Video games, draining credit cards faster than health bars

For the longest time, the base price for a triple A game was $60, but in the past five years, that has increased to $70. Not only that, more and more games are being released unfinished; then the finished product is being sold as DLC (downloadable content). Given the popularity of paid battlepasses and costly cosmetics. This leads to video games costing much more than they used to.

One example of a popular game with paid extra content is Call Of Duty, a franchise of games that are often released unfinished due to yearly deadlines. Then the completed content will be sold as an expansion or DLC, even when they should’ve been in the base game from the start. Another thing is the paid battlepasses, popularized by Fortnite, they add possible extra cost. It is getting out of hand. Even mobile games where all the player does is connect colors, such as Gardenscapes, have paid battlepasses. At least the battlepasses give away things that affect gameplay, skins can cost up to $30, such as the Beavis and Butthead skins for Call Of Duty, which are purely cosmetic.

For decades Triple A games have always had the base price of $60. Recently, the new base has become $70, which is a 20% increase. This trend started in the early 2020s, and now, new releases cost more. That isn’t even counting the special, or ultimate or any other edition of the game. These can cost from $80 to $140, a 14% to 100% increase, that’s double the money on the high end. Putting that on the base $60, it’s a 33% to 133% increase.

While when accounting for inflation, $60 five years ago is around $75 today, it takes more hours to work to buy the average priced game. The federal minimum wage was and is $7.25, in 2020, someone had to work 9 hours to afford the average priced game. Due to the increase in standard price, that time has turned into 10 hours.

In the long run, a person can save money in some ways. For example, buying Triple A games costs much more now, than it did just five years ago. As of now, the best solution is to just wait for a sale. PC game platform Steam has major sales for every season, and smaller, themed, “fests” throughout the year. These sales can range from around 20% to 90% discounts. Other platforms also have sales that can range from 40% to 80% off.