“Mario 64 was 60 dollars in 1995 meaning that it would be about 100 dollars today”
Pay has NOT kept up with inflation. People are poorer.
Folk need to stop pretending like people have as much money as they did in the 90s. Rent costs, house prices are astronomical.
Xbox’s business is still impacted today by outpricing people with their initial Xbox One reveal pricing a decade ago.
Nintendo Treehouse comments are absolutely packed with people complaining about prices.
Again, I’m vastly aware that game budgets, inflation etc have increased!
but Pay has NOT increased accordingly. I don’t know the solution, but that’s the reality.
And I make these points as someone who is lucky enough to earn well enough to just buy them regardless. Most aren’t as fortunate.
Game bubbles regularly disregard the poor, unfortunately, as the industry has an above-average number of middle-class background workers.
Price increases combined with physical knock effectively prices the poor out of legally gaming (Buying directly from them/the digital store)
I don’t know the solution
Public ownership of the means of production?
many people are saying it (collectively instead of begging)
Yeah. How come all these guys come out of the woodwork defending company’s “right” to keep up with inflation (games 60=>90) but get real fuggen quiet when ya point out those same companies don’t raise pay and collude with other companies and the govt to suppress wage increases?
It’s such a stupid argument on it’s face i can only imagine it comes from people who
Inflation is just an acceptable way to say “price gouging”.
Inflation without a corresponding increase in wages definitely needs a more appropriate name. It’s messed up because if wages kept up with inflation, inflation would be a great thing: your real debts would get smaller, and the capitalists’ fortunes would get smaller (as long as stock prices don’t grow more than they otherwise would as a function of inflation).
Game dev pay is especially shitty too (comparatively) and we all know they won’t see a cent of the increased prices.
All of my hobbies and interests are getting priced out of my reach: video games, tabletop games, fursuits, 3D printing, photography, etc. The only thing I can do is get up, go to work, and try to survive.
The funny thing about this take is making and distributing a game has never been cheaper, just cos the cost of games hadn’t gone up in price doesn’t mean companies were doing this out of charity… Also games have gone up in price indirectly with dlc, season passes, battle passes, cosmetics, lootboxes.
Damb the game companies are so kind and nice to us that must be why they’re raking in more cash than ever before!
By the looks of things nobody except ultimate goobers hold this take anymore fortunately
The problem with communism is you eventually run out of your turn on the Nintendo
Folk need to stop pretending like people have as much money as they did in the 90s. Rent costs, house prices are astronomical.
While searching through family records my partner found a lease renewal of her dad’s for his apt in like 93 for like 3-400 dollars a month and he was making 20 bucks an hour fresh out of college
When I left college in the early 10s I was paying like 900 for a small apt making 20 bucks an hour.
Today I can’t find a single bedroom apt for under 1400-1500 and I know people still making like 15-20 dollars (my partner makes like 17 I think)
Yeah I just moved into a 1br with my wife and it’s 1572/mo. I was getting the family deal of $500/mo for a bedroom in my mom’s house before, but only so long I can live with them and my wife, so it had to be done. But… there goes my decent savings I had been able to build each year before.
I don’t know the solution
Is this a reddit post?
Yeah, it’s what anti-marxist and anti-intellectual society does. The most energy someone will put into an internet argument is repeating a fake stat they saw someone else say on social media. And the $90USD price people kept repeating incorrectly.
Also, you can see people empathize a lot more with Nintendo than they do the people buying and playing the games. They enjoy putting themselves into Mr. Nintendo’s shoes and how they’d price games and make profit in the company. They do not enjoy thinking about if they were poor and couldn’t afford it at all.
This is also an effect of proprietary capture of video games. If you work outside of the established industry and publishers you have far lesser support. People do not even own their games, you’re simply just purchasing the right to run a compiled copy of a program and not guaranteed anything else.
Video games are such a disposable medium of entertainment in capitalism and it’s such a waste of human talent.
Not even, you’re purchasing revocable licenses to download copies of software, which increasingly are nonfunctional if the home server is shut down
Speaking of game prices, something that absolutely, desperately needs to change is the ludicrous 30% cut that Steam takes on every sale. Every single sale.
This might have been reasonable back in 2009 when the selection of games was limited to a few hundred AAA titles, but today the overwhelming market share of all PC game sales, Indie or otherwise, all goes over Steam.
Valve would still be making gigantic profits at just 15%. They can put the platform in maintenance mode and it would continue generating money indefinitely.
The rate has been grandfathered in from retailers. Today, with the absence of physical distribution and high degree of automation, there is zero legitimate reason for it to still be at this rate.
I don’t know why it’s a problem consumers should care about. Games are the same price for me on steam as other places so it is worth the price for those companies who choose to host them there.
It’s not like if valve took 0% cut we the consumers would see a single dollar of that discount, feel me? So no offense but i disagree that it’s something we consumers should spend a single second of thought on.
It’s not like if valve took 0% cut we the consumers would see a single dollar of that discount, f
This is not really true. The steam price is what sets the market price and the developer just pockets a bit more money if you buy it elsewhere. They do not drop the price on other stores due to agreements with steam similar to the Amazon “most favored nation” clause.
Steam’s high cut is inflating the price of games right now but is at least delivering a good service in return. Once Gabe kicks the bucket though you’ll be longing for GFWL over what steam will have become.
Sorry, but i don’t buy this at all. Steam sets market price? Nah, fam. Show me a link, cuz im too old for vibepinions.
N I’m s’posed to think it follows that if steam went 0% cut the prices of games would drop?
Gimme a damn break. When have you seen this happen?
I know I’m comin hot, but you’re whole comment is just bad.
Though you are respectfully speaking, you’re also talking out your ass which angers me to no fucking end.
I’m only speaking with an element of vagueness as I can’t know the exact details of the private agreements and because Valve users subtler methods than the example of Amazon.
We can see some of the contours from the active lawsuits regarding the situation
N I’m s’posed to think it follows that if steam went 0% cut the prices of games would drop?
If distribution costs drop in a competitive market there will be eventually be a corresponding drop in price. Games are not a commodity so you would likely see price drops on some games inside saturated niches while more unique games could retain a higher price.
Lol i can’t even with this shit. Take it easy mayne, maybe read a lil theory as a treat
Not really speaking about the consumers but it has a big impact on Indie developers, and I care about those too.
Honestly, every indie dev I see speak on the matter said that the 30% is easily worth it for how much benefits the steam ecosystem offers. Beyond just the storefront (which is better than average on discoverability), you also have systems to easily set regional pricing, APIs for multiplayer integration, friends, invites, achievements, etc.
Of course it would be better if it was lower, but 30% is not unreasonable for how much steams facilitates your work.
A partly counter, many devs wouldn’t have had a chance at reaching “this is my career now” without steam either. Games like Terraria, stardew, gmod, all would not have sold nearly as well without steam.
As a kid/teen, my dad was much more willing to buy from the same service (steam, amazon, fuckin’ runescape, whatever) then let me put his cc into minecraft(.)net. My friend grabbed nubby’s number factory because he knows he can throw 2 hours into it and get a refund easily (and is definitely keeping it). Even now, I’m much more willing to buy from steam/itch then go to the devs directly, because then its all in one place that I can see. (Vintagestory is a decent example, having to go grab the updates manually, because they had to recreate a distribution system, was annoying.)
Definitely not saying 30% is fair, but 70% of $1,000,000 is better then 90% of $1,000, or $10,000, or $100,000. Taking the hit is worth it for most devs, especially if they can kick start their development credibility. Ultimately, as someone who wants to make some games, the biggest hurdle isn’t taking the 30% hit on future sales, its justifying “investing” my current savings on a project that might not make it to steam, or itch, or my friends at all.
The system sucks, it especially sucks when the “solution” is downloading yet another piece of software and supporting the fortnite factory.
Fair enough my friend :D
While I agree that Steam’s 30% cut is unreasonable, games are not generally cheaper outside of Steam, especially AAA titles. Even on platforms with a lower store cut, such as Epic Games or direct publisher stores, AAA games being priced lower is very rare. So i don’t think steam reducing their cut would have an impact on game price.
Depending on where in the world you live and what’s going on with currencies right now, a PS5 disc in the shops can be a little bit cheaper than on the various digital platforms.
The only reason they’d lower their cut would be if they thought they could make more money that way. That’d take something massive, like a total market crash or an actual capable competitor getting a bunch of exclusives. The former might happen at some point, but the latter will never happen going by Epic’s store which is I’d say the best-case scenario for a competitor (having an infinite free money hose).
steamfront
:kelly:
Honestly I think it should be proportional or a tiered system based on sold copies not revenue e.g tiers based on 100k/250k/500k/1mil/5mil+ sales would be fair. The vast incredible majority of indie devs don’t sell more than 100k copies. 1mil copies is already a decent studio and anything more than 5mil is a major AAA title and fuck them.
I do think its ok for Steam to get a large cut from these AAA devs, keeping in mind Steam has pretty much taken over as “official” social platforms for many games with only Reddit and Discord being viable but not always reliable platforms.
Second point is the Steam workshop does provide real value and once again its something not just AAA devs but almost everyone have become dependent on. Of course there is Nexus which is still a heavy weight in old communities e.g Bethesda/TES but these tend to be outliers. Most importantly though, even if the user would prefer third party mods the fact is Steam workshop integration is very simple and reliable.
Also it’s fucking Mario Kart. That should be like $50. Shovelware can produce ripoff of it for almost free.
For real. SuperTuxKart exists and it’s free.
$20
Seriously, when has Nintendo produced a game that was worth more than like $15? They make stagnant, bland slop that rides brand recognition to stay afloat in otherwise niche genres where there’s next to no competition. Most aren’t even worth pirating to use on an emulator. They’re not even worth free and they want to be leading the charge of rising prices?
I like Mario Kart 👀
The company defenders are dumb yeah. I don’t really understand though why this is whats making people freak out. Like i wasnt gonna be able to afford a switch 2 regardless lol. Housing prices, food prices, etc are insane. Even if it was 300$ i wouldn’t be buying one until maybe 3 years after it came out. I never bought a switch and got a switch lite for like 150$ a couple years ago.
I guess maybe im just used to not having many treats and pirating tons of stuff? Like i pirate all my media and never understood why people pay for streaming services. The few times ive used one the experience sucks. Like it doesnt have most shows. My pirate sites have all the shows easily searchable lol.
Edit: I made a bit of an effort post on lemmygrad about adblocking and being a pirate after posting this. If you want a how to on that stuff then check it out.
I feel like readily available treats are one of the few remaining parts of the social contract of USian society that was being upheld. Housing, gone, social mobility, gone, affordable food, gone, american exceptionalism, gone. And now treats.
Subscription games like rs, suddenly jumped in price so much
