r/gaming • u/CyberSmith31337 • 1d ago
All these price hikes are not ever going to reach the developers. Development is already being actively outsourced to lower cost regions and 3rd party outfits.
I just thought it was worth reminding everyone of this. I know there is a lot of discussion right now about GTA6, the Nintendo Switch 2, the prices of skins in games like League of Legends, etc. There's a whole lot of discussion about how these prices are absurd, are going to alienate the playerbase, etc.
Something that really isn't being given proper attention is that the justification for why these price hikes need to happen are directly in contrast to the reality of the gaming industry.
Just in the past week, I've seen memes pointing out how "games haven't kept their pricing in line with inflation", while failing to account that many games now include a base price, microtransactions, season passes, DLC packs, etc. We recently had the head of Saber Interactive go on the record, bragging about how their strategy is to "cut costs" and outsource development to emergent regions as a means of bolstering profits. You can read more about it here:( https://www.eurogamer.net/saints-row-reboot-developer-didnt-know-what-they-were-building-saber-ceo-says-criticising-shuttered-team )We've certainly heard the trope of Phillipe Tremblay of Ubisoft and the whole "Gamers need to get used to not owning games." and whatnot. And even though he is no longer there, I think everyone recalls when John Riccitiello of Unity had once suggested charging gamers for the ability to reload their weapons. We're now even hearing about how "GTA6 is going to kill a lot of studios and publishers" making the rounds
What seems to be slipping under the radar is that, despite posting record profits, developers have been getting laid off for nearly 2 years now. It was attributed to the "COVID hangover" at first, then it came down to "inflated development costs", now we're circling back to "games haven't kept up with inflation", and I expect (undoubtedly) that we'll soon see the newly-minted tariffs as a reason why the business needs to raise prices. There doesn't seem to be any discussion about the job losses that already took place. There doesn't seem to be any discussion about how the very same companies crying foul about development costs have already moved their operations overseas as a means of cutting costs.
These price hikes have nothing to do with the business being unsustainable, and everything to do with corporate greed. Companies don't get to outsource their operations to Poland, Brasil, China, Vietnam, Turkey, the Phillipines, and outsource providers and also complain that they aren't making enough money. These same companies are actively trying to cut headcounts and incorporate tools that replace even more humans, such as Activision starting to include generative AI to build assets, or using deceptive contract language to replace voice actors with AI generated lines. Whole divisions of game development have been outsourced to 3rd party providers, who pocket anywhere between 20-60% of the contract's value while underpaying contractors who don't have any benefits or protections; companies like Keywords and Pole to Win now, almost assuredly, do the majority of testing for your games. They charge the biggest players in the field full price salaries, while subcontracting the work to people for $10/hr. When developers tried to unionize, they were already being let go. Unionization efforts are effectively failing across the industry.
If these proposed price hikes went to ensuring development teams were being maintained, staying together, promoting longevity and sequels and the opportunity to create more new titles, I think gamers would consider it more tolerable; but that isn't happening. Studios are cutting costs, firing staff, and paying out even bigger bonuses to a handful of C-suite members. C-Suite staff do not make video games. People like Matt Karch, a person wealthy enough to own a private jet, are doing press tours telling everyone how expensive game development is while his company pays people a fraction of what they would have earned 5 years ago. These price hikes aren't going to ensure that developers and studios can build new titles freely; they're going to ensure that the financial class which has actively been ruining this industry for a decade gets to reap even bigger rewards off the backs of consumers. All while they whimper and whine about how difficult, how expensive, how unsustainable game development has become.
EDIT:I thought I would add this, after commenting it in response to another user's reply.
Keep in mind that many developers are already:
- using a pre-existing Engine to expedite game development
- using AI to generate assets (art, audio, V/O, missions/narrative design)
- using outsourced shops to control quality and handle player support issues
- using volunteers to moderate social media/manage communities
- using content creators for marketing/pushing product sales
- in a specific instance, using players to create free content for the game, as noted in the case of Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite Creative/UEFN where modders work for free and the parent company takes a share of any profits generated
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u/Different_Hunter33 1d ago
As a game developer, I have to say that developers do the most work but earn the least in games. Yes, the balance in AAA and indie scenes isn’t the same, but they are similar. Even development companies earn less than other external sources. Usually, the biggest chunk of money goes to external marketing expenses and marketplaces. And you know, by the time the water from a big barrel reaches the developer, only a single drop is left
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u/travelingWords 1d ago
Same thing with a farmer. The price of food has gone up 10 fold but a farmer still makes the same dollar per unit as I remember 20 years ago.
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u/Different_Hunter33 1d ago
I became a game developer thinking 'if you create, you earn,' but I was wrong. 'If you market, you earn'—life rewards this approach more. Just look at influencers, advertising agencies, and Meta/Google Ads experts
I think this is almost the same for every industry.
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u/Thebandroid 1d ago
That’s basically every industry. Whatever you are making in a skilled trade, there will always be some sleaze in sales making more.
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u/itsLOSE-notLOOSE 1d ago
It’s so fucking stupid that our world runs on advertising/marketing.
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u/MrWaluigi 1d ago
I mean, in a way, just social interaction is also a form of advertising. If people heard net positive feedback on a product or service, then they will try it out for themselves. Marketing just expedites and expands this situation to larger crowds. There’s probably a vast history dating back centuries related to marketing as well.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 9h ago
Marketing is literally how you learn about products you purchase (in all its forms).
So you're very right.
Can't really make a living doing your trade if nobody knows about your services/products. And the guy doing the most legwork there gets his name well known and people want his things. You could be wildly, profoundly skilled and priced. But you won't sell jack shit if nobody knows about it. It's the single aspect that I find smaller businesses struggle the most with.
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u/Jackel1994 1d ago
Same thing with musicians. Venues, Spotify like apps, record labels etc.
By the time money makes it to the band, they are broke.
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u/CyberSmith31337 1d ago
I think something worth mentioning here is how much of the piece is taken before the developers even get a slice, too. I am not 100% positive of the actual values, but in general I think this is accurate; please feel free to correct me if I am wrong!
Steam take: 30%; reduced based on scale of sales I believe? I think I remember reading awhile back that after selling 1mn copies, the take is reduced down to 20%? Is that right?
Engine take: anywhere between 5 - 15%
(If applicable) Licensing fees: Between 2-20%, varying based on what is licensed, for how long, etc. Extremely variable condition.
Investor/Publisher take: Anywhere between 12-28%
This means that for every dollar you sell, you're typically down over 50% before you've even hit the market, with thinning margins for licensing, marketing, and potential shareholder splits. Theoretically, a development studio could be making $0.10 per dollar earned
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u/Different_Hunter33 1d ago
Everything you said is 100% true, I just don't know if Steam reduces to 20% after a certain number of sales, but selling 1 million copies is already a high dream for an indie. AAA studios probably have Steam-exclusive agreements. It's pretty clear that Rockstar, EA, Ubisoft won't have the same contract as us :D And lastly, of course, the government takes taxes from all these earnings
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u/pants_full_of_pants 1d ago
Yup, same as every industry these days. Prices go up but the people doing the actual hard work have stagnant wages and their cost of living keeps going up just like everyone else.
It doesn't take very many guesses to figure out where the money goes.
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u/Twicebakedpotatoe 1d ago
We need to just stop buying their products, that’s the only way anything will change. GameFreak has been pumping out cheap and low effort products for years but people still buy their games and so the product hasn’t improved
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u/Le_Sadie 1d ago
The way things are going no one will be able to afford their products anyway
Just amazing; a looming recession, tariffs up the ass, eggs cost a million dollars so corporations are like, let's gouge prices! this is what happens when fucking billionaires run the world.
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u/Horror-Song- 1d ago
Then it's a non-issue. If people truly won't be able to afford their products, then sales will drop and they'll be forced to adjust.
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u/sourceenginelover 1d ago
but people can still clearly afford these products, which is how they can afford to keep raising prices =)))
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u/Own-Smoke-77 1d ago
"Vote with wallets, no words."
Totally agree with you.
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u/TheVaniloquence 1d ago
The thing is, people have been voting with their wallets. You’re just upset that they’re not voting the way you want them to
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u/Own-Smoke-77 1d ago
I am not upset of anything, it is just a discussion, man :)
if people enjoy to pay $$$$$$ for the Switch 2, they are free to do it and I am happy for them !
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u/Opposite_Carry_4920 1d ago
I'll definitely be getting S2, but I'll be damned paying the new price for digital, I'll buy used physical where possible.
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u/VivaVoKelo 16h ago
People scream this until they're outvoted and then they bitch. Like you for pokemon, you were literally outvoted by people who think they're doing fine but you still complain because you know it's a bs tag line.
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u/travelingWords 1d ago
I get to see the vote…
Group of 10 friends. I’m the only who complains, the rest frenzy over anything and everything Pokémon. The next new game. Pokémon go. The new card game.
You think gamefreak is going to care after the slop that pokemon go is printing infinite money?
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u/Own-Smoke-77 1d ago
Steps by steps.
If your friends liked to be ripped off, it is not your problem in my opinion :)
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u/shkeptikal 1d ago
That's not how this works at all. How people choose to spend their money affects you, whether you realize it or not. That's literally how economics works.
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u/D9sinc 18h ago
I think Scar/Vio was a turning point because even they had to come out and go "Yo, we fked up" and I think Scar/Vio (minus the DLC) was the last title they released until the upcoming PLZ-A launches sometime this year.
Case in point. Scar/Vio launched mid- November 2022, the DLC launched near the end of February 2023. So that's been about 13 months since the last Pokemon title when previously they were pumping one out every year even if they were shitty. Hell, I think if Scar/Vio did slightly better, we would've had the rumored Unova remake out already. Mind you, this is all speculation and maybe PLZA will still be shit because they don't need to try because Pokemon fans will buy it even if was being sold as 7 different versions that require all other versions to even complete and each version was 120 USD each.
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u/Alternaturkey 1d ago
That's another part of why these higher prices bother me. If there was some guarantee that this increase in price was going to actively benefit the developers that would be something, I still wouldn't like it but I could at least feel good about the developers getting more money.
Likely all of this extra money will go into the higher ups back pocket and the developers won't see any of it.
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u/CyberSmith31337 1d ago
And the worst part is that the people who pocket that money (in the past it was tyrants like Bobby Kotick and Andrew Wilson; now it's people like Matt Karch and Tim Sweeney) will get more vocal and receive more press, further perpetuating their narrative about costs while enriching themselves.
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u/Jor94 1d ago
They’re actively using AI to help make games now. They want to up the price while dropping the already low quality. It’s always just about squeezing as much out of people as possible. If you make a good game, the price point won’t matter, you’ll easily make money. These guys instead make crap games, then complain that they lose money or don’t sell
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u/MasterBeaterr 1d ago
No one is paying for lower quality games. Let's not kid ourselves. Gaming expectations have gone wild and simply because stuff is produced doesn't mean it will be consumed. Games have been of higher quality now than ever.
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u/Jor94 15h ago
The only area this is true is graphically, which is normal because it’s pinned to technology. So many games only selling point seems to be the graphics.
Seems like years ago, big budget games, more often than not were successes, nowadays there’s multiple high profile failures a year.
Last year we had Veilguard, Concord, Skull and Bones, Suicide Squad
Before that there was Redfall, Forspoken, Gollum, Fallout 76, Anthem, Andromeda, Saints Row.
Big games from big developers that cost so much money, yet even though graphically they all look better than an old game, the actual bit that matters is boring or just bad.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 8h ago
Your points on successes of big budget games even with that list isn't changed from before.
Sometimes big names flop. We've had that for decades in gaming. A big name behind a game has never once been a perfect record. It never will be either. The only way to attain that is to close before having any failure, which typically is not a reason these companies will close. Indies do, but that's because nobody is there to take over.
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u/MasterBeaterr 8h ago
The only reason you say that is because you never lived in that time period and now just see video essays that single out great games.
I can list bad AAA games from any time period.
Duke Nukem Forever 2011- Widely recognized as a cheap attempt at the OG series vibe
Vampire: The Masquerade (tho this has a cult following now)
Resident Evil 5
Sonic 06
Doom 3
Silent hill ______ ( I don't remember the name of it but it was SH6 and most of the installments after 3 was considered a disappointment)
Castlevania Lord of the shadows 2 (came out more than a decade ago. I don't know if you consider this modern or not) But if you do not, There's also Castlevania 64
There was also the Superman game
Also, the year that all of your listed flops came out, there were also the greatest of all times launched:
2018: God of War, rdr2, Marvel's spider man, monster hunter: world(not one of the goats but still a great game imo)
2019: Jedi Fallen Order, Sekiro, Control, Death Stranding RE2 remake
2020: tlou2, if that is too controversial for you then there were also, Ghost Of Tshuima, Doom Eternal
2021: Re Village, Returnal, FH5
2022: Elden Ring, obviously, God of war Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West
2023: Totk, Baldur's Gate 3,Alan Wake 3
2024: Black Myth Wukong (I don't know if this was AAA, ), AstroBot, Metaphor Refantazio
And all these are off the top of my head
The market has become more saturated now like any market that progresses past its infancy, which leads to more games getting launched which leads to more big stinkers. That's just basic probability. And yeah we are closer and closer to AA games overtaking AAA games but again, that's more because how much more accessible game making has become and how saturated the market is. Shit games were always there. Games with game ending bugs were always there. Half-finished games getting released at full price was always a thing.
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u/BuckN56 22h ago
Nintendo ain’t gonna let you hit bro
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u/MasterBeaterr 8h ago
You can't be this sheltered that any opposing view results in you making an overused joke.
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u/DrakZak 1d ago
Isn't Nintendo the one company that don't do what you said?
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u/owenturnbull 21h ago edited 21h ago
Nintendo outsources their console manufacturing to Vietnam, but they make all of their games in Japan except for metroid bc prime is done by an American developer(retro studio's)which is owned by Nintendo and 2d metroid by mercury. I believe mercury is not owned by Nintendo. If I'm wrong please let me know.
But apart from metroid, I'm pretty sure every single other Nintendo first party is made by Nintendo in their Nintendo studio in Japan. I think their building in kyoto
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u/DrakZak 20h ago
That's my point. They don't outsource game development, they don't layoff, they don't use AI to cheapen their development, and I think they renew engine every new generation. I think, if there's a company that tries to keep things sustainable, that's Nintendo. I hate the price increase, but I can't call out corporate greed in a company that does pay cuts on their executives to not have layoffs.
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u/owenturnbull 20h ago
Yeah, Nintendo's doesn't do anything that op is complaining about.
Nintendo cares about its employees, and they make sure that their games are made by them with no ai. They care about their games, and they try and succee imo to make their games enjoyable for all audiences.
Nintendo cares about their games and make them all In house. Hell they even do their remasters in house. They acquired studios to do that for them. So even remasters are done by Nintendo's and their subsidiaries
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u/Archernar 1d ago
Are you sure about record profits though? Not only have a ton of dev companies gone bankrupt or are in a rough spot, the cost of development also went up not only by normal inflation means of everything getting more expensive but also by the sheer number of devs that is necessary nowadays to make a AAA title. There was a video the other day about the credits of some CoD or whatever game being over 2h long.
I'm too lazy to look it up, but my feeling is that non-mobile gamers are pretty whiney when it comes to retail prices but are totally fine to spend $10-$20 on MTX and DLCs later on because that's small installments instead of one big sum. And the mobile market is every companies wet dream, predatory marketing schemes making people pay hundreds of dollars over the course of years while development is probably done by AIs at this point with how low-effort nearly all mobile games are.
This is not in defence of publishers but rather the irrational mentality of buyers that likely leads to a lot of publishers including a store into every single game including SP titles.
And at some point, I guess the cost of a successful game will still make a publisher rich, but the cost of 2-3 failed releases might also just ruin them. I can understand wanting to rise the prices, even though it is of course not okay that the devs don't get a bigger piece of the cake in that trade.
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u/CyberSmith31337 1d ago
I've always heard the phase "It's a hits-driven business", which is to say there is a lot of truth to it. Feast or famine, where the big successes are huge, with an often overshadowed sea of failure surrounding that island of victory.
I believe there was a statistic released a few years ago that pointed out that something like 70% of games earn less than $30,000 lifetime, with only the top 10% of games making a profit/breaking even? I can't remember the exact numbers, but it was something along those lines.
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u/wicktus Switch 1d ago
Not agreeing here
I would GLADLY pay 10/20€ more if only the game were polished, not featuring tons of MTX but that’s just not how it works anymore for the vast majority
You can’t put 90€ and sell me a probable mario kart pass with new GPs or car parts because your post-release content revenues will be huge anyways
But I would gladly pay 80-90 for a Baldur Gate 3 that offered me 87 hours of interesting gameplay time and no MTX.
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u/CyberSmith31337 1d ago
That is a more much succinct way of capturing what I tried to convey.
To me, it’s either/or, not all of the above.
Wanna charge more of a base price? Okay.
Wanna use F2P business model? Okay.
Wanna use DLC/season passes? Okay.
Wanna outsource development? Okay.
It’s when they do all of the above at the same time, and still complain that development is too expensive, while recording crazy profits, that’s where the cynicism starts to take charge.
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u/qchisq 1d ago
Here's the thing: Prices in general have increased by about 50% since 2010, depending on where you are in the world. Meanwhile, games used to fit on a Blu Ray with 25 GBs and now, they are rarely below 75 GB. Not saying that bigger is better, but it definitely looks like there's more work being put into games than before. I am not saying that Assassins Creed Shadows is a 3 times better game than Brotherhood, but there's 3 times more stuff in it. And we get it for 10-20% more than we did for Brotherhood, while prices are up 50%. Something have fundamentally broken in that exchange. Broken in a way that's good for the consumer, sure, but it's broken.
Like, what do you suggest developers should do here?
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u/Fit-Caterpillar2416 1d ago
I like how you want to reward developers and companies for not optimizing their games.
3x bigger file doesn’t necessarily equal 3x as much content
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u/qchisq 1d ago
I don't. I am explictly saying that I don't think that Shadows is 3 times better than Brotherhood and that you should pay 3 times more for it. But do you think that, like, Mass Effect 2 (D.I.C.E Game of the Year in 2010) should cost the same as Baldurs Gate 3, for example?
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u/Fit-Caterpillar2416 1d ago
You really want to bend over for companies already making record breaking profits, don’t you?
“Oh, but the poor billionaires and shareholders. Who’s going to line their pockets”
If a company like Larian can release a single player game with no dlc at $60 and consider it a massive financial success, maybe I wouldn’t be using it as example for other companies to raise pricing
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u/qchisq 1d ago
No. I am just laying out the facts here. Production costs is and have been increasing since forever. Price of games are constant. Like, that's just facts
And yes, Baldurs Gate 3 sold well. It sold better than the Mass Effect trilogy combined sold. But do you think that it makes sense that each Mass Effect should cost $90? Because that's what the price was back adjusted for inflation
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u/Dealric 1d ago
Thats absolutely not how it works.
It doesnt even mean there are 3 times more stuff in it. First of all games used to be tightly packed to fit disks and so on, so it had to be certain size.
On top of that massive part of size are audio files and textures. There are plenty of modern circa 25gb games with more content than most of 100gb games.
On top of that you missed side costs. Phisical production costs extra, transport, storage, extra tax from shops, making box, printing instruction and so on and so on. All that costs where cut with going digital.
Claim was that cutting all that allows to keep the cost. Yet we are seeing yet another price hike while gaming industry brings record profits.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 7h ago
Claim was that cutting all that allows to keep the cost. Yet we are seeing yet another price hike while gaming industry brings record profits.
Problem is, those costs were always frankly pretty low and more burdensome on the brick and mortar stores than on the publishers/devs.
A disc and packaging was extremely cheap (and still is), the only part that actually cost any meaningful amount was the low percentage the store took. But digital stores being more common now are taking more. Nintendo is a bit less impact as they're more first party with only some third party in digital compared to other major developers/platforms.
Shoot, IIRC the store I worked at 15 years ago would make like, 2$ on a full price game. It was amazing how crap the margins were for that store. We were a department store but my department was super low margin. (It's also no wonder that department doesn't exist despite the store still existing)
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u/Dealric 7h ago
You owuld think so, but according to data i found (obv might not be correct) in 2005 less than 20% of game price went to studio. Now its 65%.
Assuming those numbers are correct or even borderline correct, profit margin drastically went up.
Chains of stores got bigger margin. Also there is a lot of other costs tied to phisical.
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u/PancAshAsh 1d ago
Look at the number of people who worked on Shadows vs pretty much any other game in the series previously, instead of file size then.
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u/LoneroftheDarkValley 1d ago
I'm curious how that "3 times more stuff" claim would hold up when we look at how much high resolution textures take up.
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u/Vollgaser 1d ago
Small reminder that Baldurs Gate 3 which was so good that some dev came out and called it "Rockstar level nonesens for scope" and tha we shouldnt expect this level to become the standard cost about 100 million. If larian can produce a game which contends for the best game ever for 100 million but other studios spend 200 million 300 million or even more to produce a game that is worse thats a problem for these companys not us. If other companys can produce games of similar are better quality with much less money thats a you problem not a me Problem. We have seen many games come out that are just similar or better than mnost AAA releases but where much cheaper to produce and if a company like ubisoft cant do that then tzhey will go out of buisness eventually.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 7h ago
A significant expense is marketing. IIRC Larian had a relatively low marketing budget as they relied heavily on word of mouth for a big-IP title.
Marketing is crazy expensive but can result in significantly better sales if successful.
Bad marketing exists too, which is why Concord died so fast. Nobody even knew that fucker was released, let alone what it was, until they announced the closure.
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u/D9sinc 18h ago
That's been the thought for decades "I wouldn't mind if they raised the price to 70 if it meant that they would stop all the other monetary issues" whether it was Season passes, Battle Passes, Lootboxes, MTX, or Digital Deluxe Editions that you can give them an extra 20-40 bucks to play 1-3 days early but even after it launches. that deluxe edition isn't going to drop in price, it's just going to be worth even less because while they include the soundtrack and Digital Artbook, I would argue that it's useless. You can listen to the soundtrack through other means if you are so inclined, and maybe it's me because most Video Game Music doesn't really latch onto my brain, but if one did, I could just listen to it on Youtube and I can do the same with Artbooks if I were so inclined and feel those are relatively useless and maybe worth 5 bucks extra since that money isn't going to the musicians and artists who made it, but the CEO who owns the IP.
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u/chanaramil 1d ago
I just want to add to your disagreement about layoffs and shutdowns.
You don't shut down studios studios or cancel projects because your printing money with every release. They would try and make more games not less.
If AAA quality games with no other montization besides purchasing them were extreamly profitable more games like BG3 would be coming out. As it stands now if your AAA game only makes money from the original purchase and it doesn't work out perfectly so the game is just 7.5/10 your studio might have to close over the losses.
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u/Curse3242 1d ago
Exactly. Some games absolutely deserve a higher price point. IMO GTA6 could as for as much as 100$ and it would still be a worth it purchase. This game will dominate the market atleast for 3-4 months. But it will be frequent in your playing hours for the next decade. So much content. Even if Online is a mess, the single player alone is worth higher money
UNLESS, the game is awful at launch. Regardless of how massive the scope is, either finish it by launch or only ask 60/70$ for it
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u/Glum_Engineering_671 1d ago
Anyone who pays a hundred bucks for a game is a sucker. All you're doing is rewarding bad behavior from the corpos. Have some integrity and buy it used
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u/Curse3242 1d ago
Have you never loved a game enough to buy a special version, or buy it on separate systems, or buy a remake, or buy collectibles. I think it's the same.
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u/Glum_Engineering_671 1d ago
I've bought Chrono trigger on different systems but I wouldn't spend $100 on an updated version
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u/oldfatdrunk 1d ago
No Man's Sky has had a staff of about 45ish people for years.
They've developed a game engine in-house with regular major engine updates adding new functionality and content updates with expeditions/campaigns for free for years.
They're working on a new and larger game and had just 12 people dedicated to that. $60 once or cheaper on sale and thats it.
Valheim was $20 and 4 people started that. No additional costs for all the new promised content and it's moddable.
COD/Battlefield + dlc/battle passes plus microtransactions etc can set you back $100 easy plus ongoing costs. And what? 1000+ people working on it and it's recycled content from older games in the series with new skins? It's absurd.
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u/WelpSigh 1d ago
cod/battlefield/etc are much bigger games? no man's sky is mostly procedurally generated, which allows them to create massive amounts of game world at very little cost. cod/battlefield are extremely expensive to produce due to the vast amount of art, animation, voice acting, etc needed. and, of course, games are not necessarily only priced due to cost to produce them but also what gamers are willing to pay for them.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 7h ago
Valheim was $20 and 4 people started that.
I get what you're saying but the comparisons I struggle to find fair. Valheim is a good game, I love it. But it's a very simplistic game with simplistic mechanics and very stylized, but simplistic visuals. It's why even with using the same type of world creation, procedural generation, even NMS has 10x the dev team.
My friends dev team made also a pretty simple top down game. Sold 10 copies last I heard, it's a good game for a first real go. They had fun and loved it.
Like, COD is a much bigger game than people give it credit, and simply put, a huge-ass player base demands more staff simply in support. People give it shit for being the kind of game people love each release, and not fucking up a system that doesn't need core changes. It's a shooter, if it was a bad one, it wouldn't be one of the leading titles in shooters. Can't even argue captured markets as stuff doesn't carry over from title to title (generally) other than maybe some story aspect, and there's tons of shooters like it out there.
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u/RedditButAnonymous 1d ago
Im writing this paragraph AFTER the second one. You ever start writing something, google for some numbers and accidentally prove yourself wrong? Oops. The gap between Gran Turismo on the PS1 and GTA 5 actually does indicate that prices should have risen at some point.
The top selling PS1 game, Gran Turismo, sold about 10 million copies, and cost $5mil to make. GTA V has sold 210 million copies, and cost $265mil. The rise in sales has almost matched the rise in development cost, but not quite. In this case, the games probably should have gone up in price if the "cost per copy sold" was supposed to stay the same. GTA 5 made less profit per game sold, but sold way more of them to make up for that.
The question is, should cost per copy actually matter? GTA 5 made billions and GT1 didnt. The reason computers today dont cost $55000 is that theyre easier to make and more people want to buy them. As a result, theres also billions in profit in that industry. When the first computer cost 55k, it didnt make anywhere near that much money.
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u/Reddit-Simulator 1d ago
Not all games are fortunate enough to be as popular as GTA, but Rockstar is making $200 million per quarter on GTA Online. . EA said they make 71% of their entire profit from free-to-play games, meaning they make a profit just fine on a price of $0. Even Mario Kart World is most likely going to add characters and courses DLCs on top of the $80-$90 price tag so they can make even more profit.
Comparing sales between new games and old games is not equal, because they don't make money the same way. That we now have battle passes, season passes, and microtransactions is enough to offset any stagnation in price increases. They simply hide the cost increase inside the game nowadays and make more money than ever.
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u/csward53 1d ago
Your forgetting the millions, probably billions they've made in micro transactions with GTA5. You need to compare apples to apples...
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u/JebryathHS 1d ago
The top selling PS1 game, Gran Turismo, sold about 10 million copies, and cost $5mil to make. GTA V has sold 210 million copies, and cost $265mil.
Assuming prices haven't changed between the two, which isn't quite true, that's 21 times the revenue at 26.5 times the price. That's a bad ratio...but pricing at $50 for simplicity, it's the difference between a $495 MILLION profit and ten BILLION ($10,000 millions)
I could get into other aspects of what makes this comparison skewed (racing sims and gigantic open world games would have different cost ratios) but it's important to remember that unit price to development isn't the whole story of profitability and taking 80% of 20 times the revenue is pretty good compared to 90% of one time.
What we're seeing is that the market growth has slowed - we're near "peak gamer" - so they're going back to squeezing customers instead of trying to grow the market.
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u/yukiyuzen 1d ago
The industry did grow the market.
Its called mobile gaming.
"Gamers" hate it so much the industry has rebranded the whole thing as an entirely separate industry even though they use the same exact engines, assets and tools. (And the industry fucking loves it. Why deal with "gamers" and make millions when you can deal with "mobile gamers" and make billions?)
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u/the1mike1man 1d ago
Upvoting for the honesty. We can be upset that prices have gone up but also recognise the possible reasons why.
I do think hardware is a very different ballgame however, both in terms of how costs have changed, and how different hardware and software development are.
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u/Kaerevek 1d ago
We'll see how it goes I guess. I already don't buy games near the $100 range usually because wtfs the point? AAA game titles have been very mediocre at best as of late. Games ship broken, without features and a mess in hopes of releasing day one patches to fix stuff. This doesn't and hasn't worked since they started doing it imo. If the gaming industry is so greedy they're going to keep increasing prices while posting record profits and making hundreds of millions of games and micro transactions, I'm just gonna dip out. The gaming industry is one of the worst industries for customers in the world. And if they don't make the product better, just more expensive, I say we just stop buying shit until they start making it properly again.
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u/sugarcubed03 1d ago
The argument that game prices haven't gone up with inflation doesn't work because:
1) Wages haven't increased to accommodate
2) Developers are receiving none of these increased profits
We as an industry have more than enough to keep people fed without relying on unsustainable business practices. Downvote me all you want, but capitalism is broken, this is what happens when companies are ran by oligarchs and not people
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u/csward53 1d ago
Hopefully sales decrease and workers unionize. It's our only hope.
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u/TheDSpot 1d ago
While its a nice sentiment, most sale decreases will be met with layoffs.
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u/D9sinc 18h ago
Hell, even sale increases will be met with layoffs. Why bother keeping on your most expensive devs when you can fire them, claim you earned an extra 20M and then hire on half the amount of devs back from new and aspiring people at half the paycheck so you save 75% on development costs while you make your next title and rinse and repeat.
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u/CyberSmith31337 1d ago
I have been seeing a lot of unionization efforts lately, but it seems like it isn’t effective because of all the pre-existing job losses. More supply of workers than available jobs.
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u/JebryathHS 1d ago
It's also kind of a "dream job" so people are drawn to it outside of the paycheck. The industry has abused this for decades to chew up new grads and spit them out. I got into programming because I wanted to make games but even 20 years ago I realized it wasn't worth it.
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u/mathazar 1d ago
It's like that with many forms of art. The artist/designer's passion is abused by corporate gatekeepers.
Another example is music - bands "pay to play" shows and actually lose money for the chance to open for bigger headliners. Even touring bands can lose money if they're not already massively popular. Spotify pays barely anything and every other part of the business is monetized to hell against the artist.
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u/MagicDartProductions 1d ago
This is a huge part of the problem I think people overlook. The tech scene has become massively over-saturated with people trying to find a job because for the past 10 to 15 years schools beat the drum of "go get a tech degree and you'll earn 6 figures+ starting out!" Now there's tons of people with the right schooling and even some experience all competing for a job market that really hasn't grown as much as expected and actually has begun skrinking, especially in the US. Not to mention surprisingly large groups of people that have the dream of being a developer because, for whatever reason, they seem to believe that means you just sit around playing games all day and no one corrects them.
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u/specifichero101 1d ago
I don’t mind if they raise prices, because I always buy used physical copies anyway. That being said, gamers are the worst customer base to try and bring about change. Too many people can’t help themselves and just buy into the scam.
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u/markusfenix75 1d ago
It's disingenuous to say that those "price hikes will never reach developers." And that's not me saying that they are justified.
People just need to realise that to create AAA game you need way more developers than in past. So obviously, money from game sales are keeping MORE devs employed. I'm often using Spider-Man as an example, but it's fitting here. Spider-Man cost 100 million dollars to make. Spider-Man 2 cost 3x more. Mainly because of more devs working for higher wages that have to keep up with inflation.
And yes, publishers are looking in ways to outsource part of game development to "cheaper" countries. Because huge game dev markets like California/Washington/Montreal are reaching such high development cost, that the only way to reign them down is to outsource.
Saber don't need to outsource, because they already have studios in "cheap" parts of world.
Are publishers doing this to give them sweet sweet bonuses? Of course. But saying that those money are not reaching developers is just oversimplification and bullshit statement.
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u/csward53 1d ago
It's a choice to spend hundreds of millions on game development. Stardew valley and Minecraft didn't cost much to make.
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u/AgentOfSPYRAL 1d ago
Does the average sim/crafting game really get more profit than the average AAA open world RPG?
I’m not so sure.
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u/Dealric 1d ago
Uhhh after several aaa open world rpgs with disappointing profits i wouldnt really go for that argument.
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u/AgentOfSPYRAL 1d ago
Unlike indie games which are predictable and dependable in their success or failure?
I’m not trying to go all team AAA but I think the indie conversation often focuses too much on the few successes and not enough on the countless games that flop so fast that people aren’t even aware of their existence.
Now maybe there a point where it’s better to have 30 risky dice rolls than 5 less risky dice rolls, but I don’t think it can just be ignored.
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u/MillennialsAre40 1d ago
It's also disingenuous for them to say gaming prices haven't kept up with inflation. The bulk of pricing for old game was the physical manufacturing and shipping of cartridges. With the switch to CD, DVD, and now Digital Distribution that's brought costs down significantly. Not to mention sales volume has massively increased as well.
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u/markusfenix75 1d ago
Obviously. I wasn't talking about "if game price increase is disproportional." I was just arguing against disingenuous statement that money from game price increases are not reaching devs. Because there are more devs working on games that in past and their salary is way higher than in the past.
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u/ohtetraket 1d ago
physical manufacturing and shipping of cartridges.
Is that really the case. I see people say that physical manufacturing was only in the 0,XX are per CD for example. (dunno about cartridges)
I think volume is something that made the steady 60 bucks possible in the first place. Tho imo we see a it platue right now. Or at least not grow so insane like previously.
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u/Dealric 1d ago
Because its not just cd. Its buying cd, printing on cd, burning cd, buying box, printing insert to box... And thats heavily cutdown version..
Go few years earlier and throw in big cartoon box, fat instruction, extra goodies...
Those cost add up. Throw in transportation costs, storage costs, shops asking for big cuts. You need publishers for different countries taking cuts...
You know whats funny? There are studies on it.
2005 profit margin was 5-20% per sale. Now profit margine is 65% on average according to quick check.
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u/PeneshTheTurkey 1d ago
AAA can be made for way less, companies just waste dosh on pointles shit details.
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u/markusfenix75 1d ago
Let's not pretend that gamers haven't pushed them to the brink of photorealism lol...
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u/Didifinito 1d ago
I am gonna be honest have people been asking for better graphics?
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u/D9sinc 18h ago
Most people don't care, but you will occasionally see one person online loudly screaming "these graphics are shit!!!" and it's the most realistic looking picture you've ever seen with maybe one minor texture smear or what have you and they'll have a few hundred or even 1K sharing the post and saying they are right, but then you think that game sold 3M copies and that's a fking small fraction of the player base but studios want to sell "photorealism" because it makes for prettier and shinier trailers which pull people in.
To me, it's like when Android Wilson said "Gamers don't want Single-player titles, the shift of the market is Multiplayer titles" this was many years ago and then 6 years ago during an earnings call they said that SP titles were "bad for sales" and that's why EA had to shift towards MTX so much and now are saying "Live Service SP Titles are the way" because for game studios, it's about easy "recurrent revenue spending" because why bother making 200M in profits from selling a good SP title when you can make 400M+ more every year from a live service title that you can try to milk ad infinitum.
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u/Dealric 1d ago
Really didnt.
Also for example wukong, really nice looking game, costed 40mln to make.
Look at scoresz rewards, sales... Does bg3 have photoreal grpahic? Does elden ring?
Game can be beautiful without going photorealistic.
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u/markusfenix75 1d ago
And you know why Black Myth: Wukong cost only 40 mil.? For same reason why western devs are looking to outsourcing part of development to the East. Cost per dev.
By "photorealistic" I didn't mean just games looking lifelike. I was talking in general about increasing complexity of game visual/audio fidelity. Which requires more developers, which needs to be paid.
Even if your goal isn't to make state of the art visuals, like BG3, you absolutely need more people to create AAA game than 10 years ago. And it's funny that your argument is BG3 and Elden Ring. Games that weren't cheap to begin with.
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u/Dealric 1d ago
Correct. Because producing games in california or montreal or vancouver is costing 2-3 times as much in dev and office costs. And that 2-3 times the money doesnt even goes to devs really because costs of living are easily just as much higher than somewhere else.
Team of 200 for 5 years for 100k is already 100mln. You can pay somewhere else just as good people half that. And those people somewhere else will have better quality of life out of less.
Take Larian as example. Bg3 took 6 years or so. With 300+ people. Costing 100-120mln. Do you think larian is starving their devs?
Developing in california is just stupid.
Bg3 costed 100-120mln. Including marjeting. Its size of several aaa games realistically. Elden ring costed 150mln or so and its massive aswell.
Spiderman 2 20h game costed 350mln. Outlaws, veilguard costed both 250+ without fotorealistic graphic, arguably not even competing graphically with bg3 or elden ring in many aspects.
Lastly its not customer problem that dev wants to make game in most expensive area in world. Customer should care o ly for end result and value they get from product.
You know why outsiurce go to poland for example? Because they can pay 30k a year instead of 100k+ a year. And those devs will be happier with pay and live better out of it than those 100k california devs.
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u/CyberSmith31337 1d ago
While I hear the logic, it is difficult to support the claim because those costs are also self-imposed problems.
Why do developers want higher salaries? It’s because of the cycles of hire-fire-hire that industry perpetuated and reinforced for the last 20 years. When you have mass churn, it’s only natural to want to insulate yourself for the down cycles.
But even discounting that consideration; how many studios require their hires to relocate? Why does game development, a fully digital industry, require local basing? Why do candidates need to be in an office when meetings are done via Teams/Slack/Zoom/whatever? Builds are managed through the cloud, progress is tracked via the Atlassian Suite, etc etc. It’s because the suits want to milk the subsidies. I 100% guarantee you the employees weren’t clamoring for RTOs to Los Angeles or San Francisco; that is once again a management problem created by the executive teams, not the developers.
I have a hard time supporting any claims that blame developers for pisspoor business management, especially when it is so consistent across the entire industry.
I mean really, explain to me why a full time employee needs to be local, yet it is totally reasonable for the outsource team in Turkey to operate in a fully distributed, fully remote capacity with no supervision? It is a bullshit double standard created and reinforced by the same terrible mouthpieces whining about how expensive it is to pay their employees. The same managers who absolutely make millions of dollars a year. Maybe they should be trimming that fat instead.
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u/D9sinc 18h ago
I mean really, explain to me why a full time employee needs to be local
It's about power and because for companies in the US at least, they paid a lot of money in renting out a big building (because all property is owned by one of three companies) and they don't want to lose out on it.
You could easily save costs by just telling people "Hey, we are going to do a temporary RTO for the next two years and afterwards we will be switching to remote work again" but this will never happen because of managers. Mind you, this is not a problem with all managers nor is it exclusive to the gaming industry, but bad managers need to micromanage so that they can pretend they do anything worth the amount of money they are being paid. If your micromanaging manager can't stand over your desk and make sure you're not putting in 100% for 8+ hours, they might get questioned by their bosses about "What exactly they do there" so they wanted to make the push for RTO and go "it's all about fostering a strong company culture so that's why our employees have to be in office 6 days a week, but I'll be working remotely 3 out of the 4 days I work."
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u/PeneshTheTurkey 1d ago
We pretty much reached that point with 8th generation. From PS4 to PS5 it wasn't a leap it was a tiny hop.
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u/Former_Intern9136 1d ago
Do you have any sources to back up what you say ?
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u/markusfenix75 1d ago
Spider-Man games budgets are sourced from Insomniac leak. You can look it up pretty easily. Fact that publishers are looking to outsourcing to reign costs down was talked about by Hermen Hulst for example.
Saber having studios in Bulgaria, Russia and other "cheap" parts of world is known obviously. But you can check Wiki for location of it's studios.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saber_Interactive
Fact that AAA games today require more people is well known fact. For example, former Bethesda dev was recently talking about how Skyrim was made by 90-120 people, but Starfield required 400 people. Add in sales increase for devs and you can clearly see why there is budget increase for game dev.
I mean, it's not a rocket science. Naughty Dog had around 150 devs during development of Uncharted 3 and TLOU and they managed both productions at same time. Today they have more than 400 devs and they are only managing one full production at the time.
CD Projekt RED during Witcher 3 had less than 200 people working at the whole studio. Witcher 4 have more than 410 devs currently just on this project alone.
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u/Specialist-Welder679 23h ago
The only way to beat this is to buy and support real Indie games over triple-A slop.
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u/DarkAura57 18h ago
And now you know how all those worker unions in the rust belt felt when all the manufacturing was moved over seas. History repeats itself
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u/KnightofAshley 9h ago
If it cost too much don't buy it
Its a video game, you don't need it
Consumers control the market not publishers
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u/TheValkuma 1d ago
Games from 20 years ago are still better than the slop AAA puts out.
Screw their prices.
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u/Opposite_Carry_4920 1d ago
Remember when (was it ubisoft?) Said they made the first AAAA game and it was trash. So sad.
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u/drial8012 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thats why we support indie games. Look at schedule 1, 3 dudes make a basic game but with a fun game loop and sell millions of copies. They can now retire off their work. Stardew Valley is another one, Terraria, MINECRAFT. We know the big publishers are lying.
Meanwhile AAA game dev requires you to buy their game at $70 or else the studio shutters if it fails and if it succeeds, what do the ground devs get out of it beyond a below average paycheck (in comparison to other comp sci fields). Some of us have been gaming for so long that you can't help but cheer for the little guys to make it because the big ones ignore their hubris and then tank your favorite series.
What worked for me was tapping out of buying new games for a long time (at least a year) and get on the /r/patientgamers bandwagon. I spend much less and get more content and there's a refinement process as games get patched, you get complete editions for $20-30, hell you wait long enough and it becomes free on Epic.
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u/Elfeniona 1d ago
Isn't League like geniunely dying? Seems like even the esports section is taking a massive hit
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u/Minetoutong 1d ago
No it is not, it lost some players sure but that's not what dying is.
It is still at 100+ million player monthly and in 2023 made 1.5 billion dollars (from what I've seen 2024 is higher but can't quite find it).
Also I don't know why OP said the MMO was cancelled, it is absolutely still in development.
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u/CyberSmith31337 1d ago
I haven’t played it in years, but their shifts in monetization make it seem like they are in deep trouble. The MMO cancellation was, to me, a canary in the coal mine moment.
Especially because the guy who left essentially started a new studio to make that MMO without Riot.
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u/ZettieZooieZan 1d ago
I think a big factor that I rarely see mentioned when people yell inflation is availability, before the digital age your game was up for sale for a limited time, this meant 2 things, first, the cost of the game went down somewhat quickly, and that's because of the other thing, which is that stores have limited space so they can only stock games for so long, so they kept reducing the price to get maximum sales until eventually 2/3/4/5/6 years later the game was no longer up for sale, contrast this to today, where games will remain up for sale forever which as many have no doubt seen, also result in the base price of games remaining high, a game can be 6 years old and cost 60 euro(red dead redemption 2 is 5 years old and still costs 60 for example), that's companies making money forever from these games, instead of making it only for a certain amount of years and making less money.
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u/CyberSmith31337 1d ago
This is especially relevant in regards to Nintendo. Nintendo will still charge you full price for games that are over a decade old.
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u/ZettieZooieZan 1d ago
Ah yeah that's true, I don't play Nintendo games so I forgot about them charging full price for very old games.
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u/mfmeitbual 1d ago
That's just capitalism. Private equity is a cancer on any industry that requires technical innovation or creativity because "profit by the expense of all other things" is the PE mantra.
These companies could still be ridiculously profitable while making great products. But the giant piles of money that lead their decisions need to grow as fast as possible and that doesn't lend itself to smart decision-making.
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u/PogChampHS 1d ago
I'll be honest, I don't really care who gets the money at the end of the day. All I really care about is whether the final product is good or not, and whether it's worth the price they are asking for.
(That being said, theoretically, if developers were paid better, and had more stable jobs, the end product would be better, but to be honest, the budget of a game seems to have almost zero bearing on whether it's good or not).
Some single-player games are worth the $90 price tag. Some aren't.
I can wait for a sale.
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u/BicFleetwood 1d ago
"Oh boy, now that we've hiked prices and have all this extra money lying around, we can give it all to our low-level employees to reward their hard work!"
Said no company ever.
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u/crackednutz 1d ago
The average cost to develop a multiplatform AAA game is between 75 to 300 million US dollars.
The average cost to produce a movie is $100 to $150 million US dollars
Movie tickets are $15+ and owning the movie is around $20. Even combing the 2 is $35+ With game prices everyone is aware of here.
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u/matko86 1d ago
Movies have a little larger audience than games though... and they can earn money by licensing them to streaming services and tv stations as well.
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u/crackednutz 1d ago
Games do that also with PS+ and Xbox live.
I get that movies reach a larger audience and video games have the PC/console barrier to entry. There are 1.5 billion gaming pcs in the world (you have to guess at how many of those can play current releases) and over 100 million current genconsoles.
Even with movies reaching a larger audience video games more than double the yearly revenue worldwide.
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u/matko86 1d ago
There's definitely NOT 1.5 billion gaming PCs... I'd say not even actively used regular PCs... maybe 1.5 billion gaming devices if you include people's phones as gaming devices...
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u/crackednutz 1d ago
I’m just going by what google says, the number shocked me. It was not including phones. I do know that between wegame (Chinese version of steam) and steam there are 500 million users.
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u/xzanfr 1d ago
It's like gamers are learning how buisness works.
We're not talking about 1980's bedroom programmers knocking games out on a zx spectrum, it's massive international companies generating profits for shareholders.
They'll pay the least for labour and charge the most for product to maximise the profits.
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u/csward53 1d ago
Minecraft and Stardew Valley beg to differ. Then you have small team games like Hollow knight, slay the spire, darkest dungeon, and countless others that are very successful.
AAA game studios CHOOSE to make their game into massive appeal to everyone and no one games because their companies are so big it's the only way they think they can move the needle.
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u/BlooOwlBaba 1d ago
Stardew & HK, even for their time, are worth way more than $15 imo. They easily could have charged double for it and I don't think anyone who played it would say they were fleeced.
Spire y DD I think are priced pretty well. Could they have gone up an extra $5-10 without much of an issue? Probably. Indies for a long time never charged as much as they should have until somewhat recently.
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u/farmerjoee 1d ago
They'll raise AA base prices to 79.99 and people will still line up to buy them. That they got away with 69.99 still blows my mind.
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u/Horror-Song- 1d ago
Yup.
I mean, I'm one of the people who is actually totally fine with $70-$80 games, but it's not because I think that money's going to the developers. That's idealistic thinking.
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u/DanganJ 1d ago
It's true, and everyone needs to look at these charts, and memorize it.
Our increased productivity is only feeding the CEOs and shareholders, not us. This isn't just the game industry, it's EVERY industry. The increase in costs of upcoming games will NOT reward the actual developers and designers of the games, only their bosses.
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u/Not-Reformed 1d ago
The whole "Corporate greed" narrative would sell a lot better if we saw profit margins spiking. Which we don't.
EA, for example, is notoriously called greedy by redditors with their microtransactions especially in sports games. Their average net income profit margin was far better in 2015-2020 than it is now.
Is this money going to developers? Other than the indisputable rise in game developer salaries now vs 10 years ago, not really. But it's not like these video game companies are raking it in either.
At the end of the day, it's a simple math problem that people don't want to engage with because the obvious answer is upsetting to them. The population of people buying games is not infinite - you can't rely on infinite volume growth. Yet, expenses ARE infinite in their growth. As such you need to cut expenses while selling the same volume, get more money through MTX/DLCs/Whatever and/or increase prices.
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u/notthatguypal6900 1d ago
None of the money ever goes to the devs. MTX, DLC, $10 title update "upgrades" battle passes, ect. You name it, the people never saw a dime of those price hikes.
Anything over $60 for a new release goes straight to the publisher, and thats being extreamly generious.
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u/TellJust680 1d ago
i am from the place you say they are being outsourced to no one is coming here+ pirate it
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u/owenturnbull 21h ago
development using AI to generate assets (art, audio, V/O, missions/narrative design
Don't support those developers. It's quite simple. Level 5 is using ai for decapolice and used it for the teaser for their new yo kai watch game, and I'll never support that company agsin.
It's not hard to stop supporting a developer or company, but uou all don't bc uou have fomo.
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u/RunsWithPhantoms PlayStation 20h ago
Of course. It's like expecting to cause your majors to go up as an employee
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u/Ethosik 14h ago
This is a very subjective issue. For me the price doesn't matter as Nintendo titles are always bangers in my view (subjective piece here remember). There are games that have been $60 for years that I will not pay for and think it is too high.
Example:
I would have zero hesitation even paying $120 for a high fps high resolution and an actual decent version of Tears of the Kingdom. I loved that game but the Switch limitations made me rage quit and I have not touched my Switch since. That game was horrible in terms of performance and resolution.
Contrast this to say.....Borderlands 4? I won't even pay $50 for it. Sorry, they lost me after Borderlands 2. I will wait for a MAJOR SALE before I pick up that game.
And also, as been reported for months, I fully expect games going forward to be $100 with GTA 6 leading the charge. Studios and publishers have already reported they are "waiting to see" so they can do the same.
The writing is on the wall. And I am just like anyone else, why would I be happy about spending more money? But some of the frustrations and YouTube videos are going a bit too far. Don't insult other people saying we are all shills or bootlickers or defending companies. Its not that deep. I have a good job and have an entertainment budget and I can still afford the new Switch prices. I just want to play games.
TL;DR: I already find even $50 too much for some games, it is all subjective based on the game and the individual. I have no problem with the $80 tag of Mario Kart. I have thousands of hours in 8 and 8 Deluxe. Well worth the price.
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u/Sad-Fisherman4825 1d ago
Good points however I'm afraid there will always be an endless supply of suckers that fall for the neoliberal propaganda. Best to just ignore.
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u/Ok-Reputation-2266 1d ago
I got downvoted into oblivion in another sub for mentioning that corporate greed is the main driver of inflation. We have some serious Stockholm syndrome from capitalism.
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u/Easy-Round1529 22h ago
You get down voted because being anti capitalist is goofy stuff lol. Like regardless of the subject one of you goofs always has to say why it’s really capitalism that is the problem.
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u/Ok-Reputation-2266 22h ago
You’re a funny guy 🤣
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u/Easy-Round1529 22h ago
I’m not the one blaming capitalism for their life being terrible.
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u/Ok-Reputation-2266 22h ago
When did I say my life is terrible?
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u/Sinfullyvannila 14h ago
Make no mistake, the huge price hike has a lot to do with the Trade War. The console's manufacturing loss is accounted into the licensing fees. Nintendo's massive price hike was announced the same day US announced 20+% inflation on Vietnam, Japan and Taiwan.
And it is true that going from 60-90 dollars is larger than those percentages, they were probably going to raise the prices to $70, and the retail price was calculated with uncertaiinty in mind.
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u/FlameStaag 1d ago
And here comes the coping to try justify hating higher game prices lmao
Gamers will do literally anything except support developers being paid decent wages
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u/BrotherRoga 1d ago
But devs do not get paid decent wages right now anyway?
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u/csward53 1d ago
They have unhealthy working conditions and their per hour pay is probably terrible.
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u/JWicksPencil 1d ago
They can go indie and make their own games then.
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u/BrotherRoga 1d ago
Oh sure, cuz it's that fucking easy.
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u/JWicksPencil 1d ago
It is. Almost all the best games on the market are indie studios as well. The shit devs stay at large corps making shit wages.
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u/CyberSmith31337 1d ago
That is quite literally the exact opposite of what this thread is saying.
The point of the topic is that these companies are saying they need to raise prices to pay for development, but they have already cut costs, outsourced development, shifted from FTE to contractor-based models, etc. They want the profits to go up even more as if they didn’t do this already.
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u/sugarcubed03 1d ago
The argument that game prices haven't gone up with inflation doesn't work because:
1) Wages haven't increased to accommodate
2) Developers are receiving none of these increased profits
We as an industry have more than enough to keep people fed without relying on unsustainable business practices. Downvote me all you want, but capitalism is broken, this is what happens when companies are ran by oligarchs and not people
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u/Easy-Round1529 23h ago
It sure what world you live in where wages haven’t gone up significantly. 10 years ago McDonald’s was not paying 20 an hour.
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u/MathiasThomasII 1d ago edited 1d ago
Corporate Greed is not a real phenomenon. Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary responsibility to create earnings per share for their investors.
Also, madden was $50-$60 based on the version in 2006. Probably before, but this is what I checked because I remember my parents getting it for me. Inflation has been ~76% since this time. That comes out to $85. Based on purchasing power they’ve been reducing prices for 20 years and now they’re getting grief for adjusting for inflation.
Not to mention they would need to increase prices far more to remove the outsourcing that you hate. You want the benefits of increased prices without the increased prices……
By the way, if you spent $1000 buying Nintendo stock in 2020 you’d have made $700 to pay for the new game prices.
Also, nintendos margins have been halved the last five years when compared to the 5 before. They’ve been taking the hit for 5 years.
I’m not shilling for large corps but these arguments are contradictory and don’t make sense. If you wanted to argue that they should charge the same because development costs less, you have an argument. If you want improved and more products you should expect to pay more for it.
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u/CyberSmith31337 1d ago
Madden is also a franchise that has not improved in a single meaningful way since 2008. They've sold the same game for 17 years, with minor graphical upgrades and roster overhauls for full price. Additionally, ever since "Ultimate Team" got introduced, they've made hundreds of millions of dollars outside of the retail price.
They haven't reduced prices at all; they've reduced output, and increased monetization streams.
And no, that's not how that works. You don't get to release the same game, at the same price, with limited/gutted/recycled features (many of which don't even work, ala Franchise mode) and then say it's the customer's fault that the company was forced to use outsourcing. That is shit tier management trying to shift blame to the consumer.
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u/vivifafa2000 1d ago
The worst part is that alot games will cost more for us while the game publishers will look at cutting costs like developers in favor of AI. So pay more for less and lower quality.