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.

  • jaschen@lemm.ee
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    5 hours 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.

  • stardust@lemmy.ca
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    7 hours 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.

  • simonced
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    5 hours ago

    Lol, still too expensive for that garbage…

  • irotsoma@lemmy.world
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    9 hours 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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      8 hours 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.

  • wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Exhibit A:

    nfs games up to and including MW 2012

    These are solid, enjoyable entries in the series. Peaked with Underground 2 and MW 2005, but the takeover/acquisition of Criterion pumped new life into HP 2010 and MW 2012.

    Exhibit B:

    nfs games released after MW 2012

    These are dogshit. Heavy dlc, meh progression, horrible to play on a keyboard, stupid upgrade systems (cards? cards? are you retarded, EA?), always-online, shitty online servers, horrendous physics, so arcadey that they make actual arcade racing games look desirable.

    You’ll note that this game is in the second group.

    I got it as a gift a couple weeks ago, they paid $10 for it, which I was holding out for >$5 to buy myself; it’s actually better than the last iteration, but not by much. That game - heat - I thrashed on at launch and 6mo later, and when the premium or whatever edition dropped to like $1.25, I finally bought it (10h demo before) and honestly, I want my $1.25 back. Here, $5 for unbound is about right, near the upper limit.

    If they hadn’t killed Criterion (the reboot is in name only, the talent jumped ship with the forced merge), nfs might be awesome still. They have to do a metric fuck-load to save this series. I have almost every game, I’m a massive fan of the series… But for the past decade, it’s fucking dogshit.

  • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Is there a new title coming? My car feed has been featuring a real build of the Most Wanted (2005) M3 GTR recently from BMW. I see franchise sales often when a new entry is coming out. I don’t see any announcements though, so maybe it’s just because it’s rated so poorly

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    13 hours 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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      13 hours 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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        12 hours 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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          12 hours 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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            11 hours 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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              11 hours 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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                9 hours ago

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

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

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

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      13 hours 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.

    • yesman@lemmy.world
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      13 hours 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.

  • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
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    11 hours 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.

    • 0^2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 hours ago

      Is there a way to exclude specific anticheat like denuvo from ever showing up in the store? Would love to add tags to perm exclusion list or something