I wouldn't say so. Games back in the day were expensive too, even without the constant sales. By back in the day I'm talking way back in the 80's and up.

What makes games today more expensive though, is all the DLC, microtransactions and add-ons they try to get you with, which is another sales tactic you might want to connect like with your furniture stores. Sometimes games are even offered for free, but they have a bunch of DLC that you'll have to buy if you want to experience what the game has to offer. Some games are used as loss leaders too. The tactic might not work on everyone, but it does indeed work.

Games today come out at a price, and once they can get everyone to buy it at that price, they'll lower it during a sale to get everyone else. The people in charge at the company's are the main reason of it all though, whatever sales tactics they learned, were taught, or just believe works, they will employ on that strategy for selling the game.

In regard to sales though, I feel like that there's way too many sales, haha. I find it kinda silly there's always sales, but it's just what the industry turned into. It's like a carousel with sales.

Originally posted by Grimmrog_SIG:

Steam is constantly running discounts and it feels like some sort of furtniture stores where they try to sell you "original price here way beyond what people would buy for" but we have most of the time of the years just 40% off. "offerings".

there was a time where "sales" on steam were a real thing, but we are now runnign from one sale to another and it questions what the point of sales is, just to "normalise" prices thate are too high so people even uy things?

Steam doesn't manage game prices or sale prices as they don't own most of the products sold on Steam. They don't influence or pressure pricing, or participation in sales.

So, what's happening? First, the game industry is still evolving. Which mean current and past status quos aren't permanent. Secondly, routine. You live through enough big sales events and you develop a habit of only buying games on sale, during huge sale events, and that colors your perceptions. Third, you're just getting old. Old enough to see around the facade. But maybe not quite aware it was how much novelty concealed the facade in the past. Novelty wears off, and the facade isn't quite so impressive or magical.

The price is the price. It's up to you to decide if you don't like the price. There's not an objective proof for the claim or idea though. The sales don't exist to appease curmudgeons. Enjoy games or don't.

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by Grimmrog_SIG:

Steam is constantly running discounts and it feels like some sort of furtniture stores where they try to sell you "original price here way beyond what people would buy for" but we have most of the time of the years just 40% off. "offerings".

there was a time where "sales" on steam were a real thing, but we are now runnign from one sale to another and it questions what the point of sales is, just to "normalise" prices thate are too high so people even uy things?

Steam doesn't manage game prices or sale prices as they don't own most of the products sold on Steam. They don't influence or pressure pricing, or participation in sales.

So, what's happening? First, the game industry is still evolving. Which mean current and past status quos aren't permanent. Secondly, routine. You live through enough big sales events and you develop a habit of only buying games on sale, during huge sale events, and that colors your perceptions. Third, you're just getting old. Old enough to see around the facade. But maybe not quite aware it was how much novelty concealed the facade in the past. Novelty wears off, and the facade isn't quite so impressive or magical.

The price is the price. It's up to you to decide if you don't like the price. There's not an objective proof for the claim or idea though. The sales don't exist to appease curmudgeons. Enjoy games or don't.

This is your awnser OP. To reiterate what our friend nullable said, steam doesn't set prices. Games are too expensive, but that isn't Steam's fault.

Game prices have gone up less than the prices of everything else I buy, so they don't seem particularly expensive. (I've also been seeing "OMG <current price> is too high! I won't pay more than <lower price>" threads for 20+ years now.)

As for "sales all the time". . . yeah, back when Steam sales were 2-3 times a year, they felt more "special" and I actually felt more compelled to get something. With another sale less than a month away usually, I'm more likely to think "eh, I've got plenty of backlog. There'll be another sale I can get that during" and not buy something.

Meanwhile, IRL retail has shown that people "like" sales better then Everyday Low Prices. I think it was JC Penny that tried the "let's get rid of the constant OMG SALE, and just give them that price all the time with no bells & whistles" - and they failed miserably. People didn't buy nearly as much without those big bold SALE signs on everything. Hooray for human nature?

Considering we don't own anything we purchase on the storefront? Yeah.

Originally posted by Bishop:

Considering we don't own anything we purchase on the storefront? Yeah.

You own a license. In the past you owned $2 worth of plastic and a license. And the $2 worth of plastic was only the delivery medium because the internet maybe wasn't fast enough for most people to download hundreds of MB or Multi-GB games in the first decade or so.

You want to "own" your games like you did in the past? Download a game, burn it to a CD/DVD/Blu-ray. Feel better? No? Because nothing has really changed? Exactly.

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by Bishop:

Considering we don't own anything we purchase on the storefront? Yeah.

You own a license. In the past you owned $2 worth of plastic and a license. And the $2 worth of plastic was only the delivery medium because the internet maybe wasn't fast enough for most people to download hundreds of MB or Multi-GB games in the first decade or so.

You want to "own" your games like you did in the past? Download a game, burn it to a CD/DVD/Blu-ray. Feel better? No? Because nothing has really changed? Exactly.

true but no one could just take that license away from you liek they could possibly do today.

Thread title: Are Steam prices too expensive?

Valve does not set the prices for 3rd party games.

The developer, publisher do on all PC platforms it is sold on.

Example: Assassins Creed Valhalla is the same price on Steam, Epic, Ubisoft Connect because it is a Ubisoft product.

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by Bishop:

Considering we don't own anything we purchase on the storefront? Yeah.

You own a license. In the past you owned $2 worth of plastic and a license. And the $2 worth of plastic was only the delivery medium because the internet maybe wasn't fast enough for most people to download hundreds of MB or Multi-GB games in the first decade or so.

You want to "own" your games like you did in the past? Download a game, burn it to a CD/DVD/Blu-ray. Feel better? No? Because nothing has really changed? Exactly.

"You never owned anything before and thus should be happy with owning nothing now!"

What an odd statement. It's also revisionist history. In the past when physical media was dominate you did in fact own your games. If a storefront went down or a company went bankrupt you still possessed the physical disc you purchased. You didn't need to connect to a service to verify your license. You could even make backups if you wanted. That isn't an option now due to anti-consumer DRM practices. We are now beholden to companies like Valve for access to our library and have to hope that they will continue to provide support in the future. Lastly burning a game to a disc is all but impossible nowadays due to DRM so your last statement makes no sense.

Originally posted by Bishop:

"You never owned anything before and thus should be happy with owning nothing now!"

What an odd statement. It's also revisionist history. In the past when physical media was dominate you did in fact own your games. If a storefront went down or a company went bankrupt you still possessed the physical disc you purchased. You didn't need to connect to a service to verify your license. You could even make backups if you wanted. That isn't an option now due to anti-consumer DRM practices. We are now beholden to companies like Valve for access to our library and have to hope that they will continue to provide support in the future. Lastly burning a game to a disc is all but impossible nowadays due to DRM so your last statement makes no sense.

You own the physical medium. You do not own the content on it.

You legally could not copy a PC game disk and why there was "pirating software" to break protections.

Anti-consumer? Odd comment when you need to agree to the EULA to download, install and play a game, and if you do not agree you refund.

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by Bishop:

Considering we don't own anything we purchase on the storefront? Yeah.

You own a license. In the past you owned $2 worth of plastic and a license. And the $2 worth of plastic was only the delivery medium because the internet maybe wasn't fast enough for most people to download hundreds of MB or Multi-GB games in the first decade or so.

You want to "own" your games like you did in the past? Download a game, burn it to a CD/DVD/Blu-ray. Feel better? No? Because nothing has really changed? Exactly.

There's no point in arguing with these people. They will persist in their ignorance no matter how much evidence they are given, because that is what they've been trained to do by streamers, politicians, and propagandists. It's what our entire government is glorifying now - screw science, law, and fact, go with your 'feelings'.

I'm old enough that I remember buying PC games for $20 in 1981. However, after inflation, that's over $70 in today's money. As time went on and games got bigger, the prices increased. At one point, you'd open a game box to find 10 floppy disks in it, a big manual, and maybe a few trinkets, like a cloth map and an ankh. It was awesome, but you ended up paying the equivalent of what today would be a "collector's edition". Some of those games were significantly more expensive than what I pay today. Easily over $100 after inflation.

Prices today are much better in my opinion. Indie games often sell for $20 brand new on release, and even the prestige indie games only cost around $30-$40 on release. With more expensive games, I can just patiently wait for the price to drop. I've seen a few games start at $70-$80, and just a couple weeks later, it's on sale for $50 at an authorized Steam key seller. Then a month later, I feel like a dumbass because it's down to $40. It takes forever for some games to drop in price, but they all do eventually.

The other thing is that I own so many games today that I would think it was impossible back then. Across all the various storefronts, I own easily over 1200 games. Game bundles have made PC games so cheap that you can literally own thousands of games. My collection is small compared to some of the people on my friends list, who own 5000+ games on Steam alone. I guess someone has to pay retail price to keep the industry afloat, but it sure isn't me or the people on my friends list.

Originally posted by Grimmrog_SIG:

Originally posted by nullable:

You own a license. In the past you owned $2 worth of plastic and a license. And the $2 worth of plastic was only the delivery medium because the internet maybe wasn't fast enough for most people to download hundreds of MB or Multi-GB games in the first decade or so.

You want to "own" your games like you did in the past? Download a game, burn it to a CD/DVD/Blu-ray. Feel better? No? Because nothing has really changed? Exactly.

true but no one could just take that license away from you liek they could possibly do today.

Well that was always an option. It was just harder to enforce, but it still existed. How many licenses have you had revoked by the way? And what were the circumstances? Is it zero? But you're determined to fuss and hand wring over a product owners ability to enforce the terms you agreed to? I mean I understand why you don't like the idea. But personally I'm not going to pretend your outsized fear has any merit in reality. Let's talk when something tangible happens, that raises into question the validity of software licenses.

Maybe part of my problem is I knew about this before Steam existed, so I'm decades into being used to the idea of software licenses. Seems like a lot of people are just coming to grips with this and fear of the unknown/ignorance is bliss is real.

expensive:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1890100/Ship_of_Heroes/ - 60 USD game + 15 USD/month subscription

Originally posted by Princess Luna:

expensive:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1890100/Ship_of_Heroes/ - 60 USD game + 15 USD/month subscription

Compare that game to Spider Man 2, another $60 game. There is a difference and it's quality. Ship of heroes is a low quality dumpster fire with what looks like a peak of 20 players. SOH isnt just expensive, it's overpriced. Where as SM2 is a quality game that shows effort. You also don't need a $15 subscription to play the game you just dropped $60 (giant red flag BTW don't know why anyone bothered with SOH).