Do you think games are worth their current retail price?

Let me tell you something about full-price 60$ games: if they don't offer 500+ hours of fun and engaging content with triple A graphics and mechanics these days, they are a scam. If they try to sell you things such as DLC especially on day 1, they are almost definitely not worth it. There are free games that offer THOUSANDS of hours of content with fun gameplay. Prime example is Evolve, I was playing the closed beta of a game going to be released in less than a month and there was less content in that game than games I've bought for 5 dollars. On top of that they're trying to sell me stuff in a beta where I'm supposed to be providing feedback. My general theory is to avoid companies with bad business practices, good examples of companies you can trust are Valve and Grinding Gear Games.

They use legitimate Free to Play mottos and Valve's pay-to-play games are cheap and provide more content and fun gameplay than pretty much every 60$ game on the market.
How many games offer
And let's put it another way: I live in Greece. Here the minimum wage is, dunno how much it fell (again) lately, possibly around 400 - 500 euros. Dollars are usually translated to more Euros, making things even more expensive than in the good 'ole US of A. Where, how much did we say the minimum wage was?

So, "over here", to buy a new game you have to spend almost 1/8 of your full wage! This...Is...Madness... as King Leonidas would say before giving gamedevs the boot in a Silicon Valley remake of 300!

"Honey, we won't have water this month. I bought the latest Call of Duty"...
The current minimum wage in the US is $7.25, approximately 6.26 EUR.
 
The problem in Romania also rises in response to Euro prices. We are being taxed at Euro prices when our minimum wage is 250Euros. The prices are not in terms with the market and it's encouraging piracy a lot.
 
The problem in Romania also rises in response to Euro prices. We are being taxed at Euro prices when our minimum wage is 250Euros. The prices are not in terms with the market and it's encouraging piracy a lot.
What is the cost of a brand new AAA release in Romania in Euros, tournique?
 
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Wow, 1/8 of your full wage? What?! How come are the games so expensive in Greece ducklord? I find hard to believe that they are that expensive...
 
I know that when the PS4 was first released in Greece, the MSRP on games was around 70 Euros. Is that still the price, ducklord?
 
I think the answer to this is yes and no. Yes in that some games especially the digital format are too expensive when you consider the fact that no money is spent to burn cds and print covers. There are some publishers that make their games affordable to consumers also.
 
I think the answer to this is yes and no. Yes in that some games especially the digital format are too expensive when you consider the fact that no money is spent to burn cds and print covers. There are some publishers that make their games affordable to consumers also.
I agree with this. I think digital games should come at a discount, for the reasons you mention, and also because you can't resell them or trade them in to recoup some of your money back.
 
I don't know about current games. Some of them seem reasonably priced while others do not. However, I have noticed that games lose market value incredibly fast. A game that's been out for months will drop by 5 or 6 dollars, then continue to do so over the course of a year if it's not a highly rated game. In the end, I just wait til' the hype for the game is over with and see if it's worth it usually. There are games though, like Kingdom Hearts, where I'm fool enough to pay anything due to appealing subject matter.
 
They need to separate the prices better. In Romania, games come off as very expensive when compared to minimum wage. It's almost 50E is almost 30% of the minimum wage.
 
Depends, Ubisoft and EA games? I don't think so. They sell the fraction of a whole game, with full of bugs, for full price then charge you for DLCs so you can actually enjoy the game as it was intended to be. Now, the Witcher 3 on the other hand, I'm pretty sure it'll worth the full price.

Agree with Corten here. I've observed a very disturbing trend with many of this big gaming companies. Early releases of games with many obvious bugs that could have been fixed with proper testing, limited content which forces you to buy DLCs, and worst of all, games which such horrible DRM that you cannot play offline. In some cases, the DRM even locks you out of the game because of a bug.
 
On personal computers, I'd have to say no.

Why bother? Most of them get very cheap very quickly. And when you see things like those humble bundles or Steam sales where a $50 game ends up costing $5, it's not hard to see why most pc games blow up in sales after those sales happen
 
No, I do not think they are at all, and especially when there is no disc. Simply selling a downloadable game and charging $50 for it is a rip off.
 
I think that given it takes sometimes hundreds of people thousands of hours to make some of these games it is well worth it. Some, clearly, are not. There seem to be a plethora of games that get released early and expect you to pay extra for features and I'm having the micro transaction trend. It's the worst thing that has happened to gaming, from my experience. It is what ruined runescape for me.
 
I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet, but, Life is Strange is a cool game, and I picked it up for only 14$ with all the discounts and vouchers. It's a cool little game, which is kind of like a blend between Walking Dead and Heavy Rain, with added time-control elements. I have completed the first episode, and I'm waiting for the second one, which comes out in March, sadly. Will keep occupied with something else till then, tho.
 
I don't think so, especially since most games nowadays, after a few months, Steam will sell it for a much lower price. Perhaps the multiplayer games like GW2 or COD are worth it but...with COD, new one coming out each year, it's hard to justify the cost. Free games like TF2, Dota, LoL really makes other multiplayer games look outrageous when the free ones offer such quality gameplay. I would say GW2, out of my many games, was worth paying the initial cost for.
 
This hugely depends on the game. I'd never pay 50€ for a single player shooter with ~6-8 hours of gametime value. On the other hand the price is perfectly fine for something like an RPG where you can easily play for 50-100+ hours per game. I'm more "resistant" when it comes to prices for games though, since a lot of the games I buy are from Japan anyways, so I have to add 10-20€ for shipping and 10-20€ for taxes as well. If it's a game I really want that's fine with me though, I'd rather pay 90€ for a great game I want than 60€ for Call of Duty.
 
No, they're definitely not worth their prices. ESPECIALLY since torrenting is so incredibly rampant. Why would people pay so much when they can just get it for free??
 
Absolutely not. There are rare exceptions out there, but it seems like to me that these days more and more games feel incomplete. The industry is all about deadlines and pushing games as absolutely quickly as possible to make money and then move onto another project and make even more money.

I realize and understand that making money is the bottom line, but there has been a line crossed where they are being pushed to the point that quality is being sacrificed for speed. It's the typical quantity over quality model. Now, I don't want to say EVERY developer or game is like this, because obviously that isn't true. There are still quality games out there and definitely titles I do not mind paying the full $65 (with tax) for.

But when I see really popular and generic titles like Madden, Call of Duty, or Battlefield ship every year and they have DLC ready to ship and sell BEFORE the game even releases? I have a major problem with that. If your game is selling DLC the day the game comes out, you are deliberately keeping content that I believe should be in the game in order to squeeze more money out of your customers. That practice alone infuriates me and needs to come to a screeching halt.

Playing devils advocate for just a moment, however. Those of us who don't like paying full retail price for these games are doing nothing but promoting a pay to win style of game. A game that is 'free' but absolutely destroys your bank account with micro transactions. It's a losing proposition, really.