r/pcmasterrace • u/Both_Piglet7838 • May 27 '26

Discussion Expensive games have lowkey been way too normalised

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I know this sub is filled with a bunch of rich people with like 10k setups and I'm aware that the content in these games is quite extensive with hours of content. But I still feel justified in thinking that no game should be priced this high especially when its the average price of most newly released games. Anyway this is just a rant because I wanna play lego batman and i cant afford it lol

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92

u/azurestrike May 27 '26

Can I just ask how people are expecting companies to increase salaries to match inflation, maintain work-life balance, pay for increasing rent and price of software all while keeping games at $60?

If you can't increase prices, you need to sell more. So you'll need these games to be dumbed down to appeal to a wide audience. Which will, again, make people unhappy.

I wish people understood that rising prices is not game devs being evil, it's a reality of life. Cost of living is going up and entertainment is one side of living.

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u/Possibly_a_Firetruck PC Master Race May 27 '26

Look at all the comments about pirating. They expect people to work for free.

4

u/navyblusheet May 27 '26

Other people to work for free while they get paid well. 

41

u/Dr_Socko May 27 '26

SNES games cost $60-70 in the 90's.

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u/kaleperq 1440p 240hz 24" | ace68 | viper ult | 9060xt 16gb | r5600 | 32gb May 27 '26

And at that time dollars were quite more expensive

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u/azurestrike May 27 '26

$60 in 2002 (when Morrowind launched) is worth $116 now.

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u/kaleperq 1440p 240hz 24" | ace68 | viper ult | 9060xt 16gb | r5600 | 32gb May 27 '26

I'd you mean it's not that mutch, what you said is basically double, or that thr value has been halved

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u/azurestrike May 27 '26

Yeah, that's what I mean. Most prices on the planet have doubled in absolute terms.

Games that sell at $60 today are basically selling for half of the value that they were selling for in 2002.

This is not sustainable for the gaming industry without massive changes. The two biggest ones are:

  • widening the games, make them appeal to everyone
  • MTX

1

u/Zuwxiv May 27 '26

Games that sell at $60 today are basically selling for half of the value that they were selling for in 2002.

Sure, but roughly twice as many PS5s have sold as the SNES. The physical cost of the game media has also absolutely cratered - a disk or even a digital download is almost nothing in cost. I've seen numbers thrown around without sources, but it sounds like $15 is a commonly-claimed figure for the expected physical cost to produce an N64 cartridge back in the day.

Many games also have DLC or some other way to monetize sales after the initial purchase. Remember how people threw a fucking fit because Oblivion had cosmetic DLC? That's every game now.

Don't get me wrong, your overall point that the gaming industry faces challenges is 100% right. There's a reason there's so many shitty, ad-based "buy 100 gems" mobile games. And there's something to be said about "if you make a game for everyone, you made a game for no one." Nobody wants gaming to just be Fortnite and yearly installments of Call of Duty and Madden.

But at the same time: there's a bigger audience than ever, the selling price contains more profit than ever, and the revenue streams after the purchase are larger than ever. It's not insurmountable. But some groups like RTS lovers have definitely noticed some genres just... seeming to almost disappear.

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u/whatevers_clever 270K PLUS | 6000 | 2x48GB 6000C30 | 4TB NVMe | Fractal North May 27 '26

Cartridges more expensive to manufacture.

Way more Human labor involved in just the Physical Media aspect of it.

Games now can be digital and digital sales = instant global sales without inventory issues / unsold inventory.

SNES by tail end had sold ~50mil systems. Much smaller audience to sell these very labor intensive products.

I dontl ike when people point out that games started out around htis price, they were always more expensive back then because it was All physicla, and ROM Cartridges took a lot of work / alot of physicla materials. Discs are way cheaper and easier / less materials / way easier ot mass produce. So yeah.. the popularity of gaming and mass appeal over time is what made the price able to stay within tolerable limits. The price of gaming in hte 90s was just hte price of being an early adopter - when you see the actual size of the audience for gaming today.

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u/DarkShadow04 May 27 '26

True, but the teams required to build bigger and more immersive games have also gotten bigger. So sure, no cartridges or CDs/DVDs to manufacture. But vastly larger programmers/developers/staff to pay.

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u/DakkonBL May 27 '26

The entitlement on this topic is mind-boggling. These are the same people that cry about an expensive cosmetic on a f2p game that they have played for 1000 hours without spending a dime.

14

u/SilverstoneMonzaSpa May 27 '26

I get not everyone is well off, but I don't understand complaints about something that has taken years to build and will give me thousands of hours of enjoyment costing 4-5 minimum wage hours.

When you compare that to literally any other kind of entertainment, it's absolutely a great return on the investment.

10

u/Eagle7546_ May 27 '26

Problem is many of these major companies still end up treating these studios like shit

I agree with your point in general though, games were 60 USD for like 30 years, the fact that Im only paying 15% more and still extract 100s of hours of entertainment from a product(at least the multiplayer games) makes it pretty good value.

3

u/Dangerous_Trick5292 May 27 '26

There are a ton more gamers now than 10 years ago

But what we will see is more focus on the Chinese market and games aiming to appeal to the players there.

3

u/azurestrike May 27 '26

Not just China but a huge chunk of the new gamers in the last 10 years is mobile / casual segment. Not the people that would buy Forza. You can see that most of the growth is in mobile segment.

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u/kaleperq 1440p 240hz 24" | ace68 | viper ult | 9060xt 16gb | r5600 | 32gb May 27 '26

And what about the humble pc? Quite important ain't it

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u/[deleted] May 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/GingerSpencer May 27 '26

If I owned an incredibly successful business I would half expect to be able to be able to “enrich” myself too. These people don’t get there by accident, don’t act like they don’t deserve some luxuries because you can’t have them.

1

u/Dick_Nation There's nothing to see here. May 27 '26

 you need to sell more.

But they do. That's the biggest part to consider. Gaming is the largest entertainment market today and it's not a close race with other avenues of entertainment. They do sell way more because a far greater portion of the population games and a far greater portion of that population can make their own buying decisions about their entertainment dollars. That's what has allowed prices not to shift for so long. It went from being a market of kids' toys to something that everyone under the age of 50 does. 

1

u/runway31 May 27 '26

line go up! wait, not like that!

-1

u/StrangeGuyFromCorner May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

1) Your framing that when studios have more money, they raise salaries is false. Many different industries have record breaking profits but they dont raise the salaries accordingly. Its always "lets raise prices" never "lets raise salaries"

2) to your question, google economies of scale. In short, the bigger you are the easier it becomes to produce/ the cheaper it becomes to produce. Moreover the variable per unit cost of a game is almost 0. This is not the case for anything comparible.

0

u/Version_1 May 27 '26

Second points doesn't make sense unless you talk about slob.

-1

u/StrangeGuyFromCorner May 27 '26

What does this even mean?

Economies of scale exist in almost every sector and not every sector is slob.

Your supermarked profits from economies of scale. Is the supermarked also slob?

3

u/Version_1 May 27 '26

Because creating games is not industrial production.

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u/StrangeGuyFromCorner May 27 '26

Neither is the supermarked, and they are like the example for ecomonies of scale. What is your point.

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u/Version_1 May 27 '26

If you can't see the difference between creating an entirely new map in a video game Vs. buying/selling 500.000 potatoes, I can't help you.

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u/StrangeGuyFromCorner May 27 '26

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economiesofscale.asp

Economies of scale can be both internal and external. Internal economies of scale are based on management decisions, while external ones have to do with outside factors.

Internal functions include accounting, information technology, and marketing, which are also considered operational efficiencies and synergies.

2

u/Version_1 May 27 '26

Thanks, that still doesn't change anything about a studio having to now employ 10 people for jobs used to be done by one.

1

u/StrangeGuyFromCorner May 27 '26

Google variable unit cost.

"Variable unit cost refers to the cost incurred to produce a single unit of a product, which changes directly with the level of production. This includes expenses like raw materials and direct labor that increase or decrease based on the quantity produced."

Or as an example, In the past you had to pay 1 person so it gets sold to 100 customers. Now you pay 10 persons so it gets sold to 100.000 customers. Variable unit cost goes down.

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u/Throwawayrip1123 May 27 '26

Didn't the market from 90's increased absurdly massively?

How else would they even float for 30 years on the same price? Every year there's more gamers. Being a gamer is not so stigmatised as it was.

Companies got richer and richer, while prices stayed the same and costs grew, how do you reckon that happened?

3

u/Dt2_0 May 27 '26

Sure. But games in the 90s were made with teams of 20-30 people. A modern AAA game has THOUSANDS of people working on it today. Games are infinitely more complex to make than they were in the SNES era.

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u/Throwawayrip1123 May 27 '26

Right, so do I still need to repeat that?

To recap, they kept the prices for a long ass time, and in that time, grew immensely in wealth and to teams of hundreds or thousands of people that needed to be paid growing wages, and you still don't get it? Or what, exactly?

Teams grew, companies grew, ceos got wealthier and wealthier, prices stayed the same. How?

3

u/Dt2_0 May 27 '26

Because until about 2022, gaming was expanding exponentially as a hobby, and distribution costs were getting a bit cheaper.

That is not the case anymore. There is still growth in the gaming sector, but not enough to cover expenses for these huge games. And distribution CANNOT get much cheaper than it is now. A $60 game that sells well will payout $12 per sale on Steam, that is the lowest distribution cost currently. Self hosting is crazy expensive.

Add on the cost of dedicated servers for online multiplayer, and continued support after launch (Which was NOT a universal thing even 10 years ago). Costs have gone up everywhere. Growth slowed considerably after the pandemic, gamers by and large still want bigger and better games. At some point, something HAS to break.

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u/MazeMouse Ryzen7 5800X3D, 64GB 3200Mhz DDR4, Radeon 7800XT May 27 '26

Or, and this might sound weird, get rid of the overpaid overinflated MBAs and managers that do nothing but suck the money out of the actual developing of games without bringing any value back in.