This can’t be a new normal.
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Yes, it is the new normal.
Corporate greed, inflation, potatoes?
All the above! This is the new normal!
Look (not at the promo, at a dozen of full priced games)
https://store.steampowered.com/
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$70 os a steal for the 1000s of hours of entertainment.
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It definitely is the new normal. The cost to produce games has increased significantly while the sale price has remained the same for years, this inflation debacle of late just sped up the process.
It is $70 because free is too much.
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Inflation isn’t happening only now. It has always happened and will continue to happen.
You know that really nice looking house that now costs over 200k? It would’ve been less than 8000 in 1940s.
We’ve had cheap games for two decades. Even that new 70$/80€ price is cheap compared to what we had to pay in 90s.
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Yes I’m aware, just the rate at which it’s been going up recently is what’s made everyone raise prices to offset costs.
O post person complaining about the costs of the game at like 1am… checks out
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That’s not normality either, it’s never really existed anyway. They are only made structures of people and guess from which layer against which enormous other…
It has always been like that, that’s why there are power pyramids and the owning class.
But let’s leave this whole redistribution structure outside and accept this made injustice, then 70-100 $/€ etc. would not necessarily be much, if in the same breath our wages would rise for 50 years according to the productivity, efficiency in connection with the progress accordingly also. Because here only dumping and hold down takes place, and the gigantic surplus values flow again over hundreds ways to the owning class.
If there were a fair distribution of the produced goods and values, then we would all live in utopia.
This does not mean we would have no worries and problems, but they would be completely different than this damn money system that permanently harms us and produces fewer winners at the expense of the huge amount of people who have produced and produce all this.
So 70$ is a massive amount of money, if you as an oppressed worker invest your whole life time in wishes and goals of other people, what we define as work and for that everything goes for rent, food, heating, fuel and electricity and that despite we are all 10x as productive on average as for 30-40 years thanks to technology use.
Prices are rising, everywhere we are fleeced with taxes and levies of all kinds, but wages are stagnating or declining… just as all the unions have allowed themselves to be infiltrated, or let’s say bribed and the struggle for the workers is basically a farce.
If you look at the distribution of wealth, then 1% has all the money that the rest + machine work constantly generates. 10% still live quite solidly and 90% impoverish by and by.
This is of course no normality, it is made illusory reality…
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As long as economy has existed, so has inflation.
People need to understand that the value of currency gradually decreases over time. That’s a fact. How fast it happens depends on many factors and recent years the inflation has certainly spiked, contributing more than on average.
To put things in perspective, due to inflation 70$ has less value than 50$ had 20 years ago. That means you are paying relativistically less for a new 70$ game now than you did 20 years ago when you paid 50$ for a new game.
So yes, it is normal.
70$ is still cheaper than what games used to cost in 90s.
“But games used to be 40$ in 1995”
Yes, but that 1995’s 40$ is 78,52$ in 2023.
That 1$ you have in your pocket now will be worth less than 1$ next year.
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Exactly. A lot of people seem to have hard time understanding this. The difference isn’t huge but it is gradual and eventually prices need to be adjusted up to counter the decreasing value of the currency.
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Plus I think making an AAA modern game will definitely be more expensive nowadays compared to…PS2 game graphic time.
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Economics is lost on some people. People are mad at Blizz for charging $70 instead of being mad at those in charge who have kept wages from keeping up with inflation?
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I paid more for many NES/SNES games in the 80s and 90s.
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It’s not a given that you will get 1000s of hours of it. The average player might not even get 100.
Its a given i will. Even if the average player just finishes the campaign that’s 35 hours. Even at $2/hr, that a great calue for paid entertainment.
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Tell that to Larry Flynt
Something being cheaper per hour doesn invalidate the value of something else. Most paid forms of entitlement cost a lot more than $2/hour.
I know for me it will end up being fractions of a penny per hour.
I understand all that, I was making a bad joke.
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