Everyone stay tranquil, this is a story about the economic realities of video games and how they affect businesses and consumers.
Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 are video games, and Larian’s publishing director says they were priced “below their value” because the studio believed it would get a return on its investment and was also concerned with costs that regular people already pay.
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There’s a bit of context surrounding that statement, which ends in the tweet, and it’s this: Encouraged by Star Wars Outlaws’ pricing, Michael Douse, the aforementioned publishing executive, said in another tweet earlier this week that he believes, “Almost all games should cost more at a base level because their production costs (inflation, for example) outpace price trends.”
The developer added that he believes “the price of a game should be in line with its quality, breadth, and depth,” and ended the thread by apparently joking that studios are simply waiting for GTA 6 to potentially reset the market a bit with a higher price tag that will be worth it before following suit.
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Now Douse is back at it with another thread on the subject, which includes a “short economics lesson” since Twitter is by far the best medium to deliver them. Noting that “most of the development costs are salaries”, argued that many studios and publishers respond to inflation causing higher costs of paying developers, especially in the later stages of development as work gets closer to release, in several different ways.
This is where things like AI can come into play, which can be seen as an basic cost-cutting measure, and Douse says another consequence is that many Triple-A studios try to “reduce risk” by following established trends in their games. Despite some “exceptions,” the publishing executive believes this strategy is less likely to lead to “*better* games.”
Finally, Douse outlined his approach to pricing Larian games in delicate of the situation, saying, “I priced DOS2 and BG3 below their value because I care about people’s living expenses and I believe in our profits,” and added that the collector’s editions were “significantly lower” than the studio could have priced them.
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Now let’s take a deep breath.
While this is clearly a elaborate situation that can’t be fully explored via a Twitter thread, Douse has clearly put a lot of thought into it and has a useful perspective in the perspective his post provides. There’s probably no basic answer to the conundrum that would ensure that consumers who are currently squeezed by rising costs in all areas of their lives, developers who deserve to be well-paid for their strenuous work and have job security at a time when their industry is seeing mass layoffs on an almost monthly basis, and executives who have to look at spreadsheets and please shareholders can all be equally cheerful.
Then again, having to find a way to make it all work is supposedly one of the reasons high-ranking executives in the gaming industry make more money than the game developers who make the games their companies sell, right?
