I usually look at it from cost per hour perspective. Tears of the Kingdom was 70 but I played it for ~140 hours, so 0.5 per hour. I’m ok with 1 per hour too but anything higher I start to ask myself “is the developer / publisher worth my support?”. Not all games can be judged by this metric though (eg outer wilds, unpacking)
So far, nothing beats the value of factorio. Mindustry (being so cheap) is a close second.
60+: Haha, I can’t imagine it’s worth it.
20-59: Buy if it comes strongly recommended.
10-19: Impulse buy if the description and screenshots look cool.
1-9: Buy if I like the store thumbnail.
0: Hahaha FUCK no this will hold the game flow hostage every few hours to get me to pay infinite money.
EDIT: YES I know proper - often Open Source - free games exist. :) OpenTTD and good ol’ Nethack are my faves
There’s been a lot of good games for free on epic, and epic still pays the dev/publisher for it, so it’s worth clicking the button even if you don’t download it and play it from thier client.
Don’t let me tempt you with !freegames@feddit.uk!
0: Hahaha FUCK no this will hold the game flow hostage every few hours to get me to pay infinite money.
https://supertuxkart.net/
https://www.wesnoth.org/
https://xonotic.org/
https://freeciv.org/I wish Armagetronad wasn’t so forgotten and had more people in the servers :(
Super Tux Kart is very underrated, super fun game actually
These seemed like recommendations for free games that both are quality and aren’t money grubbing.
Oh, this is fun, lemme do mine:
1-5: It’s most likely worth the money because I’ll likely beat it and have fun even though it won’t land in my all-time favorites.
5-10: I’m hesitant, but it’s probably worth the risk or it’s niche and I need to support the developer.
10-15: I either know for sure I’ll have a lot of fun with it or I’m desperate to play anything new because my library feels a little stale RN.
15-20: It better be fantastic and end up an all-time favorite because why would I pay this much for a video game.
20-60: I’m good. I can wait.
Unless it’s free because it’s open source!
Netscapes?
Clippy! What’s up man! It’s been forever! It’s me, Netscape Navigator! Remember me?
Yes, I remember you! How are you doing, Netscape Navigator?
Mine is more:
$0.00: Is it FOSS, or is it on GOG? Is it DRM-free? Cool. (see: Luanti/MineTest, OpenTTD, Battle for Wesnoth, Beyond All Reason, FreeCiv, FreeOrion, Remnants of the Precursors, Endless Sky, The Ur-Quan Masters, Mindustry, Jill of the Jungle Trilogy, etc)
$0.01+ - $4.99: Is it in eXo? I’ll get it that way.
$5+: I can’t imagine buying it if there’s anything either in the FOSS category or in eXo that does the same thing.
And 99% of the time, if there isn’t, straight to torrents.
Does my game’s thumbnail please you, m’lord?
Main previews won’t load for me right now I’m using mobile tho but yeah the banner looks great
That’s really fun, reminiscent of old-school platforming, absolutely worth the $2 and it runs great on the Steam Deck! Good job!
Thanks!
Not necessarily my cup of tea, but at two bucks it’s basically free, so…
Not the one you asked, but I do like the art. Though I’m not a fan of beat em ups.
Thanks! My partner worked hard on all the art.
Quick question for a game dev:
How does getting steam deck verified work? Like do you reach out? Or do they just check whenever they get to it?
Cool looking game! If I wasn’t deeply unemployed right now I would buy! Hopefully soon
It’s an optional part of getting your game on the steam marketplace, but I’ve had a friend try on steamdeck without messing with it and had no issues. Ymmv, I’m one example and this is my first project.
I’ll probably never play it, but the game looks cool and I can appreciate someone else’s hard work, so Imma buy it.
Good speed on your journey!
Thanks, the support is appreciated!
0: this will stay in my backlog forever
For me it’s
1-4 might buy and never play it
4-12 eh if it’s got good reviews and it’s my genre it’s a potential impulse buy
12-25 it’s got to be very acclaimed and I have to desire it strongly
25-35 if it’s like the sequel of a game I loved A LOT, and has good reviews, and it gets me on a good day
35+ no way, I’ll wait for a discountAs someone who came to PC gaming from decades as a console gamer it blows my mind how cheap PC gaming is once you get over the initial cost of the PC.
And the Steam discount golden age ended years ago, nowadays it’s much more expensive. Not to mention the bundles of the time.
I thought this was age instead of price until I got to 0.
BloodborneNightmare Kart costs 0
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So their greedy assholes that admit to price manipulation…
Never mind, ignore original comment
$8 is a fair price for peak
Were… were you under the impression that companies who sell products of any kind have some kind of deep formula for making sure their pricing is only the razor-edge of what they need to price it at to keep a business running?
Are you insane? Have you ever sold anything? Have you ever run a business?
Also $8 is “greedy assholes” to you? Are you a bot or a tankie or something?
Do… Do you not know what price manipulation is?
Yeah duh, it is when they manipulate you into buying a game for 8$, while we think it is just 5$. Didn’t you read the post?
/jk
Bruh, 8 euro for a full game is greedy??? People out here regularly spending 20 for a skin, or a slotmachine dopamine surprise box… Now that’s real greed
I got like 40 hours of playtime from Peak before taking a break. For $8 I’m very satisfied.
This is just this scene from The Jerk in written form.
A reminder that you don’t need to know advanced maths to be a developer. Just call the necessary functions to do the job
Glances at this guy’s main() function
Instantly dies
I remember when I saw my first main() I just started writing code only inside of it. That seemed to work so I kept going. 20 years later I’ve only ever written code inside that same main(). I’ve changed jobs 4 times. Just… if(job==0)… or if(job==3)… Works like a charm.
I haven’t touched software development in years. Fuck that shit
Good thing I didn’t buy this game. Or continue to buy anything from steam. I got lost trying to figure out what this is even talking about, other than money money money.
After work do you say to yourself “work work work for money money money”, because those are the vibes you are giving off.
I have to disagree. This quote would be super shitty talking about microtransactions, but if this is about Peak, I dont believe they have any microtransactions in their game. Its the full price of the game. And honestly, if you have friends to play it with, $8 is a steal. Its nothing ground breaking or like world changing, but it’s a fun time-waster to spend time with people you like and accomplish a goal with decent replayability.
Very replayable, goofy, and fun, worth your time, and very lightweight, though you can increase settings if you have a better rig. 1000% worth your time especially if you have a few friends. If you all turn off your common sense it becomes even better.
What a way to reveal how stupid you are
What, for questioning the mental gymnastics over the number for the price tag? 3 is 5 and 8 is 10 or whatever? Just say your game is worth $8 and leave it at that. All this feels like the rationale used to explain not rounding up the prices of everything, $2.99 instead of $3 - something I’d like to see gone too.
The best bang for buck Steam purchase I’ve done is Halo MCC for 39,99€. Five great games plus Halo 4.
Getting the Orange Box for $10 back in the day has to be my all-time best.
I’m curious now if anyones selling it used that’s such a steal
It’s frequently on sale for 3.99 on steam!
Oh sweet! Thanks for saying! Have a great day!
Unfortunate they want to shut those servers down.
The crafty madmen
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For me, it goes:
0 - hell no
1 to 5 - sure why not, that’s about as much as a bottled drink.
6 to 10 - maybe once a month.
11 to 15 - better be a pretty damn good game, or I’m refunding.
16 to 20 - I’m waiting for a discount, not worth it.
21 to 60 - hell no
61+ - I’m blacklisting your company from my recommendations.
I have not spent more than $30 for a video game in over a decade and a half. I have no idea who’s affording all these “AAA” titles that go for $50+, or who’s keeping that market alive.
There are some miserable, well-off parents out there in liberal America who just throw money at their kids and ignore what they do with it I guess.
Some of the best games i’ve ever played are in the 1-10 range. With that in mind, i do brlieve that a 60+ game would at least be über eccellent and have much to do. Which might unironically make such games bloated, if they weren’t costly that is. Just to add to this, terraria is about 10 dollars on steam at most times.
Not only is the game fun, but it can last forever if you want. There are many cases of games where the monetisation model is donation based. I bought an offer for pixel dungeon despite the game being free, mostly because shattered pixel dungeon singlehandendly revived the game.
I get that this is Lemmy and users here are a certain way but calling anything over 16 dollars not worth it is genuinely insane.
I think for a good game, by a good company worth supporting, $30 is very fair and reasonable, especially if you get more than a few hours of play out of it.
We seem to spend $60 on movie tickets and snacks for two and leave the theaters after 90 minutes disappointed and never complain as a society beyond saying the movie sucked, but then going to watch the sequel because everyone else is watching it.
The only reason I wouldn’t personally spend more than $30 or so on a game is because generally everything more expensive is published by a major studio, and thus sucks ASS.
Yeah, I’m with you. There’s tons of games I’ve paid a lot more than $16 for that I would absolutely tell past me to buy again instantly. Most recently Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. $40 with all dlc and I’m over 100 hours in, enjoying every minute. Over 100 hours of entertainment from something that cost me less than an hour of labor, in what world is that not worth it?
Yeah man, every single game I’ve got a ton of hours in or thought was a truly great game has been over $16
You can always do the XKCD trick
But even this seems to have gone stale over time, as retro game prices get sticker (even going up as vintage games come back into fashion).
One thing I don’t see on this list is “piracy”, which is a bit weird if your line is $15. I find a lot of bargain bin games to be as bad or worse than FTP games. $20-30 has historically been my sweet spot
imo over 16 it better have workshop support or an active online playerbase
Considering the huge number of games I have that I haven’t tried yet, I don’t think it’s crazy at all to have a high threshold for buying yet another one.
Saying indies are expensive seems wild, but I kind of get it since the Steam Sales on pre-2015 games go hard. And easy piracy of anything up to PS2.
The biggest challenge I have with pirated games - especially Nintendo games - is the controller.
Yeah, I can get Metroid Prime or Mario 64 or Super Smash easily enough. But I can’t have that classic experience on a PS knock off controller.
It’s not the end of the world, of course. But I feel it.
So I suppose you are not doing
pacman -S endless-sky endless-sky-high-dpi?I found some good stuff in the F2P demo/early access. Especially if you’re just looking for a few hours of fun. Every now and then you can find a release F2P title that’s not monetizing you. But without the marketing budget or polish they don’t take off in popularity.
What do you have against OpenTTD and Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead? \s
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead
I spawned as a nun in-game on the rooftop of a cake restaurant. I’ve got nothing but a bible to wreck zombies. And there are so many, there is no tutorial, the controls are tanky, the devs are out of their mind.
0/10
Still waiting for ANNO 1800 with all extensions to fall to the 5$ category. Until then, I’m enjoying me some ANNO 2070.
Meanwhile factorio devs being chads and going with a round number for pricing.
Well it’s different when you’re selling drugs
Surprised Factorio 1 isn’t free so they can hook you before Factorio 2 comes out.
Isn’t factorio 2 basically the space expansion pack?
That seems very subjective. Personally I always round prices correctly (yes I’m pedantic), and every 2.5€ block counts. So 7.99 ≈ 7.50 to me.
