hatFor the media itself yes, for the actual product no. That would be similar to me being able to produce infinite amounts of graphics cards for nothing other then the initial cost of creating the first one. I already handled that and now I can make them indefinitely, my only hangup being the number of cardboard boxes (installation media) I have to pack them in. I'm not here to argue the laws they may or may not follow, just sharing my own thoughts on it.

There's R&D costs, there's production costs, and there's distribution costs. That's the case with pretty much everything physical: drugs, furniture, graphics cards, you name it. I'm talking about specifically digital products that never incur production costs because they're never translated into the physical realm. R&D costs are still there but production costs are nil. When you buy the game on Steam, GOG, what have you, you're still paying distribution costs, but not production costs. That should translate to a savings for the consumer but, in reality, customers usually end up paying the same or less for physical goods compared to digital goods. For example: both usually start at the same price, say $59.99. If the game didn't do well, in a year, it could be selling for $9.99 retail (not on sale) where the digital version might go for $19.99 on sale, $39.99 retail. That's the laws of supply and demand at work. Of that $9.99 you're paying for the physical good, probably none of that goes to the developer; it's going to the publisher (marketing, production, financing) and retailer (their cut).

Cut out the middle man and pay more. Something is very wrong here...

Microtransactions are taking the same concept and turning it up to 11. They already have their cake with digital distribution, they sprinkle microtransactions on top and eat it too.

FordGT90ConceptMicrotransactions are taking the same concept and turning it up to 11. They already have their cake with digital distribution, they sprinkle microtransactions on top and eat it too.

On Android and iOS, you get games for free and the micro-transactions are where they make their money. And they don't really force it on you most of the time. But charging full price and then ALSO micro-transactions? No thank you. To those devs I hold up my hand and say; Pick a finger!

If you don't want it, don't buy it.... the only thing I can see this doing is making games more expensive by sticking one more badge on the "box."

TheMailMan78Honestly gamers are partly to blame for the lootbox fiasco. Publishers are forced to keep the stale 59.99 pricing and yet the cost of gaming as skyrocked since the 1980's. 49.99 to 59.99 from 1986 to 2017 is hardly an adjustment for inflation.

But then, it costs almost nothing to get the game onto our hard drives these days. Now, you click and the computers make it so. Back then you needed a disk or cartridge, a man sailing a boat, another man driving a truck, another few on forklifts, salesmen.... etc....

lexluthermiesterOn Android and iOS, you get games for free and the micro-transactions are where they make their money. And they don't really force it on you most of the time. But charging full price and then ALSO micro-transactions? No thank you. To those devs I hold up my hand and say; Pick a finger!

Different customer base and a completely different market. Most people on mobile platforms don't even consider a product if it is not free. This forces all apps (not just games) to be free. To monetize, they either do it in microtransactions or ads (or both) on the backside.

The free to play model has been tried and except some exceptions like League of Legends, it hasn't worked out that great. Basically, if you weren't one of the first to succeed with the free to play model, you're not going to succeed. Now they're trying mixed: full retail price + microtransactions. ...have their cake and eat it too...

FordGT90ConceptDifferent customer base and a completely different market. Most people on mobile platforms don't even consider a product if it is not free. This forces all apps (not just games) to be free. To monetize, they either do it in microtransactions or ads (or both) on the backside.

That's not true at all. There are plenty of games and apps for purchase that have and are doing very well. A solid half of my library on Google Play is paid apps and games. And I'm far from alone on that one.

FordGT90ConceptThe free to play model has been tried and except some exceptions like League of Legends, it hasn't worked out that great. Basically, if you weren't one of the first to succeed with the free to play model, you're not going to succeed. Now they're trying mixed: full retail price + microtransactions. ...have their cake and eat it too...

On the PC, that can be true. What they should be doing is charging a base price, like $10 for the game and then micro-transactions for more stuff and then a premium price for the base game and all addons, present and future. But $60 and $70 for the base game and then almost $100 more for addons? No thank you. It's like EA's "The Sim's 4". You can easily spend over $300 on that game and still not get everything.

You people ignore not only common sense but the basic laws of market and economics. A game in 1986 cost 49.99 adjusted for inflation would cost 112.51 today. You are basically buying games at 26.66 dollars at 1986 prices. I hate to break it to you but it takes a LOT more to make a game nowadays than in 1986. If anyone argues this your just as greedy as EA. Volume can't make up that huge of a difference. People need to pay more for their games or get ready for more predatory actions from publishers.......or less Big budget games. You choice.

TheMailMan78You people ignore not only common sense but the basic laws of market and economics. A game in 1986 cost 49.99 adjusted for inflation would cost 112.51 today. You are basically buying games at 26.66 dollars at 1986 prices. I hate to break it to you but it takes a LOT more to make a game nowadays than in 1986. If anyone argues this your just as greedy as EA. Volume can't make up that huge of a difference. People need to pay more for their games or get ready for more predatory actions from publishers.......or less Big budget games. You choice.

Nothing is stopping publishers from adjusting their prices. Publishers have chosen to continue charging $40 - $60 and they continue to make a profit.

Prince ValiantNothing is stopping publishers from adjusting their prices. Publishers have chosen to continue charging $40 - $60 and they continue to make a profit.

Hell, prices have come down. In the early to mid-90's games were routinely $70, $80 or $90 for some of the best games. What Mr. 78 missed is that the games market has expanded significantly since the 80's and 90's and the economy's of scale have a great deal to do with market pricing. What is also missed from that conclusion is that the quality if games have come down with the advent of digital distribution. Publishers think they can get away with releasing games that are just barely "good enough" and fix problems with patches along the way. The gaming public has turned into a huge beta-testing group. Before this time, devs had to properly debug and a test the software. So they have gotten lazy AND greedy. Back in the 80's and 90's, game creation was an artful craft. Artistry in games has become more rare.

Loot-crating and micro-transactions on games for top-tier prices is just a greedy money-grab, nothing more. Game prices are being artificially inflated without the quality to match. Companies like EA demand much and deliver little. It's an economic model that can not be sustained without damaging the whole industry, which has in many ways already happened.

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lexluthermiesterThat's not true at all. There are plenty of games and apps for purchase that have and are doing very well. A solid half of my library on Google Play is paid apps and games. And I'm far from alone on that one.

Only if they have a lot of marketing/brand recognition behind it.
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TheMailMan78You people ignore not only common sense but the basic laws of market and economics. A game in 1986 cost 49.99 adjusted for inflation would cost 112.51 today. You are basically buying games at 26.66 dollars at 1986 prices. I hate to break it to you but it takes a LOT more to make a game nowadays than in 1986. If anyone argues this your just as greedy as EA. Volume can't make up that huge of a difference. People need to pay more for their games or get ready for more predatory actions from publishers.......or less Big budget games. You choice.

A-Train (the original) released in 1993 for $100. That's $172.98 in today's dollars.

TheMailMan78I don't mind buying games at higher prices. 100+ bucks is ok for me IF the game condones the hours. Fallout 4 as an example gave me 200+ hours and not a single loot box in sight. I did however pay 120 bucks for it and the DLC and I would do it again.

Honestly gamers are partly to blame for the lootbox fiasco. Publishers are forced to keep the stale 59.99 pricing and yet the cost of gaming as skyrocked since the 1980's. 49.99 to 59.99 from 1986 to 2017 is hardly an adjustment for inflation. In fact they would be losing their asses at this point. Sprinkle in mass piracy and you have publishers paying gamers to buy their product. This is not fair to anyone.

IMO publishers should be charging a minimum of 100 bucks for a AAA game with EVERYTHING included at launch. No more DLC. No more loot crates and IMO that would be an amazing compromise between the supply and the demand. We have come a long way from 8-bit side scrollers. The price needs to reflect that.

patently false. The cost of games only have gone up on select titles and sales has also skyrocketed in line with increased budget. No intelligent person makes or relies on loot boxes to make a quality game. It is dishonest and laughable to make such a statement and anyone purporting this should be laughed out of town. :slap:

There was no such thing as having millions in sold copies back in the 80s or 90s. A million copies sold is a new thing since the 2000s. I dont think even HL sold a million copies at first. It took many years for that to happen or if it did it was one of a select few games that did and was an anomaly due to it being a game changer.

Some early access games have sold 10s of millions of copies in todays world. No dev is starving for money if they make a good product....even crappy ones make good money. A special place in hell exists for devs like code hatch. Prime example of whats wrong with humanity and the gaming market. This is why i do not give my money willie nillie to devs unless there is good cause. They deserve no trust. I have commented and posted before about how a good dev would post financials and business plans for a game and treat early access buyers as investors and not a rich parent giving them free money.:toast:

I hate loot boxes because its about a cash grab and padding profit margins. It isn't about making a quality product. PS2 is a prime example:nutkick:.

Regulations are almost always bad and the only regulation that needs to exist is publishing statistics like probabilities of loot boxes and maybe source codes to be audited for corruption/theft from trying to publish fake statistics to steal money.

Anything else is a blatant power grab and will only cause more harm than good....Consumers can use their brain and not buy loot boxes from shady companies....like website games. :banghead:

FordGT90ConceptOnly if they have a lot of marketing/brand recognition behind it.


A-Train (the original) released in 1993 for $100. That's $172.98 in today's dollars.

read above....ark and PUBG had no issue making a "good"/"high demand" game and making 10s to 100s of millions of dollars.

now....lets just see 60% actually get reinvested into the game....ha i am dreaming.

lexluthermiesterThe Belgian government has already concluded that this kind of thing is gambling. And a number of other EU governments are joining in investigating. There are even rumblings of the US Senate looking into things. And I hope they impose very strict regulations on this kind of thing. It will discourage devs/publishers from including it in games.

i could careless what some statist thug says. Regulations on gambling defies basic logic. As I stated above...the only regulation you could possible argue for is releasing the statistics so people know what they were actually buying.

Anything else is a statist power grab.

FordGT90ConceptIt still boggles my mind how the Steam Market is allowed to exist. Valve is practically printing money. I think the only tax on it is sales tax to the state of Washington. Still, every game that offers something on there, they're effectively creating a new unregulated market asking money for a digital product that has a real, one time value, of no more than $1000 (time to create the asset). Then they give away 1000s of them randomly and (here's the trouble spot): allow people to trade them for money. This effectively makes them securities (like stocks) but they're not being regulated as such . Valve needs to declare the tangible worth of the good and it can never be exceeded.

And it doesn't stop there either: music, movies, games, everything that is strictly digital. It can be copied ad infinitum but it still needs a declared value. Why is this important? It goes straight into piracy. If someone has a copy of something they're not supposed to, that's how much money was "stolen." Declaring a value of a digital good then becomes a two sided coin: If they declare the value of something too high and they sue a pirate asking for 1000 times that much, the judge will ask what are they smoking. If they declare the value too low and someone is selling the product for less than that, the publisher can use that in court against the seller because they're technically selling at a loss, therefore, the item must be stolen or second hand (these are not-transferrable by nature).

Problem is, there's only two parties involved here: 1) lawmakers that don't understand it enough to regulate it and 2) the game publishers profiting hugely from it. I don't see a path to a good, permanent solution for everyone.


It's good they're cracking down on loot crates because it turns the above problem into gambling. It needs to be labeled as such. But to get at the heart of the problem.......not going to happen any time soon.

your failing to understand the value of intellectual property and the value of a service. Something doesn't need to have a physical value to have value.

Paintings, cards, bitcoin, historical items, and so on all have a value put on to them via market demand. Why has no one made a second steam and replicated it. They have....Why does it not have the same value you? market barriers, market share, demand, and more are several but not all inclusive reasons for such a thing.

SkullFoxActually no. DLC is a fantastic thing if done right. DLC if used like expansion packs of old (Simcity 4 Rush Hour, C&C Generals Zero Hour, GTA IV EFLC, etc...) is fantastic and a nice way to make a game great and to enlarge the current universe of a game...

Saints Row are games that due DLC right. You have a solid game without DLC and you can add more content for a fairly low price too. If you wait for sales like cheap/poor people. You can get all DLC and base game for 5-10 bucks after everyone elses buys.

This is what you call price skimming and i have been harping about how game industry needs to realize that price skimming is their friend! In the last 5-7 years price skimming has because a common practice and gets companies much much more money especially from people like me.

I bought like 10 games over 15 years because old games...HL was still going for what 35 bucks 5-8 years after release? Granted it was the only gmae that could pull that off but its why i never bought many games and spent maybe 500 dollars over 15 years of gaming.

now in the world of steam. I pay hardly nothing for games for 2 reasons:
1.) DRM (GOG excluded)
2.) price skimming

first reason is why i'll never pay full price for a game with a select few exceptions (like 2 games)
2nd reason is why I have a 1200 game steam account with games in origin and GOG.

I have spent like 2 or 3 grand over the years but they would have never gotten me to spend that much if it wasn't for price skimming. For 50 bucks...sure..I'll buy 20 Star Wars games from my childhood that you would never get me to pay more than 5 dollars for but 1 or 2 of my must haves. But since they used bulk selling and price skimming they got 50 dollars from me when before at best they would get 0-10 dollars.

TheMailMan78You people ignore not only common sense but the basic laws of market and economics. A game in 1986 cost 49.99 adjusted for inflation would cost 112.51 today. You are basically buying games at 26.66 dollars at 1986 prices. I hate to break it to you but it takes a LOT more to make a game nowadays than in 1986. If anyone argues this your just as greedy as EA. Volume can't make up that huge of a difference. People need to pay more for their games or get ready for more predatory actions from publishers.......or less Big budget games. You choice.

Honestly did you not watch the vid I linked? It's not just the volume of goods sold that has gone up significantly the COST of goods sold have gone down significantly with digital distribution. They're not adjusting because they see no reason to do so or they'd lose more money than they would gain by adjusting for inflation, I'm hinging on the latter considering how more often than not that many game titles are on sale or just discounted, and quickly a title is likely to receive this type of soft price adjustment after it's release, i.e. once they've recouped their investment and some it's all pure profit so then it doesn't matter what the game sells it's still profit.

HopelesslyFaithfulread above....ark and PUBG had no issue making a "good"/"high demand" game and making 10s to 100s of millions of dollars.

One-Hit-Wonders. Once every few years, the stars align and a game gets far more traction than it deserves. It's a phenomena of market forces.

HopelesslyFaithfulyour failing to understand the value of intellectual property and the value of a service. Something doesn't need to have a physical value to have value.

There's little more than copyright behind most microtransaction items. Indeed the game had to do something to draw buyers into the market. Still, we're talking digital on top of digital on top of digital in most cases. Traditional market forces don't apply and that's fundamentally what allows them to exist. These markets are ruled by user agreements, not regulation. Government is omnipresent when physical goods are concerned and almost completely absent in digital. Digital is incentivized because of this.

I guess what I'm saying is there needs to be a long hard look at how digital transactions operates by governments and that extends to all things digital, not just games. BTC is running away for the exact same reason microtransactions are: there's no checks and balances; it's all greed because supply is unlimited (for BTC, they just carry the decimal out further).

FordGT90ConceptOne-Hit-Wonders. Once every few years, the stars align and a game gets far more traction than it deserves. It's a phenomena of market forces.



There's little more than copyright behind most microtransaction items. Indeed the game had to do something to draw buyers into the market. Still, we're talking digital on top of digital on top of digital in most cases. Traditional market forces don't apply and that's fundamentally what allows them to exist. These markets are ruled by user agreements, not regulation. Government is omnipresent when physical goods are concerned and almost completely absent in digital. Digital is incentivized because of this.

I guess what I'm saying is there needs to be a long hard look at how digital transactions operates by governments and that extends to all things digital, not just games. BTC is running away for the exact same reason microtransactions are: there's no checks and balances; it's all greed because supply is unlimited (for BTC, they just carry the decimal out further).

government not being involved isnt a bad thing (ruins just about everything...top men roflcopter) and you can thank the government for you actually not owning anything you buy here and not enforcing Library of Congress rulings that state DRM must be removed when the product is no longer supported. *cough* GTA 4 *cough*

But again you missed an entire section of my post but that was obviously willfully ignored. Dishonesty at its finest.

Are loot crates hard to break open, that it should require experts?

It seems a little dodgy....

the54thvoidWith power comes great responsibility.

They are privately funded - thats a concern. Funded commissions tend to be self preservational. Their third action has to be the transparency of their funding sources. i.e. if EA gives them lots of cash we can expect loot boxes to be A-OK.

lol, that would be rich. So in order to rip off it's customers, EA would then after to pay off another company first. That sounds pretty fair to me.

FreedomEclipseIt seems a little dodgy....

Seems like a lobby that was ready to go live the moment their digital markets drew political ire with the purpose of keeping government out of them.

Devastator0Mate, I live in Australia where the average price for a PC game is either $89.95 or $99.95 AUD and the average price for a console game is either $99.95, $109.95 or $119.95 AUD. We in Australia are already there.

Isn't the min wage is AU also like $20?

Devastator0A straight currency conversion doesn't agree. $60 USD = ~$78-$79 AUD. Believe me, we are paying the Queen's Tax for games.

Fixed it for ya :D

Looks like this industry stuff is absolute BS....

HopelesslyFaithfulSaints Row are games that due DLC right. You have a solid game without DLC and you can add more content for a fairly low price too. If you wait for sales like smart/sensible people.
.

Fixed.

I'm just throwing this out there: I don't care who these guys are or how many organization tackle this or how widespread the practice is. If it's got loot boxes, I'm simply not buying. Well, as a general rule, I don't buy anything that has both an initial cost and microtransactions.

TheMailMan78I hate to break it to you but it takes a LOT more to make a game nowadays than in 1986.

No, it doesn't. We didn't even have high level languanges back then. Coding things in 1986 was a bitch and you had to directly target the hardware, no abstraction. I hope you love assembly, as it's something few can handle and even a mother can't love.

FordGT90ConceptOne-Hit-Wonders. Once every few years, the stars align and a game gets far more traction than it deserves. It's a phenomena of market forces.

As much as I don't want to admit this, I think it has more to do with decent gameplay than the "stars aligning" ford.

R-T-BNo, it doesn't. We didn't even have high level languages back then. Coding things in 1986 was a bitch and you had to directly target the hardware, no abstraction. I hope you love assembly, as it's something few can handle and even a mother can't love.

Assembly is a beautiful thing, if you understand it and know how to use it. Like any other method of programming, it takes time and persistence to master.

lexluthermiesterAssembly is a beautiful thing, if you understand it and know how to use it. Like any other method of programming, it takes time and persistence to master.

That's fair... But to make a fully enjoyable game in?

I think that's my hell.

Devastator0Mate, I live in Australia where the average price for a PC game is either $89.95 or $99.95 AUD and the average price for a console game is either $99.95, $109.95 or $119.95 AUD. We in Australia are already there.

I dont live in Australia.