Valve: Games are too expensive

[randomizer]

Funny how people think Valve is the good guys. Sorry, last I checked these guys who are preaching "cheaper games" are talking out of the other end of their mouth by charging full RETAIL price for the right to DOWNLOAD a new game.

In my case they then "steal" the game licence back again

Steam FTL

[Psykocyber]

Funny how people think Valve is the good guys. Sorry, last I checked these guys who are preaching "cheaper games" are talking out of the other end of their mouth by charging full RETAIL price for the right to DOWNLOAD a new game.

Its completely irrelevant how you buy the game. They don't charge you for distribution, they charge for the development. And if Valve isn't the good guys, who the hell is the good buys? EA? Blizzard?

[tajoh111]

There are no good guys. Valve wants to make maximum money like everyone. These type of statements are simply good publicity. People will swallow it up because it is valve, and they think valve could never lie to them. Valve reminds me alot like apple in this respect.

I dont believe for one moment they believes games have too high a retail.

Noone wants to sell a game for 25 dollars on initial release. Especially ones which have a high budget.

Most game makers would rather sell purely on the console than sell for 25 dollars.

The retail price of games has not gone up in twenty years, so how can we complain about the prices. People just pirate so much because its so easy. Ten million people pay 15 dollars a month to play wow, people pay 40 dollars for each expansion pack. Is the price scaring everyone off. People will pay the price of entry if they cannot pirate.

[Serpentarius]

Its completely irrelevant how you buy the game. They don't charge you for distribution, they charge for the development. And if Valve isn't the good guys, who the hell is the good buys? EA? Blizzard?

there's no good guys in business .. it's all about maximising profit ..

of coz at the guise of a "good guy" style .. business is very much like politics
you'll understand when you work in a software developer firm .. you think programmers really get the salary they deserved?

it's their bosses who get the cash. some companies may offer distributed gains to "encourage productivity", but in the it STILL the boss gets the cash

some are underpaid, like indian programmers .. we are talking of ration 10:1 of the salary

[zanzabar]

There are no good guys. Valve wants to make maximum money like everyone. These type of statements are simply good publicity. People will swallow it up because it is valve, and they think valve could never lie to them. Valve reminds me alot like apple in this respect.

I dont believe for one moment they believes games have too high a retail.

Noone wants to sell a game for 25 dollars on initial release. Especially ones which have a high budget.

Most game makers would rather sell purely on the console than sell for 25 dollars.

The retail price of games has not gone up in twenty years, so how can we complain about the prices. People just pirate so much because its so easy. Ten million people pay 15 dollars a month to play wow, people pay 40 dollars for each expansion pack. Is the price scaring everyone off. People will pay the price of entry if they cannot pirate.

what he is saying is that it is more profitable to sell the game cheaper since u sell more units, its not a good or bad guy thing its a macroeconomic thing, it seams like a good thing to me since they had more profitability then they were carrying a dead weight loss making the market less efficient through artificial means of forcing a higher price than the demand and peak supply curves called for

and retail prices have gone way up, when i was a kid they were $20 for an snes game and even back in 04/05 games were only $30 for PC and $40 for console and now they are $50-60 for the pc and $60-80 for consoles

and u can pirate WOW there are plenty of private servers

[motopen1s]

I have mixed feelings about Valve. I would say most of the time - their European customers are screwed. That is, the price drops are very rare or even unavailable in this region. Of course everything is also in Euro.

What really pisses me off however is that some games purchased from Steam are totally screwed when it comes to language settings or simply even do not work. In many cases you are not able to play the game in english. And if you take Company of Heroes series then both german and english setting do not work correctly (you cannot hear speach in some instances and embient sounds in others!). So even though the bundle did get cheaper on Steam - what is the point in a game without the sound? (tons of threads on support forum but nothing is done; Valve claims that they can't sell english version of the game in Germany or something like that but hey - just give us a working german version then!)

Now, I am even scared to buy anything from Steam, because I am afraid that I will end up with a screwed german translation or in worse case with a broken game.

Else, I love Steam.

[zanzabar]

COH isnt a valve game they are just distributing it on the client. blame THQ, and why some1 would buy one of their games and expect it to work is beyond me. thats like getting something from EA and complaining about reg and clipping

[Marvin_The_Martian]

Like the message, would love to see them drop prices to go along with what they say ( no I don't mean the discount actions I mean just plain over the board whole range covering lower prices period )

Untill then, talk is cheap.

[motopen1s]

COH isnt a valve game they are just distributing it on the client. blame THQ, and why some1 would buy one of their games and expect it to work is beyond me. thats like getting something from EA and complaining about reg and clipping

Both versions of retail games (german and english) are working absolutely fine, the one distributed at Steam is screwed. I dont think THQ deserves any blame.

[Shintai]

Valve are right on the spot.

[3NZ0]

Valve are right on the spot.

Right on. Now all we need is action to follow up on words.

[Rob94hawk]

I have mixed feelings about Valve. I would say most of the time - their European customers are screwed. That is, the price drops are very rare or even unavailable in this region. Of course everything is also in Euro.

That's your socialist union for ya. Your European Union over there has to "nickle and dime" you in every way they can.

[FischOderAal]

Funny how people think Valve is the good guys. Sorry, last I checked these guys who are preaching "cheaper games" are talking out of the other end of their mouth by charging full RETAIL price for the right to DOWNLOAD a new game.

Servers ain't free.

[Motiv]

That's your socialist union for ya. Your European Union over there has to "nickle and dime" you in every way they can.

God help them EU people (if they believed in it) and their free Healthcare and Social justice. Makes me sick

[mr_knowitall15]

Woot woot for totally hoping for this in another thread!

[fiskov]

I must be one of the only people who dislike Valve..
There games are unfit to pass beta let alone go full retail, CSS being the biggest criminal of them all.. How is it possible to make a game actually worse now than it was during the Beta 4 years ago?
Ever since CS Sold out to steam the games and quality have been nothing but sub par. All Valve has is HUGE amounts of respect for the originals and greats CS, HL, TFC.
Now everyone and there grandmother is too scared to bad mouth and admit these remakes/sequels simply can't compete to their original counterparts.

And they rant about games being to expensive? i'm sorry when was £30 to expensive for 3-4 years hard work. I'll agree with them that yes, CONSOLE games are too expensive £50+, but PC games.. No, sorry.
And some of us like the convenience of DVD's especially here in the UK where nearly every ISP carrys a 40gb monthly download allowence, as well as it being faster to put in a DVD than recieve a message saying "Sorry the servers are currently busy at the moment please try again later".

[Calmatory]

you also have to remember one thing about valve. you never loose your games when your harddrive gets wiped and you lost your game disk. all you have to do is load up steam enter your username and password and download away. who else does that for you for free?

If Valve dies, you lose all the stuff you paid for. Not good. :|

I must be one of the only people who dislike Valve..
There games are unfit to pass beta let alone go full retail, CSS being the biggest criminal of them all.. How is it possible to make a game actually worse now than it was during the Beta 4 years ago?
Ever since CS Sold out to steam the games and quality have been nothing but sub par. All Valve has is HUGE amounts of respect for the originals and greats CS, HL, TFC.
Now everyone and there grandmother is too scared to bad mouth and admit these remakes/sequels simply can't compete to their original counterparts.

And they rant about games being to expensive? i'm sorry when was £30 to expensive for 3-4 years hard work. I'll agree with them that yes, CONSOLE games are too expensive £50+, but PC games.. No, sorry.
And some of us like the convenience of DVD's especially here in the UK where nearly every ISP carrys a 40gb monthly download allowence, as well as it being faster to put in a DVD than recieve a message saying "Sorry the servers are currently busy at the moment please try again later".

Yeah, and CS 1.6 is way better than CS:S. 1.5 was actually better tahn 1.6, sorry.

original HL better than HL2 -> "VALVE OMG U SUX GTFO -.-".

Valve actually updates the games. See CS:S(or DoD:S) for example, it has been going on for 5 years with constant updates and patches. How many other companies do this? If MMORPG's are excluded, I can't think of many others.

Oh, $15 for CS:S, DoD:S and HL2 Deatchmatch was great deal 2 years ago.

[LowRun]

Funny how people think Valve is the good guys. Sorry, last I checked these guys who are preaching "cheaper games" are talking out of the other end of their mouth by charging full RETAIL price for the right to DOWNLOAD a new game.

Totally agreed

God help them EU people (if they believed in it) and their free Healthcare and Social justice. Makes me sick

Could hardly be more off topic.

[Loque]

I would buy more new game releases if they were 25€ a pop, as it is I buy 1 for every 5 I *try*

[gillbot]

I never buy a new launch. I always wait for the sale or it to become old before I buy. GoGamer has awesome sales too, I got Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance on their 24 hour madness for $20 each.

[saaya]

what, game developers and publishers didnt realize this until now?
oc games were selling well initially a couple of years ago when they are around 20-30euros, the top titles now sell for what? 50-100 euros...

[Cuthalu]

I have mixed feelings about Valve. I would say most of the time - their European customers are screwed. That is, the price drops are very rare or even unavailable in this region. Of course everything is also in Euro.

Steam is ridiculously expensive in the EU - games are a lot cheaper in retail than they are in the digital format. It's unacceptable.

[Psykocyber]

Steam is ridiculously expensive in the EU - games are a lot cheaper in retail than they are in the digital format. It's unacceptable.

So Valve is also responsible for others publishers prices? And isn't €50 standard for retail in € using countries?

[Levish]

if games were priced reasonably enough people that would rather pirate them could even be coaxed into buying a few titles :p
heck if old games on steam were 5-10$ I'd probably even buy old stuff for giggles since I already do for Virtual Console (Wii) and Live Arcade (360)

[RPGWiZaRD]

I have no problem paying full price (40~45€ typically lowest price for a new game for etailers in Finland or amazon.co.uk for around 32~35€ with shipping included) for games I like and will play for quite a while. However these games are very few and if price was half of this or say typically 22~25€ or so at etailers in Finland I would also buy a lot more games I'm not so sure about if I like or not. At half the price I'd personally estimate I'd buy roughly 3x more games. I think already a cut of 10€ in average across europe for games would cause a huge boost in sales.