Games

The amount of options isn’t the issue.

For most 25-40€ games I buy, i can get a great experience for the next 30-50 hours.

Indie games absolutely crush the statistics, where some sub-15€ roguelikes have such insane replayability, that i’ve clocked over a thousand hours into a couple. Not to mention how incredibly creative, unique, and story rich some of them are.

Meanwhile, what used to be 60€, and is now 80€+, is some “cinematic” 20fps on console slop, that you can barely get 5 hours of real gameplay out of. I don’t wanna sit there and watch a movie with an occasional A button press. Or even worse, play something like the Assassins Creed reboot, that had 500 hours of gameplay, 490 of which is just useless collectibles around the map.

But it still spooked Wall Street, as parent company Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.’s shares plummeted as much as 10% following the news.

I think our economy might be predicated entirely on stupid.

Also, $80 is a lot when typical people's buying power is decreasing. I think like half of americans can't tank a $500 surprise bill, and they want people to blow nearly 20% of that on a video game? Fuck off, capitalists.

Don't pre order games. Don't buy games at full price. Support indie devs.

I have 170 games in my backlog and the summer sale is coming. I ain't spending 80 bucks on one video game.

I will continue to wait until games go on discount

What AAA title is worth $80? The most time I spend gaming is in a 10 year old shooter, and an indie survival game. Both of which I bought for <$20.

It sucks that waiting for a sale might only bring down to the original $50 new full price it used to be.

Just have to wait longer I guess.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I made a rule that I can't spend over $10 on a game until I've played through my entire backlog. I haven't bought a game over $10 in 10 years and I've spent $6k on Steam since I started using it.

!patientgamers@sh.itjust.works

There are so many options out there that asking for $80, or whatever the equivalent is, is just ridiculous. I really hope people stand up against this bulshit.

There are very few games I would spend $80 on. Actually, at this point I don't buy a lot of new games to begin with, I'm mostly just grinding the same old favorites now.

But for the games I really care about, I'm willing to spend on games I know will be worth it to me. I've waited 22 years for a sequel to Kirby Air Ride and if I have to pay $80 for it, I will pay $80 for it.

I pirate games first before buying. Too many games become shit past the return window on Steam. I buy every game I like.

I’ve only bought one $80 game thus far (And that was during a 30% steam sale so only $55) and from my years of experience of buying games, I can confidently say that my enjoyment in games goes down as price goes up.

Although weirdly all of the $80 games that released so far have been pretty bad so that’s strange.

I'm over the massive, over-produced games. I looked at the price of the new Indiana Jones game (AUD119), and even though I loved Machine Games' previous work, I noped out. These days, I'm mostly reverting to simple arcade games more akin to the early era of gaming I grew up on. Shotgun Cop Man, from the people that made My Friend Pedro, just came out. It was $13. Finished it in one sitting, but I'll probably play it multiple times. Much better investment.

I think Titanfall 2 is still on sale on steam for uh... 5 dollars.

Its got Northstar, a custom client that allows for private multiplayer servers... also works on linux, literally has its own custom proton version.

Oh and there are mods as well, guided installers, mod managers, etc, for windows and linux.

Runs great on a steam deck!

... and looks ... basically the same as a shooter from 10 years later, at least at 1280 x 800?

(its built on a custom forked version of the portal 2 source engine, so it actually runs efficiently and looks good =D)

Doesn't have a huge playerbase, but it is decent enough that you can probably find a few well populated servers, at least in NA region.

... looks like titanfall 3 got turned into an extraction shooter and then cancelled.

So anyway yeah, hilariously its time to return to tradition for enthusiasts of many old school competetive games from before the bullshit of endless battlepasses and MTX kicked into high gear... and as others have pointed out, the indie scene is full of gems.

At garage sales books can often be found for 25 cents a piece (320 books in $80).

certainly wont purchase a 80$ game with mid-tier playability.

I live in LATAM. I bought civ v once and never stopped playing it since

I don't know who's all this people who can buy games every launch, but they must be so incredibly privileged

Just like other aspects of commerce, we’ll see what the market does. I hate to say it that way, but that’s simply how it works. Look at what’s happening to McDonalds right now. They’ve been raising prices for years, now tariffs have made things even worse, and people have responded accordingly and go to McDonalds less. Ball is in their court.

Another good example is the recent news about Beyoncé no longer filling major concert venues. I know there’s a lot of factors going on in these situations, but the truth at the core of it is that prices finally went up to a point where a not insignificant portion of her audience noped out of the transaction. Simple commerce.

No kidding. Not counting games I play 'any way I can':

• Oolite
• Endless Sky
• Nethack
• Shattered Pixel Dungeon
• Dwarf Fortress
• Liberal Crime Squad
• Mindustry
• WarZone 2100
• OpenTTD
• OpenRCT2 (though this requires some investment, you need the files from the original 2 games)
• FreeCiv
• EDOPro
• Card-Forge

That's just what I have on this machine. If I check my GOG account, I'd have more. And I don't give money to Valve.

I still have so many games I've picked up on Steam sales that I'll happily wait for those $80 games to go on sale while going through my back catalogue

That's basically what I've been saying ever since the switch 2 announcement, I'm glad I can just copy the Sources from this article to support my intuition. Thank you, Superjoost!

For the last 10 years I've only paid full price for one AAA game: Elden Ring. I've gotten something like 200 hours out of it. It may be the best value for a AAA game ever, in my book. (And I haven't yet played the expansion.)

I'm happy to wait for sales on everything else, including the secondary market for Nintendo games, but after their recent fuckery in multiple arenas, I'm not keen buying anything they produce. (Not that it matters. Their stuff will sell regardless.)

For the GTA delay, if it is so they can release a less bug filled finished product instead of the usual AAA strategy as of late of throwing whatever out and maybe kinda patching it later on, then good on them for doing it how it should be done. I probably won't buy it either way since I haven't cared for the tone of any of the GTA games since San Andreas personally, but for the people that will it is a good thing.

As for the price of games in general. I'm not opposed to theoretically paying $80, or even more, for a game I deem worth that kind of money. Never have been. The issue is 99% of the time the games in question aren't worth that kind of money. As an example, I am a Hitman fan. Over the course of the varies releases since 2016 to what is now just called Hitman: World of Assassination, I have spent well over $100 for maps and content. And I don't regret it because the end result is a huge game that I have gotten untold hours of enjoyment out of over the last ~9 years.

The AAA players have simply started to price themselves out of their own market, and smaller players have started to fill the void they left behind.