Can’t use the word “buy” if you can’t actually buy the thing.
I understand the sentiment here and I am the kinda gamer that rarely buys games on release date and waits for deep discounts, but the “renting” it aspect of the argument seems pretty hyperbolic. I try to think of the value as entertainment hours per dollar. I usually only get a game if I think I’ll get at least 1 hour per dollar or two, and I bet I’d get at least that with this game at $80-100. I’ll probably still wait for a discount but I doubt they’ll be removing the rights to the game before you can get decent value out of it. Hell I bought GTA 5 on multiple consoles and still got my money’s worth.
I try to think of the value as entertainment hours per dollar
Yeah because the brainwashing worked on you lmao
How is that brainwashing? If I go to a 3 hour concert for $50 then I’m agreeing to spend about $15/hr of entertainment. If I’m okay spending $80 for 100 hours of entertainment in gta6 (assuming the game isn’t just trash) then I’m agreeing to spend about $1/hr of entertainment. Am I brainwashed for considering the value I’m getting with my money?
Yes, because that’s not how markets are supposed to work. The value of a bottle of a water to me when im thirsty could easily be $100 but it doesn’t cost that much to produce it. Value isn’t the same thing as price, and if everything were priced to our value we’d all end up living on subsistence wages drinking only water and eating only rice.
A market needs a tension between supply and demand, otherwise it’s some kind of feudalism or slavery.
I wonder why nobody complained as much about Crimson Desert on ps5 that have physical release but it’s drm protected, so you can’t play from disk and you need day one patch from internet. This is bizarre to me. It was in March this year so corporations just moved forward in their agenda.
Those complaints are back in the 2010s or so when most physical games from AAA devs/publishers became nothing more than links to the download and a DRM check rather than actually contain the whole game.
I would call it leasing before I’d call it renting tbh.
Tell you what: Finish making the game, patch out all the bugs, add some DLC, and I’ll consider paying you $5 for the GOTY edition in a few years. Best I can do.
add some DLC
cries in GTA5
You mean single player GTA Online?
That microtransaction bullshit probably ruined GTA DLC/expansions forever
DLC is shit and ruins game balance in GOTY editions.
Welcome to the game! Here’s all this amazing loot you bought! Now your first quest is to kill that rat over there with your brand new Fire Sword. Oh yeah, here’s your Anglic Armour and your Awesome Horse Armour. You’ll have to lug that around in your inventory for a few hours until you find the horse quest though.
I’m going to disagree with you. Things like Shivering Isles added replay value to Oblivion and, to my memory, didn’t include anything that would overpower you in a new game.
I agree with both of you, I think it comes down to the scope and type of DLC. An expansion size DLC like Shivering Isles tends to fit in nicely with the rest of a game because the developer needs to plan out when and where you can start to access the new stuff, but a lot of smaller DLC like bonus weapons can be integrated pretty poorly because they want you to get the cool little thing you paid money for and it’s easier to put it in a hard to miss chest or just give it to you early on.
Rogue Trader handles Twitch Drops and preorder shit pretty well. It’s in a chest in the captains quarters and a lot of it is outclassed early on, that which isn’t well it’s a CRPG with Russian devs they probably grew up playing classic fallout and arcanum they expect you to break the game once you know it IE Fallout 2 Navarro rush.
Eh, depends on the game.
Plus, you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to.
One counterpoint to that argument is that you might not know what’s OP, what’s a normal balance level, and what’s gonna be cosmetic when first starting a game.
Very possible but if it’s something that mattered to you, you could probably look it up.
Maybe, but I would be worried about spoilers personally. You can only experience a game freshly once, once you know what’s coming it’s never the same.
lol this exact thing happened to me in Dying Light.
I was used to DLC being a new world to explore at an appropriate time like in Dark Souls. I didn’t expect to be given items that invalidate the first 15 hours of the game. (I didn’t use them, but still, it’s unpleasant to have to exert that much willpower when starting a new game…)
I’ve never played a game that was ruined like this. so I’m gonna say it’s an issue of shitty games doing shitty game things
Fallout: New Vegas is like this. With all of the DLCs you start with some overpowered weapons that makes the first serious quest silly
I absolutely hate it. I always have to try and remember all the random crap that was thrown into my inventory and avoid using any of it for an authentic experience.
Chet watching the brain damaged mailman sell a bunch of random shit to him.
I still havent played GTA5 because I never found the disc cheap enough, at some point I quit looking for it, really sucks GTA4 was the last game from that franchise I’ll get to play, but ending physical discs means I will not buy your console game.
I found GTAV at a thrift store for $4.99 several months back. Bought it. Still haven’t played it lol
Pretty sure I paid $5 for GTA5 and not much more for 4 and San Andreas. I think GTA 3 was the last time I paid MSRP.
Maybe if Epic gets desperate enough after their plan to chase Roblox and slop crashes they’ll let you download it from them for free like they did 5
preorder what?.. what are you reserving anyways?
I assume the standard “I didn’t wait to see the reviews” cosmetic that all pre-orders seem to give people these days
You’re preordering your bytes, duh! It’s well known that companies run out of bytes when there’s massive demand and have to order more from the byte farms. If you don’t preorder this, the company might not have enough bytes for you and your download could have to wait a long time until they replenish byte stock!
If it’s anything like Forza Horizon 6, they are reserving the ability to play the game five days before everybody else.
I doubt they will do that because they’re releasing a story focused single player game, they don’t want spoilers out
Even better for Rockstar, they can say:
Oi if you don’t want spoliers you better lock in and preorder right now (you scum).
If it is yes, but afaik they won’t do that for gta
The ability to have it all downloaded and ready to go at launch, I guess. Wouldn’t be so bad if the price weren’t raised out of blatant greed while simultaneously removing the option to get a sellable license via a disc.
Why pre order? Would they run out? It makes no sense without a physical copy
So they signed up for that subscription right away! (I do believe if you pre-order your auto enroll for the subscription)
Pre-orders usually let you download the game data before the release date and time so you can play it instantly when it releases.
How else are you going to get meaningless cosmetic bonus items!!!1!?!
If the authentication servers can keep up ofcourse.
Shit article. Counting down to when you can start giving them money for a pre-order we don’t even have details about is news!?
But really, if we reward companies for games before they’re even released and reviewed, we deserve any and all garbage they decide to give us…
Relax and wait for pirates, especially when PC launch comes 😏
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/488/
That comic was uploaded in 2008. More true today than ever before.
This is why I jailbroke my kindle.
Kobo’s are much better
Making good use of your already existing hardware is always a superior choice
Yeah, well, I have a Kindle and I don’t have the money for a kobo, especially when my Kindle still works
Your kindle won’t work for very much longer.
why should a jailbroken Kindle stop working?
It won’t! That’s why I jailbroke it! It also has 10x the functionality now too.
speak with your wallets sisters and brothers, do not rent this bs
Millions will, and Rockstar will make billions, but don’t buy it at launch anyway. Get it on a sale or pirate it when it comes to PC instead.
Once again we all suffer because of the stupid majority. Imagine if everyone closed their wallets to the likes of google, meta, apple, rockstar.
Shame actually works quite well despite what everyone’s been trying to tell us.
In my experience, I’m the one who gets shamed for not being in walled gardens of google/apple/meta when everyone else is. Network effect is powerful
Does it though? Pre-orders have been constantly shamed since the '90s and, if anything, they’re even more prevalent today without the ability to get anything physical.
AND the ability to have it taken away at the whim of the publisher, no refund.
It’s pretty sad you have to tell people to pirate when honestly no one should be playing it at all. even discussing it helps them. If this is so bad, which I think it is because I’ve quit buying/playing games almost 10 years ago, Then the answer is to not engage.
This isn’t food.
There are so many independent studio/artist making things that desperately need your help in anyway. To read share and engage with their shit. Every minute spent with a major corps bullshit piece of entertainment Is time taken away from the independent artist. Every minute you spend engaging with this complaining or not, helps them.
No, you don’t have to play it, but if you want to without giving Rockstar money, the option will be available eventually. I’ll urge people not to give a company money for a game, but I’m not going to tell them not to play it at all. The game WILL be massively popular and WILL be talked about regardless of what you do, so just doing your part of not paying $80+ for it is good enough.
Rockstar will make billions
Yeah, well it won’t be my fucking fault, at least.
Nor mine!
And my axe!
Saw an article a few weeks back that said something about how Rockstar was ensuring availability for the game. Availability? For a download?
Also, why bother pre-ordering? The whole idea of pre-ordering is so that you can ensure you have the game when it comes out because there are limitations on supply meeting demand on the printing of a disc. Again, this is a download. Other than some artificially limited exclusives (which, again, are downloads and will probably be made available again at a later date) there is no reason to pre-order. Unless you want the game to just automatically install for you, I can’t think of a real reason for pre-ordering this. (Disclosure: I am old and I practically never download big games–not at launch anyway)
Bro, you don’t get it.
My preorder tells Rockstar that I am okay with them charging the most for the opportunity to rent the game from them while I pay them additional money for multiplayer. It also means that I can preload the game, because I have been conditioned to have 0 patience, and the thought of waiting to give Rockstar more of my time and money hurts me physically.
Let me have this bro. Please. If I spend the equivalent of a weeks worth of groceries on a game that is going to essentially be the same game as the last game, I can finally feel something for a brief moment.
Didn’t forget, on PlayStation if you download (even pre-orders) you can’t refund it!
So if you buy it and download it now, you don’t have to deal with those pesky reviews.
Had me in the first part, ngl
I also don’t understand what pre-ordering means nowadays. sometimes they offer you some sort of extra thing, which makes sense. but why would you preorder if you get literally nothing for it
To pre-download and have it playable the second it goes live, I guess.
Even if you’re old, those are solid arguments.
Even if your IQ < 1 those are solid arguments.
If I were going to make an argument for pre-ordering digital games, the only one I can think of is basically that you can pre-download the game.
Instead of waiting on a 300GB download when the game launches, you simply get a quick patch (probably a few KB in size) to actually activate the game files that you have already downloaded ahead of time. It means your wait is only a minute or two, instead of potentially hours (depending on your local internet speeds).
Maybe if it allowed access to an open beta ahead of the official launch date. I’ve seen a few games do things like that, where the full game releases on {date}, but pre-orders can play the open beta starting like two weeks ahead of time. If it’s something like a competitive game where familiarity with the in-game systems will matter, having access to that beta could be valuable. Even if the systems get updated for the final launch, you’re simply reading patch notes and adjusting your play-style accordingly. But everyone who didn’t pre-order is starting from 0.
That’s literally the only justification I can think of. Because yeah, the pre-order bonus content stuff is almost always artificially gated (it could just be available for everyone right from the start) and will almost certainly be made available to everyone at a later date anyways.
If I were going to make an argument for pre-ordering digital games, the only one I can think of is basically that you can pre-download the game
Sure but that leaves no valid reason to pre-order a few months before launch, instead of a few days.
Sure but that leaves no valid reason to pre-order a few months before launch, instead of a few days.
Ok, I got one! You’re in the process of declaring bankruptcy, your credit card is about to be revoked, and if you pre-order the game now, the cost will be included in the credit cards that get zeroed out. Even better, unlike a physical game, there’s nothing for the court to seize!
A fringe benefit of digital games - they have no monetary value, therefore they can never be seized by courts to pay debts and fines! They’re bankruptcy and judgment proof!
Or really, any scenario where you have the ability to pay now, won’t have the ability to pay later, but can still get some benefit from it in the future.
😅
But the thing you want to play it on can get seized.
Not sure if it’s the same where you live but where I live, there are high interest rate bank accounts that require a minimum spend per month. A pre-order could help you hit that maybe. I don’t know that’s the only thing that comes to mind. Plus if it’s on Steam, you could refund if it turns out bad anyways. If it’s not on Steam, however, welp.
Bought about 15 games for that much the other day in the GoG sale. Against the Storm is probably my favourite out of the 3 I have played so far and will probably keep me going for a while even though I want to play the others too.
i cant justify spending 80 usd for a game when there are so many amazing games that are free or are under 5 usd
I’ll just wait for the PC version and then sail the high seas.
I can’t even be bothered to pirate it
Hard-working crackers worked on this, you better show your appreciation by seeding
If digital, then games should cost about 5 or 10 bucks apiece. The high cost is mostly attributed to the plastic and the distribution (and the greed, of course).
The high cost was never related to the plastic or distribution. Probably the entire DVD, case and booklet came in under $3. It has always been simply the price the publisher thought they could sell it for with regard to consumer demand.
Retailers get a cut. Digital lets them keep a bigger portion of the pie. Sony / MSFT are probably more likely to give them a bigger portion of the pie given that by releasing exclusively on consoles it will move more console sales (and thus other game sales on their platform) given how large this release is.
If consoles didn’t give them a sweetheart deal we would see a PC release day 1.
If consoles didn’t give them a sweetheart deal we would see a PC release day 1.
There could be other reasons for that though (although i wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right)
Development costs of GTA 6 are estimated to be a billion dollars at the low end. The cost of manufacturing and distribution compared to that are nothing.
Take Two are def greedy af though.
No one told them to spend that much on it lol
The cost is the r&d bro. CDs cost nothing to Make.
Uh… development budget?
if capitalism, then price must be the highest to maximise growth.
This, but small indies can’t even justify that low of a price tag most of the time. There is a reason that a game like Zorch costing only five bucks surprises people, it’s just not that common.
Hell, it’s less surprising when a game is free since either you are Fortnite and you’ll squeeze your player dry through mtx anyway, or you are Shattered Pixel Dungeon and you just don’t care that much. Those who love it so much can toss you a few bucks on Patreon if they’d like.
Look, all I’m saying is that you need to stop reading this and start playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon right now.
Highest price is not necessarily most best for profit. They likely calculated that selling it for 70 or 90 means less profit then selling it for 80.
the higher price means less purchases,
It is an optimisation issue, once you have a reasonable localise estimate on how much people are willing to pay, finding the ideal price is trivial.
Unless there is a public expectation like games being no more than 60$, but then companies try to break those expectations too, that is why lots of releases have special editions with BS addons. to test the waters
Indie games are dirt in cheap in comparison to AAA budgets and they can’t even justify a ten dollar price tag usually, you may as well give it away at that point.
Didn’t they spend 2 billion?
I’m not even sticking up for this but yall are insane.
This is why everything sucks. You expect everything for nothing then wonder why your games nickle and dime you for dlc and your food is nasty and your clothes are all plastic.
As a professional artist I’ll tell ya it seems like a poor man’s hobby to make games, write novels, or make music. So you have people that make this shit for the love of the game or a lot of cash and nothing really in between.
My wife, who’s an accountant, never really played video games growing up. When we got married, she liked to hang out on the couch while I played various Zelda titles (I think WindWaker HD was the first one she got really into with me, and she’d become a second set of eyes). She was the one who helped me understand how a video game is maybe the most value for one’s money of all the entertainment options. For a long time, games were still around $50 (which was even the price when I was a kid) and she was kind of blown away at the notion that you could pay $50 for something and have like 80+ hours of enjoyment when going to a movie was like the same price for only two hours and going to a play was often even more expensive. An album is still pretty great deal-wise because you can get years of enjoyment out of that. But in terms of a story-telling medium, a video game is still an amazing value for what you get (even at $80).
My problem with what is going on with this game and Sony in general is the idea that they want me to pay $80 for something that, due to DRM, I’m not actually owning. If they want me to pay that kind of money for something that I feel like I have actual ownership of, with a reasonable expectation that I can play it for years to come (like I can with my SNES and Saturn and whatnot), then I’m still happy to pay $80 for it. But I am not given that assurance. I thought Tears of the Kingdom was worth the price (and still do). But I have the card on my shelf and so long as I have a Switch I can play it.
I expect it for nothing because the sellers expect it for everything. Just trying to find the perfect balance in between. There is nothing wrong with a healthy profit but it shouldn’t feel like rape. It has to work for both sides.
I can’t justify spending $80 on a game I won’t own.
I can’t justify spending $80 on a game I won’t sell.
I can’t justify spending $80 on a game I won’t share with friends.
