Why are $70 AAA games slashing prices so drastically?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨DuckWrangler9000@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/780012f4-cc2d-4852-b8e0-b27546af5ab9.png

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.

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Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It happens all the time. Especially when the game is critically panned or is old enough that it’s not selling at the original price anymore.

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- Mannimarco@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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
  
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  - Dultas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Both are pennies on the hour investments though. Factorio Space Age has drawn me back in like the OG did years ago.
    
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  - Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Bruh… :(
    
    I just bought Biotech and Anamoly for regular price like 2 weeks ago.
    
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- TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.
  
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  - Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Factorio has only ever gone up in price, and the new expansion costs more than the base game did.
  
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- Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  or any nintendo game, I swear they’re never on sale.
  
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  - icecreamtaco@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    They’re on sale right now
    
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  - Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Literally on sale right now.
    
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- yesman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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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irotsoma@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.

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- SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.
  
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- Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Luckily I started to only buy games after comparing on isthereanydeal.
  
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- TedZanzibar@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.
  
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- skulblaka@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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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capt_wolf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
The steam fall sale is going on right now.

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slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Rope people in with the base game discount and flood them with DLC is the EA way.

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- TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I bought Witcher 3 AND ALL dlc for like 8 dollars last year during this sale.
  
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- DuckWrangler9000@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  I was really tempted by the sale for BFV and BF2042 and a friend told me not to saying it’s EA owned and that’s bad 🥲
  
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  - TGhost@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Be aware of the kernel anticheat,
    
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  - popcap200@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Who gives a shit. If it’s fun and you like it, buy it and play it. Every game studio/publisher is greedy.
    
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Mandy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Pirate triple a and buy indie.
Its what both of em deserve.

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- Tanoh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Nah, just don’t play the AAA bullshit. It is not worth your time to pirate
  
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  - Mandy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    that one depends on ones opinion tho.
    personally? all the ones i did try where dogshit.
    But one womans trash is another man or womans treasure as they say.
    
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- cRazi_man@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  This is the way
  
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  - xavier666@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    This is the way
    
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GhiLA@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
They’re showing their true value.

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_sideffect@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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

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jaschen@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.

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FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Bro, it’s the black friday steam sale…it says so in giant letters on top of the steam store page.

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- TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  but 80% is a lot more than the usual 10-20%
  
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  - FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    These sales always have crazy deals like this. It’s nothing new.some are better than others.
    
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  - Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Yeah, but the 10-20% sales are for good games.
    
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stardust@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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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secret300@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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

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LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.”

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- BroBot9000@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Absolutely this.
  
  Last ditch attempts to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
  
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  - TachyonTele@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    The Steam Autumn sale is right now. Almost everything is on sale.
    
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Soleos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.

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RedditWanderer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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.

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badbytes@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Also, some Steam sales are amazing. 90% off, is great, but not that rare.

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daggermoon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It’s funny I was going to buy it until I saw EA account required and Denuvo.

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- zer0squar3d@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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
  
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  - TroublesomeTalker@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    There’s a couple of curators that “review” DRM in games. It’s not perfect but it helps.
    
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  - daggermoon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Not that i’m aware of, you really just have to read the store page before buying a “game” (license).
    
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ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Because it’s badly reviewed and sales have dried up…?

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Mwa@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
EA Game 🤮

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CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Unbound was basically dead on arrival, its practically just heat with re-shade and barely any actual new content.

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- SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  With the same shitty unoptimization I might add. These games were horribly optimized for what they are. My 8750 and 1060 should not be struggling with this game at 1080p
  
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bruhsoulz@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Because broke niggas like me can’t afford 20$ for a legitimate skyrim copy even tho I got 1800 hrs in that game

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wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Exhibit A:

nfs games up to an 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 of whatever edition dropped to like $1.25, I finally bought it (10h demo before) and honestly, I want my $1.25 back.

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.

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Strider@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
It’s called idiot tax. (hint: not the discounted price)

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jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Because it’s two years old?

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- FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  No it’s the damn autumn sale right now. AAA games stay at full price for years when not on sale.
  
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  - jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    If it were just the Autumn sale, stuff like Space Marines II would have a steeper discount and frankly that sale is more than a little aenemic.
    
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  - darcmage@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    Only if they’re good games that people are still interested in playing. Crappy games slash prices all the time. Exhibit A: Suicide Squad
    
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- altima_neo@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  And because it was kind of a shitty game.
  
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RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Because NFS Unbound sucks. Never in my life have I tried to refund a game so quickly. Couldn’t make it past the first hour of the game.

The characters just won’t shut up, I’m trying to drive not hear people yap about how the illegal street racers that cause millions in public property damage and multiple fatalities each race are so oppressed by the government.

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- Bloodyhog@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Ah, is that the one where you had to endure teenagers trying to do the cool talk for like 15 min before you can even see a car? Uninstalled and refunded straight away.
  
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simonced@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Lol, still too expensive for that garbage…

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- GhiLA@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  boots up some real NFS
  
  “TO THE WINDOOOOOOOO-”
  
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  - DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    TO THE WALL!
    
    ALL THESE FEMALES CRAWL
    
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Joelio@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Because most people won’t/can’t pay these stupid prices just for an average/poor experience.

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boydster@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Black Friday sales are crazy sometimes

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passepartout@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
NFS Unbound wasn’t taken too well by the community. I recently replayed NFS Heat (which was the release before unbound) and it is still a great modern NFS game!

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Aielman15@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Instead of gradually lowering the prices, publishers tend to keep the original price and give it higher discounts as time goes on. People read it and think “wow, it’s 90% off! I can’t miss this deal!” and buy the game.

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XeroxCool@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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

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