’s that game, all the bells and whistles and I’ll pay $80 if you show me you goddamn actually care for the thing you are making.
Show me the love for your product/art/work and I will gladly give you money to support you for doing something you care about. And I mean even the ceos. Have some goddamn integrity and humility for fucking once.
Sorry to rant.
No need to apologize for ranting, rant on.
It was $50 before that and as high as $90 before that. $60 is kind of arbitrary, honestly.
Yeah, but it suffices as a line in the sand. We could probably use horse armor as well, but that’s even more arbitrary and there are few publisher who have managed to keep mtx based market under control and run a free successful game for years, ex POE.
$60 in 2007 is a bit under $100 now in terms of purchasing power. Games have essentially gone down in price.
Yes, but that’s just finding justifications for publisher who use every possible opportunity to screw us over at every opportunity while delivering shittier products every year.
No need to run free PR for them, corpos have whole departments for that. Fuck em, use the same mentality corpos use towards us, show them no mercy or forgiveness. Treat corpos with the contempt they deserve. We are the ones who have to exert the counter force, not just accept whatever they throw at us.
Why would you ever buy anything from a corporation like that?! They aren’t selling you food. This is pathetic. Gamers are pathetic.
We shouldn’t, that’s the point. Most, probably all AAA companies should crash and burn.
Microsoft is fulfilling that by buying half of them up. They’ve been incapable of not killing off studios they buy.
On console, digital only means the only market is them. That’s why this is happening, and it’s the real issue. The ownership thing is an issue too, but that’s been dead for a while, even with physical disks. Very few games worked with only the disk install and no internet, so the disk doesn’t let you play without their support anyway.
I’ve been PC only for a long time now, so I’m fine with digital only. On PC we have some choice of marketplace. Sure, (I’m probably going to get flammed for pointing this out) Valve has used their market dominance to force price parity, but it’s still better than consoles. Console players are about to get fucked, and they’re probably going to turn around and thank them for it.
There’s nothing wrong with getting fisted.
No, I love fisting. But with consent.
Because people with money have the time and patience to arrange an eloquent argument to legislators.
Easy, and correct, to say “But a lot of those guys are bought and paid for.” They are, but they also need to convince the gullible representatives; the ones that want to think they’re doing the right thing, and will vote yes anytime a bill has “For Children” in the name.
But senators aren’t convinced by “Like stop being such assholes.” They need a mature, well-arranged argument that demonstrates unfairness and harm. SKG showed when it’s well-described, it can have effects.