Don't pre order games. Don't buy games at full price. Support indie devs.
this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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There are so many options out there that asking for $80, or whatever the equivalent is, is just ridiculous. I really hope people stand up against this bulshit.
At garage sales books can often be found for 25 cents a piece (320 books in $80).
But it still spooked Wall Street, as parent company Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.’s shares plummeted as much as 10% following the news.
I think our economy might be predicated entirely on stupid.
Also, $80 is a lot when typical people's buying power is decreasing. I think like half of americans can't tank a $500 surprise bill, and they want people to blow nearly 20% of that on a video game? Fuck off, capitalists.
We (the gaming community) say this every time, but microtransactions and lootboxes have spread like viruses because gamers are buying them.
I hate predatory pricing on principle, but whale votes count for a lot more.
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Generally, I don't buy games over $18 CAD. I've made exceptions (Temtem, Civ 6, Super Mega Baseball 3, My Time at Portia, Satisfactory, a couple of others) but never paid more than $40 unless it's a gift for someone I really like (I pre-ordered Fallout 4 for my ex for her birthday).
I will happily wait years for something to come down in price. I have 600+ games on Steam: I always have other options.
It sucks that waiting for a sale might only bring down to the original $50 new full price it used to be.
Just have to wait longer I guess.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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For the last 10 years I've only paid full price for one AAA game: Elden Ring. I've gotten something like 200 hours out of it. It may be the best value for a AAA game ever, in my book. (And I haven't yet played the expansion.)
I'm happy to wait for sales on everything else, including the secondary market for Nintendo games, but after their recent fuckery in multiple arenas, I'm not keen buying anything they produce. (Not that it matters. Their stuff will sell regardless.)
No kidding. Not counting games I play 'any way I can':
- Oolite
- Endless Sky
- Nethack
- Shattered Pixel Dungeon
- Dwarf Fortress
- Liberal Crime Squad
- Mindustry
- WarZone 2100
- OpenTTD
- OpenRCT2 (though this requires some investment, you need the files from the original 2 games)
- FreeCiv
- EDOPro
- Card-Forge
That's just what I have on this machine. If I check my GOG account, I'd have more. And I don't give money to Valve.
I've said this elsewhere before but video games are a commodity and an impulse buy. Very few people view the next video game as an essential purchase for themselves. So sure people can have them and haha about how much the cost of developing a video game has gone up till they're blue in the face but that is not going to change how the consumer will feel at the register buying the game. If the person at the register does not feel that the price is justified they're not going to pay it they're going to wait for a sale, borrow it from a friend if they can get access to physical media, or pirate it.
There are very few games I would spend $80 on. Actually, at this point I don't buy a lot of new games to begin with, I'm mostly just grinding the same old favorites now.
But for the games I really care about, I'm willing to spend on games I know will be worth it to me. I've waited 22 years for a sequel to Kirby Air Ride and if I have to pay $80 for it, I will pay $80 for it.
There are a few franchises that still have me day 1 even if they went to that price point (The Witcher, Persona, Trails). Those are always 80 hours minimum, though.
The amount of options isn’t the issue.
For most 25-40€ games I buy, i can get a great experience for the next 30-50 hours.
Indie games absolutely crush the statistics, where some sub-15€ roguelikes have such insane replayability, that i’ve clocked over a thousand hours into a couple. Not to mention how incredibly creative, unique, and story rich some of them are.
Meanwhile, what used to be 60€, and is now 80€+, is some “cinematic” 20fps on console slop, that you can barely get 5 hours of real gameplay out of. I don’t wanna sit there and watch a movie with an occasional A button press. Or even worse, play something like the Assassins Creed reboot, that had 500 hours of gameplay, 490 of which is just useless collectibles around the map.
Measuring games by hours has become an increasing less useful metric to me because I already have my grinding games that I can endlessly replay. When buying new games, I'd rather get something I'll really enjoy for a short playthrough than a long epic JRPG I can't bring myself to actually set aside time for - even though I do really love JRPGs.
I feel like play time per money spent mattered when most people were buying offline games at full price but to me it hasn’t been relevant for a long time. I might pay full price for a game that is incredible for 5-10 hours but a game that is mediocre for 100 hours I wouldn’t even play for free.
I fully agree with that. There are some games that are fully worth the price, even if the hours/$ isn’t quite there, but in most cases it’s not anymore
Check out Expedition 33. It feels like a love letter to jrpg but without the time commitment.
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It kills me the the Jedi games, TLoU2, GoW games, they're fun but they're what, max 30 hours to beat? And they're trying to up the price to 80?
Red dead 2 deserves 80. Cyberpunk in its current state could deserve 80. Both are around 100-120 hour games and I've replayed them multiple times. 30 hour games by proportion deserve a quarter of the price.
Never will understand people equating monetary value with how long they spend time with a game. Quality /= quantity or else Ubisoft and gacha games would be the best games of all time.
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Would be interested to know what games you have >500 hours in. Especially if they aren't multi-player online games.
Stellaris, civ v, oxygen not included, city skylines, x3/rebirth/4, workers and resources: soviet republic, kerbal space program, rimworld, crusader kings 2 and 3.
Basically anything civilization/city/base/colony builder is my jam and some of them have over 2000 hours over the years. I like building perfect societies and roleplay how people live in them in my head while i do it. It's one of the ways i relax and express creativity.
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XIV, but I never engage with other players aside from solo queue for dungeons etc
Factorio, stardew, civ vi are my top 3.
Terraria is the easiest one.
I wish I had more time to play other single player time sinks like Dwarf Fortress, or even BeamNG.drive.
I've clocked 600 hours in Kerbal Space Program, and probably high thousands to over ten thousand in Minecraft.
Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Witcher 3, Fallout
Really any RPG you can easily get 1000 hours of play.
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Fallout 4. A lot of this is going to be due to mods.
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Wargame: Red Dragon. Intended to be played multiplayer; I played it single-player. Steel Division II is a far better single-player choice if you don't mind the different setting, as the AI is much more interesting.
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Skyrim. A lot of this is going to be due to mods.
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Fallout 76, the only entry here I actually play multiplayer (and even that to a minimal degree; that game tends to have players having pretty minimal interaction with each other unless they're actually trying to play with each other). I would recommend playing Fallout 4 over Fallout 76 unless you specifically want multiplayer; Fallout 76 is just the closest thing to "more Fallout" short of a Fallout 5.
Not run through Steam, so no Steam stats (though available on Steam) but I'm sure that they're way up there:
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Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. Free and open-source, though there's a commercial build on Steam if you want to effectively donate. If not, can download from their project page.
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Dwarf Fortress. Free, though there's a commercial build on Steam with a fancier, more-approachable UI and such.
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Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, though that's going back a few years. Free and open-source.
Some others with a fair bit of playtime:
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Steel Division II. Primarily a multiplayer game, but I only play single-player.
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Mount & Blade: Warband. The Prophesy of Pendor mod adds a fair bit of time to this.
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Elite: Dangerous. Though I don't remember how I accumulated that many hours. Wasn't super-impressed with the game. Probably pretty in VR, though.
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Carrier Command 2. Primarily intended to be played multiplayer, but I play single-player.
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For indie and cheaper stuff specifically? The Binding of Isaac is over 1k hours between my two copies. Rimworld, Factorio, and Terraria are all close to 500h as well. If Minecraft counts as one for you, this is an outlier with roughly 4k hours since 2011.
Otherwise, I am quite into MMOs and story-rich singleplayer RPGs, so there's a handful of them with well over several thousands of hours played too.
and Terraria are all close to 500h as well.
If you like Terraria, have you tried Starbound?
Yes. I didn’t like it nearly as much, if at all. I’ve heard mods make that game infinitely more enjoyable though, so maybe i’ll try it again some day
Well I’m not them, but for me: KSP1: 1800.8 hours. Current cost $40 = $0.02 an hour DCS: 1294.7 hours. Money spent eh $300 = $0.23 an hour Witcher 3: 1131.5 hours. Current cost: $40 = $0.03 an hour. Civ vi: 589.9 hours. Current cost: $60 = $0.10 an hour Stardew valley: 579.3 hours. current cost $15 = $0.026 an hour Fall out new Vegas: 543.6 hours. Current cost: $10 = $0.0018 an hour
Now if we add in the $2000 worth of peripherals I have to play dcs it’s cost balloons quite a bit but, it’s not terribly difficult to get high playtimes in cheap games. I would also say the cost per hour for me is double or triple what it actually is, as these are the current prices, and besides dcs I buy everything only on sale lol.
Well I’m not them, but for me: KSP1: 1800.8 hours. Current cost $40 = $0.02 an hour
My electricity costs to run the game are higher than the cost of the game itself at that point.
EDIT: Keep in mind that some of these have DLC, and if you buy them, it increases the price. Kerbal Space Program with all DLC is $70; that's still an extremely good value at 1800.8 hours, but does bump the number up. Fallout: New Vegas has (good) DLC that I would want; all DLC would take the game to $45. Civilization VI would go to $230 (and I assume that they're still turning out DLC). I listed Stellaris myself, along with a lot of other people. I really liked the game, and even the base game is a good game, IMHO, but in typical Paradox game fashion, if you buy all the DLC, it adds up to quite a bit
$470 currently, and they're still turning out DLC. Someone listed DCS, I have The Sims 3 on my list, Total War: Warhammer II. All of those games have pricey DLC libraries that, if purchased in total, run multiple hundreds or over a thousand dollars (with the Total War: Warhammer series using an unusual take on this, where prior games in the series also act as DLC for the current ones). They can still be pretty cost-competitive per hour with other games, but only if the person who buys them is actually playing them a a lot.
Minecraft, slay the spire, civilisation, atomicrops.
Balatro could have been a contender but I lost interest suddenly and unexpectedly.
spoiler
Tetris the daddy
Factorio, eu4, stellaris, satisfactory, slay the spire, etc
FTL for me
Peglin for me. Cheaper world games I have an insane amount of hours in.
RimWorld ...