Video Game Fees

[Thebestoftherest]

The problem with the internet in general is that we are all moochers. We want everything for free and often actively prevent these websites from making money by adblocking or chuckling at the idea of donating or buying a subscription.

Its like video games. People spend £60 on a game and think that entitles them to years of free play, updates, new content and developer support. When in reality, you've actually contributed almost nothing to the upkeep of that game. The ''whales'' meanwhile, the ones buying the loot boxes and the battle passes etc. are single-handedly keeping that game afloat once it falls out of the sales charts.

The fact that you are putting in hundreds, nay thousands of hours, into something FOR FREE and expecting something back FOR FREE makes you borderline worthless to these companies. You are actually supporting nothing. You are just entitled.

How dare people not empty out their banks accounts to keep a unreasonable company happy, it not like we are giving them money for the game.

[Madner Kami]

The problem with the internet in general is that we are all moochers. We want everything for free and often actively prevent these websites from making money by adblocking or chuckling at the idea of donating or buying a subscription.

Its like video games. People spend £60 on a game and think that entitles them to years of free play, updates, new content and developer support. When in reality, you've actually contributed almost nothing to the upkeep of that game. The ''whales'' meanwhile, the ones buying the loot boxes and the battle passes etc. are single-handedly keeping that game afloat once it falls out of the sales charts.

The fact that you are putting in hundreds, nay thousands of hours, into something FOR FREE and expecting something back FOR FREE makes you borderline worthless to these companies. You are actually supporting nothing. You are just entitled.

So you're paying a monthly fee to keep playing the chess-game you purchased 50 years ago? That book over there in your shelf. When was the last time you paid for it? What do you mean you purchased it? The book had to be printed and the people who wrote and printed it, still need to live, do they not? So why are you not paying your dues? Dude, that was the single-handedly dumbest pile of words you put on this forum in quite a while.

And on the topic of saying stupid shit and embarassing oneself in public, Trump's Twitter-account was reinstated. Musk's Tweet accompanying it reads "The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei." This roughly translates to "The voice of the people, the voice of God." As another Twitter-user noted, these four words are just part of an actual quote. The full quote is: "Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit." The translation? Well: "Do not listen to those who say the voice of the people is the voice of God, since tumult of the crowd is always close to madness." Indeed it is...

[clearspira]

The problem with the internet in general is that we are all moochers. We want everything for free and often actively prevent these websites from making money by adblocking or chuckling at the idea of donating or buying a subscription.

Its like video games. People spend £60 on a game and think that entitles them to years of free play, updates, new content and developer support. When in reality, you've actually contributed almost nothing to the upkeep of that game. The ''whales'' meanwhile, the ones buying the loot boxes and the battle passes etc. are single-handedly keeping that game afloat once it falls out of the sales charts.

The fact that you are putting in hundreds, nay thousands of hours, into something FOR FREE and expecting something back FOR FREE makes you borderline worthless to these companies. You are actually supporting nothing. You are just entitled.

So you're paying a monthly fee to keep playing the chess-game you purchased 50 years ago? That book over there in your shelf. When was the last time you paid for it? What do you mean you purchased it? The book had to be printed and the people who wrote and printed it, still need to live, do they not? So why are you not paying your dues? Dude, that was the single-handedly dumbest pile of words you put on this forum in quite a while.

False equivalence and the sort of entitled bullshit that I am talking about. Your chess game probably cost a couple of bucks total to make. As did your book. The majority of the cover price comes from the materials and warehouse space - which is covered by the significant mark up that is put onto your chess game or your book. And even then, you are behind the times. There are subscription services for books. Amazon KDP for example will pay the author a certain amount per page read. Audible is a subscription service.

Modern Triple A games on the other hand cost hundreds of millions of dollars. I'm not good enough at maths to work out how many games at $60 a head they would need to sell to break even, but I suspect that its not enough.
What your $60 entitles you to is one (1) game that is in a playable condition. If it releases as a janky mess then of course I would expect the developer to fix it because I would term that no different to being sold a defective product. Beyond that? The mere fact that you are playing their game is worth zero (0) to the developer is terms of revenue.

You have a choice. Pay them for a continued, expanding experience, or be a demanding mooch. Your choice. But the latter will mean that ultimately there will either be a ceiling on how good games can be
in future or the cover price of your game will shoot up and up and up.

[Riedquat]

The problem with the internet in general is that we are all moochers. We want everything for free and often actively prevent these websites from making money by adblocking or chuckling at the idea of donating or buying a subscription.

Its like video games. People spend £60 on a game and think that entitles them to years of free play, updates, new content and developer support. When in reality, you've actually contributed almost nothing to the upkeep of that game. The ''whales'' meanwhile, the ones buying the loot boxes and the battle passes etc. are single-handedly keeping that game afloat once it falls out of the sales charts.

The fact that you are putting in hundreds, nay thousands of hours, into something FOR FREE and expecting something back FOR FREE makes you borderline worthless to these companies. You are actually supporting nothing. You are just entitled.

So you're paying a monthly fee to keep playing the chess-game you purchased 50 years ago? That book over there in your shelf. When was the last time you paid for it? What do you mean you purchased it? The book had to be printed and the people who wrote and printed it, still need to live, do they not? So why are you not paying your dues? Dude, that was the single-handedly dumbest pile of words you put on this forum in quite a while.

False equivalence and the sort of entitled bullshit that I am talking about. Your chess game probably cost a couple of bucks total to make. As did your book. The majority of the cover price comes from the materials and warehouse space - which is covered by the significant mark up that is put onto your chess game or your book. And even then, you are behind the times. There are subscription services for books. Amazon KDP for example will pay the author a certain amount per page read. Audible is a subscription service.

Modern Triple A games on the other hand cost hundreds of millions of dollars. I'm not good enough at maths to work out how many games at $60 a head they would need to sell to break even, but I suspect that its not enough.
What your $60 entitles you to is one (1) game that is in a playable condition. If it releases as a janky mess then of course I would expect the developer to fix it because I would term that no different to being sold a defective product. Beyond that? The mere fact that you are playing their game is worth zero (0) to the developer is terms of revenue.

You have a choice. Pay them for a continued, expanding experience, or be a demanding mooch. Your choice. But the latter will mean that ultimately there will either be a ceiling on how good games can be
in future or the cover price of your game will shoot up and up and up.

Ever tried writing a book? It can be a hell of a lot of effort. It is not just a couple of dollars to churn out. If you're going down that path you should only be considering the minimal costs per unit to burn a disc or have on a server.

I don't think that people do expect continual free content anyway. They do expect it to keep getting fixed if it's not released in a good state. The "keep paying" aspect, loot boxes etc. aren't a fair way to recompense the producer for their work, they're a way of large companies to screw more money out of their customers with little effort.

[Madner Kami]

False equivalence and the sort of entitled bullshit that I am talking about. Your chess game probably cost a couple of bucks total to make. As did your book. The majority of the cover price comes from the materials and warehouse space - which is covered by the significant mark up that is put onto your chess game or your book. And even then, you are behind the times. There are subscription services for books. Amazon KDP for example will pay the author a certain amount per page read. Audible is a subscription service.

Modern Triple A games on the other hand cost hundreds of millions of dollars. I'm not good enough at maths to work out how many games at $60 a head they would need to sell to break even, but I suspect that its not enough.
What your $60 entitles you to is one (1) game that is in a playable condition. If it releases as a janky mess then of course I would expect the developer to fix it because I would term that no different to being sold a defective product. Beyond that? The mere fact that you are playing their game is worth zero (0) to the developer is terms of revenue.

You have a choice. Pay them for a continued, expanding experience, or be a demanding mooch. Your choice. But the latter will mean that ultimately there will either be a ceiling on how good games can be
in future or the cover price of your game will shoot up and up and up.

It's not a false equivalence, it's all exactly the same. I purchase a product for a price. That price covers the development and deployment of the article and, customer-laws be thanked, also maintenance-costs caused by shoddy development and deployment. Nobody would "expect free patches", if the product arrived in a proper state, but we've grown used to the fact that this isn't the case and hasn't been for nearly 30 years now, ever since computer-magazines allowed for the wide-spread distribution of patches at earliest. What you are arguing for is to pay for the continued use of a product you already purchased.

Oh and btw.: You keep the books you purchased on Audible, even if you cancel the subscription.

Oh and one more thing: If a game costs 100,000,000 units of currency and you sell a copy for 60 units, then you need to sell roughly 1.7m copies. Ass Creed 4 cost pretty much that amount and sold 15 million units. And an arseload of purchasable DLC. The prevelance of this economic model is telling. Your entire arguement completely falls apart, because people are obviously very willing to pay for continued maintenance and content and games are far from being so expensive that their purchase costs doesn't cover their gestation.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

A big change was Steam market. Games used to run on a distribution model and you had barriers to entry in terms of who could join the game market. It had to be a big company which effected a competitive monopoly market (not to be confused with a monopoly system involving one firm).

What we see is games by big companies taking much more time to develop in order to stand out. Or they have a subscription based platform to avoid the insurance cost of gambling on a big game. The games do actually cost more money, and it's more risk for the company. It's great to hear about the games that sell well, even if they're not up to your own standard, but a loss this day in age is a lot more jarring.

[Madner Kami]

What we see is games by big companies taking much more time to develop in order to stand out. Or they have a subscription based platform to avoid the insurance cost of gambling on a big game. The games do actually cost more money, and it's more risk for the company. It's great to hear about the games that sell well, even if they're not up to your own standard, but a loss this day in age is a lot more jarring.

This stance is disproven by the wildly successful indi-game market. Minecraft is the most sold video game in history, with 50% more sales than the next best AAA-title (GTA V).

[McAvoy]

Let's not forget that in 1990 a brand new Super Mario Bros 3 game cost $50. Today new games more or less costs the same too. In today's money accounting for inflation that would be $114 for a new game if they kept up with inflation.

There is also degrees of games where they are playable versus what you have to pay for to make it playable. Some games are perfectly fine if you don't pay a single cent. Other games pretty much you have pay constantly to play the game as leveling up or using something would take 100x as long.

Or a game comes out glitchy as hell. Take for example Madden series of football games. Each year new game. Each year for the past ten years or so they have been glitchy where by the middle of the football season EA finally fixes the game. That of course is free.

You have to take into account that unlike Super Mario Bros 3 in 1990 all games are connected to the internet. Multi-player functions and all. Which means there has to be some sort of upkeep to maintain that function. You say your initial buying of that game should cover that.

But like I mentioned above, the price of the game off shelf hasn't gone up.

There is no maintenance for that book or chess game you bought. In fact what happens if you break or damage the chess game or book? If you choose to fix it, there is some cost involved in fixing it. Whether it's a small amount of glue or some tape.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

It's interesting how game prices have been sticky in spite of inflation for the past 30 years. Given the prevalence of gamers among millennials and onward, it seems the market just stayed consistent and got heavy as time went on.

[Draco Dracul]

You have a choice. Pay them for a continued, expanding experience, or be a demanding mooch. Your choice. But the latter will mean that ultimately there will either be a ceiling on how good games can be
in future or the cover price of your game will shoot up and up and up.

I mean in practice most companies are making games worse so that they can get more money out of people. AAA Games are on average less feature complete than they were 10 years ago and games 10 years ago were less feature complete than games 20 years ago as total pagacakges with maybe a big expansion gave way to lots of small DLC which gave way to micro transactions.