Battlefield 2042 is $60 right now. One of my friends on Steam plays Battlefield 2042 and I thought hey, that would be pretty cool to play with him. I’m sure it wouldn’t be that much because that game came out a long time ago and was extremely poorly received and like, I’m sure it would be really easy to buy that game or get it now since it’s been so long and again, very low reviews. The game is $60!! But when it goes on sale, it’s like 8$, so 80% off. Truly unbelievable. Why do they do this? Like, they’re basically trying to kill the game or something because no one in their right mind would pay $60 for this game, so 90% of the time when it’s not on sale, no one buys it or wants to try it out… Also, lots of old games that are “on sale” constantly for like $5 and the base price is 40-60$, so it makes it seem like SUCH a good deal, when in reality, the value has just depreciated…
They never seem to lower the base cost of anything, making it deceptive. Is it really 80% off of a $60 game if no one in their right f*cking mind would pay that much for it ever?
There’s still a bit of market force, but it comes in the form of other game developers.
Imagine you went to the grocery store, and saw Hardin McCombsky’s Super-Premium Dry Seasoned Cheese was $1000 a wedge. How ridiculous! How do they expect us to pay that much for that cheese?
Only…Shaw’s Bargain Dry Cheese is $4. And it’s not the same thing - but it’s still pretty good.
Basically, this kind of thing works out in many other industries. Sometimes on rare occasion, one producer makes things MUCH better than competitors and can demand a much higher price because no one else comes close.
To give a more game-relevant example, BattleBit is $15 and compared favorably to Battlefield. In other cases where there’s no competitor and the developer hasn’t lowered their price for sales, it may be because they’re confident they did good work and made a good game. Factorio is famous for this.