this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 1 points 3 hours ago

Adults are better at delayed gratification, children aren't. As we get older we're able to make our expenses less and less expensive, because we can wait for the optimal moment.

The $70 price tag is aimed at games for teens who haven't developed the ability to wait, who suffer from heavy emotional swings and have a big case of fomo.

[–] myfunnyaccountname@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 hours ago

With they almost all aaa games are released half finished. Not talking about dlc. Just fuckin broke. They shouldn’t be more than 40 tops.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 15 points 11 hours ago
[–] nuko147@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Every now and then, I put all the games that come out with a price tag of more than 60€ to my ignore list in Steam. So I won't make any mistake to buy them even in a huge sale.

If a game is sooo good it will be an exception to buy it on sale, if it costed 70€ or 80€.

[–] spiffmeister@aussie.zone 4 points 9 hours ago

I'll watch them go on sale for 50% and still not buy it. Maybe for a 90% sale.

[–] TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id 1 points 10 hours ago

That's a brilliant idea. Thanks.

[–] arcine@jlai.lu 15 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

It was never justifiable. I have never bought a single game over 60€, and I never will.

[–] parzival@lemmy.org 2 points 9 hours ago

Same for me but $40, and those were exceptions for exceptionally enjoyable games, for the most part the most ill ever spend on a video game is $20

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 8 points 14 hours ago

Same. But somebody is. All the losers who buy every edition of FIFA or CoD brand new keeps this cycle going.

[–] Stern@lemmy.world 74 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

I've got 150 games in my backlog. I am happy to wait a year or longer until a hundred dollar buggy piece of shit game becomes a polished, discounted 25 dollar game.

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 3 points 14 hours ago

I have a humble bundle subscription for $15 for seven games. $2 a game and not all of them are winners.

But when a movie ticket is $15 for a two hour movie, seven games is cheap as hell.

And every few months, there's a banger that surprises me and I end up growing my backlog even further.

[–] Drasglaf@sopuli.xyz 15 points 22 hours ago

Or at least a discounted buggy piece of shit game that might be worth trying, they don't fix most of those nowadays. Although sailing the high seas would probably the best course of action for such games.

[–] Novamdomum@fedia.io 27 points 20 hours ago (5 children)

£70 for a game was never justifiable. In the last 5 years these have been my most expensive purchases:

£27 Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream (Finished it - Superb game!) £50 Assassin's Creed Shadows (Played 6hrs - REGRET! Won't ever spend that much on a game again) £26 Manor Lords (Played 4 hours - REGRET!) £28 No Rest For The Wicked (Played 8hrs - Will play more) £28 Tower Simulator 3 (Played 19hrs - Superb game!) £34 X-Plane 12 (Played 8hrs - REGRET!)

Now... people who PRE-purchase games for £70... That's truly mind boggling.

[–] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I only understand preordering a game these days if someone has bad internet and they preordered a physical copy, or if they are preordering a Collector's Edition that comes with physical stuff like a statue or whatever.

[–] scala@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 hours ago

Warframe and Soulframe are free and have provided me over 6000hours of fun over the course of both their launches.

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 3 points 14 hours ago

So many good indie games that are under $10 that people sleep on.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 3 points 14 hours ago

With digital platforms like steam where there are zero chances of a game not being in stock prepurchasing benefits are limited to the few bonuses they give out like exclusive skins and crap.

I have bought a game at full price over $40 maybe once a year but not a prepurchase unless they had a free beta before the game was released. Nearly all of them were multiplayer games where I had played the beta with friends and we ended up putting in hundreds of hours.

Sadly, not enough games have free versions to try out so most games I purchase for $40 or less.

[–] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

If you liked Erikshom then you might also enjoy Desperados 3. It goes on sale very regularly and can likely get a copy for about $5 USD if you wait a little while.

[–] Novamdomum@fedia.io 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Oh I loved Desperados 3! 😁 I paid £18 for it back in March 22 and spent 61hrs in it. Excellent game. Shadow Gambit is meant to be good too by the same people.

[–] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Once you run out of Mimimi's games then there's one more called Sumerian Six with the exact same play style.

[–] Novamdomum@fedia.io 2 points 8 hours ago

Hey thanks for that. I hadn't heard of this one. Looks really good! Grabbing the demo now 🙂👍

[–] hydrashok@sh.itjust.works 8 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Only game I’m immediately paying full price for is HL3. Everything else gets added to a Steam wishlist, where it sits until the price drops enough. For example, the oldest game addition on my wishlist was added in July 2012.

I don’t buy anything that costs more than $5. Spending more than $10 is exceedingly rare. If that game never drops that far, so be it. I’ve got plenty of other games to play or revisit in the meantime.

[–] IronBird@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

i'm allowing myself to get excited for the upcoming Exodus, their original advertising for that was "literally the greatest scifi rpg evermade", and i'v been dying for big epic scifi rpg ever sense ME trilogy

[–] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Terraria 2.

If they say it's 100 euros, I'll still get it as a long term investment.

[–] Sibbo@sopuli.xyz 20 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Meanwhile speculation grew from a 2025 report by gaming industry advisory company Epyllion that the next Grand Theft Auto will be the first game to be priced at $100, paving the way for others to either follow suit or at least contemplate a price hike.

I guess I have to wait a few years till it gets down to 30€ or so. That's manageable.

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 20 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (2 children)

They've monetized GTAV so thoroughly via Online that they've given the game (including single player) away for free because they still made a profit off of it.

Charging $100 for a sequel they'll definitely monetize even worse is the epitome of greed.

[–] I_Jedi@lemmy.today 9 points 22 hours ago

I fully expect gacha mechanics in the sequel.

Pull for Niko Bellic! Only available for one month! 0.1% drop rate, but pity triggers at 150 pulls!

[–] Hapankaali@lemmy.world 0 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

$100 today is about $40 in 1990. In those days games were made by a handful of people or even a single individual in one of two years of development. Chris Sawyer started work on the 1994 classic Transport Tycoon in 1992 and wrote the entire codebase in x86 Assembly. The price isn't really that crazy considering the comparatively massive undertaking that is GTA6 development.

Having said that, it's rare nowadays for any AAA game to release anywhere near its best state, so it tends to be worth it to wait even if money isn't the concern.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 8 points 14 hours ago

They also sold far, far fewer units, made less money per sale, and were not nearly as profitable long term.

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 12 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

GTAV has made over ten billion dollars, one billion of that in its first three days. They would have earned more than double its entire lifetime development costs (estimated at ~200-250 million) if they'd charged a twentieth of what they did.

[–] GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world 8 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

I can't remember the last time I bought a game more expensive than $20. If you price it higher, I will just pirate it. Fuck your greed, you could have had 20, but now you'll get nothing

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Pricing a game over $20 is hardly greed. If every game was $20, it would be extremely hard for most of them to break even.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 2 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Why should I care? I didn't tell them to hire 400 people to make some generic mass market slop. I won't even bother to pirate it.

[–] HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

The Balatros and Silksongs of the world are the exception, not the rule. Game development, especially at high levels of production value, requires multi-talented teams of people to make work.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 3 points 12 hours ago

I'll spend my money on the few great exceptions then, rather than the mediocre slop.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

It's not either/or. Games can be made at all levels of production value and come from teams of many different sizes. Even games made by very small teams can have trouble breaking even at $20, because hardly any game is going to sell as many copies as Hollow Knight: Silksong.

[–] 58008@lemmy.world 10 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

My parents paid about that much for a SNES copy of Earthworm Jim back in the mid-90s. It was disgusting then and it's disgusting now, despite the fact that, adjusted for inflation, that would be £140 today. I mean I don't feel like we're getting a 50% discount when a game costs 70 fuckin' quid nowadays.

There's really no reason to spend that anyway, not on PC at least. IsThereAnyDeal.com and the slightly questionable loaded.com (formerly cdkeys.com) give decent discounts even on day one (and Steam itself will eventually have it on sale, of course). Loaded isn't like G2A, which is a credit card thief's wonderland. It's more like when your uncle Jim crosses the border with 40 cartons of cigarettes secreted in the wheel wells of his truck because they cost 400% less over there. I can live with that level of mischief when it comes to AAA games that take the absolute piss with their prices and their hostage DLCs. EA, Ubisoft and Rockstar have not caused me a millisecond of lost sleep when I get their games for £3 six months after release from a code that was originally bundled with a new GPU. With how extremely easy it is to pirate games (something I haven't done in nearly 20 years), I don't feel like those larger AAA companies are meeting us half way, to say the fucking least.

[–] scala@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 hours ago

Isthereanydeal is great. Set minimums and patiently wait. If it's a single player game and it's super hyped I just sail the seas.

[–] rushmonke@ttrpg.network 5 points 18 hours ago

Products are priced according to what people are willing to pay, not what it costs to bring to market.

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 13 points 22 hours ago

I get one full priced game maybe once every two or three years. Most of the time, Steam sales are my friend.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 9 points 22 hours ago

I never justified it. Cheaper indie games have always been here.

[–] NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net 6 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

I will admit, I've only ever paid that amount for three games ever. Voices of the Void, EOD Tarkov and the Founders edition of Soulframe, and the only reason I did that was to support the devs.

Making $100 a baseline cost for a brand new game, where the AAA companies have decided "oh you can do patches to fix bugs in the first couple of weeks without losing too much money." Is the standard (which came first, the chicken or the egg?) is absolutely ludicrous.

I remember when Gran Turismo 4 was an expensive game because it was 40. But that worked right out of the box; you pay for it, put the CD in and bam. Fully working game. That you own. Forever.