It’s beyond insane to me that a $70 “AAAA” game (kidding, it’s AAA) dips down to the absurd price of $5. I’ve never seen anything like it. Wish the entire Sims 4 “collection” if you can call it that was $5 total, would be incredible, or Starfield.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    24 days ago

    It happens all the time on Steam and physical retail. Especially when the game is critically panned or is old enough that it’s not selling at the original price anymore.

    Pretty funny to see the big budget “AAAA” games going from $70 to $5 in just a few months, while seeing an independent game like RimWorld never go on sale and have multiple DLCs that aren’t much cheaper than the base game because the former loses interest hella fast, while the latter seems to keep gaining popularity.

    • Mannimarco@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      Just fyi, Ludeon Studios changed their stance on sales some time ago, in fact it’s on sale right now! Never more than a 20% discount though. Factorio however has still never been on sale. But your point still stands

      • Dultas@lemmy.world
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        24 days ago

        Both are pennies on the hour investments though. Factorio Space Age has drawn me back in like the OG did years ago.

        • papalonian@lemmy.world
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          24 days ago

          No. Don’t. Don’t tell me this, don’t do it to me, I’m trying to complete Satisfactory playthrough

          • TheSaus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            24 days ago

            But he right tho… the basics have been cleaned up a bit so the early game isn’t as slow, and every planet actually made me feel like new again

            • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
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              24 days ago

              On the contrary, IME they significantly slowed down the early game, but they removed the early-mid-game dip right after you unlock fluids and oil processing

              • Dultas@lemmy.world
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                23 days ago

                Yeah the green to blue transition seemed like a smaller hurdle than I remembered.

          • scarilog@lemmy.world
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            22 days ago

            Yeah I’m trying to convince myself to give space age a try, but damn I know it won’t be good for me.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      I think part of this has to be related to the idea that you cant do good, creative, interesting things on e the number of cooks in the kitchen gets above a certain size, which might actually be quite small. I mean look at terraria and stardew valley. Microscopic dev teams with impact the size of asteroids in terms of total effect and the long term impact on gaming.

      I think “good” in media is an extension of having a singular vision for what you are trying to do. Focus too much on crowd pleasing and you lose the plot.

      • I completely agree with that. Even the games that made the big companies big back in the day started off being like 3-5 people, tops. Now they have hundreds of people, tons of ideas, along with limited time and tons of bureaucracy. Even if there’s just one person making the decisions, it can’t be easy frequently hearing good suggestions from other people working on the thing under you and not wanting to try and incorporate them.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      Factorio has only ever gone up in price, and the new expansion costs more than the base game did.

    • yesman@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      “The Callisto protocol” went from release @$60 to free on Epic, in less than two years. That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen a game depreciate.

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    23 days ago

    Instead of lowering their prices over time and so sales are less significant of a percentage, they keep the original price indefinitely and just have lots of sales. This makes the percentage off much higher than if they had depreciated the regular price as it should. Pretty common these days.

    • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      This also pleases the Steam Store algorithm god. A big spike will bump the game up in the charts, then the algo will serve it to more people in the store and more people will buy it. The more sales momentum a game has the more the algo will show it in the recommended sections.

    • TedZanzibar@feddit.uk
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      22 days ago

      This shit winds me up so much. It used to be that a game would be full price for 6-12 months before moving onto a budget label at a vastly rexuced price.

      Nowadays games are full price forever, except for the few days a year when they go on “sale” and get reduced to what they should’ve been all along. During which time the publishers get to act like they’re being altruistic and doing us a massive favour.

    • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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      23 days ago

      The slow burn lowering prices over time also maintains a bit of long term income for a maintenance team to patch and improve the game. This game is 2 years old and is getting slammed down to $5, that says to me they’re just trying to cash out on whoever is left that wants to buy it but hasn’t, and then I’d bet this game never sees an update ever again afterward.

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    23 days ago

    I pirated the game and it included all the DLC. Then I played it for a few hours and was glad I didn’t spend 5 dollars on it.

  • _sideffect@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    These are old games

    The price regularly seen is just there to make them seem that they have more value than they actually do

  • stardust@lemmy.ca
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    23 days ago

    $70 price is for people who are really impatient and then sales are to capture price sensitive people over time. Not unusual. It’s why I wasn’t bothered by the $70 retail price, since I knew I’d never have to pay it. It’s just a tax on the impatient.

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    22 days ago

    Because recent AAA games are so trash noadays and also the main thing is that the price of the game isn’t their main source of income anymore.

    Sell game cheap get em hooked on spending more money in game on used condom hats or whatever garbage they sell in their games

  • LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    Because they’re desperate to recoup some of their money for development and the game hasn’t sold very well. Case in point: Suicide Squad is 3.49 or 4.99 for the deluxe edition. The game sold like trash so they desperately want to make some more money and hope people will go like “well it’s only 5 bucks. I may as well.”

  • Soleos@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    There are people willing to pay $80 for your game, $60, $40, $20, $10, and $5. You might be able get someone willing to pay $10 to pay $15 with good marketing, but you will never get them to pay $60. So when you’ve gone through most people willing to pay $60 and $40, you might as well go through the rest of the market. It doesn’t cost you that much more than you’re already spending on servers, so why not make that extra money.

  • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    Because it’s not just about money, that’s why you hear about the number of copies sold more than gross revenue, it represents number of interested people that can buy another product at X dollars. Every now and then exec put up big sales, pump the numbers up before the big reports.

    That’s also why Nintendo games neeever go on sale.