Online sale have reduced distribution costs and unlimited scaling compared to physical media, so successful games are far more lucrative now than they were and unsuccessful games don’t have losses from overproduction and returns from stores.

Certainly a factor that should be included in determining what a game costs, as is the 30% off the top taken by Steam, Microsoft, and Sony for most digital sales. Distribution in 2023 was not a factor in determining the current max price for a standard edition non-sports game, which was set in the early 00s.

I’m also comfortable seeing games that cost less to produce carrying lower price tags, as in many cases they do, Hades and Hi-Fi Rush coming to mind.

If selling at the current rate wasn’t profitable, gaming companies would have stopped making games by now.

They continue to make $60 games, yes. No one can say whether some company would have made the greatest game of all time last year if they’d been able to sell it for $70, or $80 or $100. Maybe they’re making it now as GTA6.

The economy of scale is what lets companies operate at higher costs. According to Wikipedia RE2 cost about $1 million to make. $1m might still buy a PS1 caliber game, but the remake cost at least an order of magnitude more. Many games now cost nine figures; GTA6 apparently cost $1 billion.

I’m not saying games should haphazardly inflate with everything else for the sake of share holders, but I’m open to the idea that the formula used twenty years ago to decide that AAA games should cost $60 might be out of date.

deleted by creator

I don’t think it’s hyped up. You just need context.

The OGL stuff was a tipping point but WotC prioritizing profit at the expense of the player is hardly new. I think the last truly lauded release in D&D proper was the shift to 5th edition, which was nine years ago and was a correction after 4th. Before that it was probably Eberron, almost twenty years ago. Other changes have largely been to increase profit with little consideration on improving the game. 4th edition, while not actually a bad game, was a mistargeted attempt to cash in on MMOs as well as the first attempt to kill the OGL. More recently you will not find many active DMs who love the 5e splatbooks, or who think the game values how they spend their time preparing for a session, or thinks the game does a great job helping them design custom content, or who really loves how WotC is locking down the virtual tabletop space.

Tabletop game design, as well as how designers interact with their player bases, has completely changed for the rest of the TTRPG space.

You missed the rise of Paizo, where former D&D writers found a home to write pre-generated content that is legitimately good and saves GMs hundreds of hours of work, called Adventure Paths, and who later filled the niche of 3.5 when WotC forced closure in favor of something more easily monetized. You missed Apocalypse World/Dungeon World/Blades in the Dark and Cypher, systems where cutting down on prep time was a serious priority rather than a tertiary afterthought, making games much more fun for the GM. You missed the OSR, the return to D&D’s roots. You missed Savage Worlds, Fate, FFG’s Star Wars, Free League, Honey Heist, Gumshoe, Lancer, tons of innovative ideas.

The other old companies like White Wolf and Chaosium have reacted at every step, re-writing their games to reflect modern design principles unprompted and working to improve distribution of their content. Those have also been attempts to make money, but by making the product better, not by squeezing the player base. The one time WotC was forced to turn to its designers they got 5th and they’ve been milking it since.

A lot of people don’t care about any of that, they just buckle down and play D&D. But DMs and most of the people who talk online are power users who know what they’re missing.