No you’re right, Minecraft did do that. At least they didn’t hide behind inflation though, they simply increased the price as content was added.

Regardless, office pay has next to nothing to do with this. The consumer doesn’t directly pay the worker’s salary. The worker makes the product, the consumer buys the product, end of transaction.

Pay is handled by the studio. If the devs want a pay increase, which is more than deserved, then the studio needs to find the funds for that. If they don’t have the funds then they need to create more product. Simple as. Artificially boosting the price of existing products isn’t the answer.

Again, it’d be like if CDPR decided Cyberpunk was suddenly worth $90 after the 2.0 update. That’d be silly.

Google strawman.

Look, I don’t mean to be a dick but unless your reading comprehension is abysmal you’re purposefully misunderstanding my point.

Like I said,

That’s very different than deciding to increase the price arbitrarily in the middle of developing an early access title that’s been in development for 5 years, and isn’t releasing officially yet.

I’m okay with how Minecraft did things. Same with titles like BG3, Hades, Shovel Knight, and countless others. This is different, and if you can’t understand that after I laid it out twice for you then it’s clear you’re not arguing in good faith.

The costs of updates and bug fixes, ie maintenance, aren’t equivalent to building the game from the ground up.

Again, there’s literally no reason for you to believe that this price increase somehow means you’ll never have to pay for dlc. Have you never heard of Factorio?

And for the record, like with your Minecraft example, I’m not against devs charging less for Early Access versions, alphas, betas, etc, and charging more for the finished product when it fully launches. That’s a very common practice, in fact it’s the standard.

That’s very different than deciding to increase the price arbitrarily in the middle of developing an early access title that’s been in development for 5 years, and isn’t releasing officially yet.

So you’re saying that because of that, all things must also rise in price, just inherently?

By your logic any movie released decades ago should cost far more now than it did back then, right? To rent or buy, it should be infinitely more. What about games from the 90’s or 00’s? They should be far more expensive.

Why don’t I have to pay 100’s of dollars every time I watch A Clockwork Orange? Why doesn’t it cost hundreds of dollars to play the original Half-Life? After all, counting for inflation they should all cost far, far more than they currently do. Actually take a second and think about it.

Why do you think buying a digital copy of something is cheaper than buying a brand new, physical copy? Because each physical copy had to be built from the ground up, taking all new materials to do so, whereas the digital copies can effectively be infinitely reproduced. They’re not affected in the same way.

Nope, they decided to accept purchases for a game that isn’t finished, and in doing so promised that one day it would be. If they stop now they’ll just be scammers.

They should do what Larian did. Release the game in EA, develop the game with those new purchases helping to keep things going, then release it when it’s complete. No artificially changing the price, no bs.

And in what world has what we’ve gotten from free Satisfactory updates constituted would-be paid dlc? Or are you just using hypotheticals that aren’t relevant?

Hence why you release a new product. You can’t indefinitely make income from one thing until the end of time.

You can charge more for a new product, as you can actually scale for inflation when you have to make it from the ground up. After all, the tools and manpower it required cost more now. So you can charge more.

But asking for more money for a product that was made half a decade prior, that didn’t cost what it costs now since inflation wasn’t where it is now, isn’t the answer.

Listen, as a general rule of thumb, if even EA and Activision won’t go there, maybe you shouldn’t either.

I wrote is elsewhere but I’ll write it again here:

Inflation affects physical goods because you need to make the product from the ground up every single time. Those materials cost money, and rise with inflation, so making the product from scratch each time gradually costs more as time goes on. Hence why they need to raise the price of the finished product - otherwise they’d literally lose money on each sale.

Digital goods don’t work this way, once the product has been made it can freely be distributed without having to be remade again and again.

Yes, it costs money to patch and update. But that’s not comparable to rebuilding the product from the ground up like with physical goods.

Fair enough, maybe I’ve just become jaded after seeing what the Factorio devs pulled.

I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, I’ll take your word for it. I’ll be really sad if they decide to increase the price even further on the official launch though.

I wish that were true but according to their video it’s due to inflation, not due to any official release.

They’ve been developing No Man’s Sky for even longer. Should it cost $100 now?

Edit: And it’s in Early Access so… no duh?

No, no it doesn’t. The cost of a game getting patches and updates isn’t the same as the cost of making the game in the first place.

Inflation affects physical goods because you need to make the product from the ground up every single time. And those materials cost money, and rise with inflation, so making the product from scratch each time gradually costs more as time goes on. Hence why they need to raise the price of the finished product - otherwise they’d literally lose money on each sale.

Digital goods don’t work this way, once the product has been made it can freely be distributed without having to be remade again and again.

Yes, it costs money to patch and update. But that’s not comparable to rebuilding the product from the ground up like with physical goods.

By your logic all movies, tv shows, and all other forms of digital goods should actually increase price with age, not decrease. Team Fortress 2 should be like $100 by now. After all, servers aren’t free.

Also, their wages come from sales. If they no longer have money to pay their employees then they should look towards developing new games, dlc, or merchandising. Artificially inflating the prices of existing goods isn’t the answer. There’s a reason that not even EA or Activision have pulled this.

Maybe games as a service shouldn’t be a thing then. Just a thought.

By that logic any game that gets updated should have its price increase. No Mans Sky should cost like $100.

Nintendo Labo

Persona 3 Portable

Gross, and they even used the “inflation” excuse the Factorio devs used, despite it literally not applying to existing digital goods.

Not even EA would try to increase the price of a half decade old game…

Edit: And wow, putting it on sale right before a price increase? Sounds like fomo to me.

This really is the year of the douche and the turd sandwich

I mean I live in CT, and technically I have wolves and bears, but neither are going to appear under my toilet paper

Eh, a distorted reality is now a necessity to be free