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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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Spencer's analysis is just an overview of the current symptom.
This is the real disease:
Investors/shareholders demand infinite growth, but there's finite space to grow (millions of games, few customers). This is why, in the past 2 decades we've been seeing the scummiest of practices being employed again and again, as well as a 300% hike in base prices. Capitalism has eaten gaming.
But we've been observing this trend in AAA and AA publishers/developers mostly. Indie gaming is alive and well and evolving towards being better and better. Why? Because indie developers are not usually beholden to investors.
Once you hear a gaming company you used to like has gone public, say your condolences and then run away.
Two decades ago, games were $50 which, due to switching to discs, was a price reduction over cartridges, so this point in time is a bit cherry picked. But even rolling from there, a 300% hike in base prices would mean games cost $200, and that's just not true.
50 dollars were console games. On PC you'd often find the same game at 30 dollars (disk) or 20 dollars (steam) on release. The difference was due to console makers taking a standard fee cut from every sale.
The first AAA games back then to be released at 40 and 50 dollars on PC were COD MW1 and BF3, which set the trend for all other games since then. This was pure profit for the publishers, since there was no cut for console makers on PC. And before you say it, no, the Steam cut back then wasn't even comparable (much less since it was a % cut and not a standard fee). In fact Steam hiked their cut because of the price hike triggered by EA and Activision, which is what then made EA pull their games off Steam and create Origin.
I don't know where your information came from, but a lot of it is very wrong. I thought maybe you might be from some other country, but that would mean it's a country that uses dollars that are stronger than US dollars, which I don't think is a thing.