Games Are Starting To Take A Toll On My Wallet And I Really Don’t Like It

The gaming industry is growing swiftly, but it is also facing an ongoing struggle—the ability to remain economical. The sheer evolution in tech, particularly visuals and mechanics, has attracted more fans, but as a result, games are becoming more expensive and need more storage space.

Gaming Is Becoming A Luxury With Its Revamped Requirements

The gaming industry is full of profitable game publishers and popular game titles. It’s a powerful ecosystem that keeps growing. One trend is for developers, especially those who use AI in games, to work for large tech companies that can offer them high compensation.

Game publishers often have high overheads, and producing top-quality games can take time. They also have to charge enough for the games to make them worthwhile. Not only that, but the growing competition forces developers to raise the bar without considering the everyday consumer.

The Abysmal State Of AAA Titles

The cost of individual games has risen steeply. Besides the initial cost, players are often goaded into purchasing expansion packs or deluxe editions to find the full experience, most of which should’ve been in the base game anyway. However, no other niche exemplifies this more than the state of AAA titles, which have garnered some controversy due to their recent pricing inflations.

AAA titles are known for their high production value and cost more than other games, so it’s no surprise that games like Elden Ring or Red Dead Redemption 2 usually cost $60 at launch. After all, this has been the default price point for decades, and I would personally pay a bit more for those aforementioned titles.

Unfortunately, the state of AAA games is declining while their prices are rising. $70 is starting to become the norm for your favorite high-end titles, which may be acceptable if the game’s quality can justify it, but it usually doesn’t. When you have widely-known gaming flops like Redfall and Forspoken asking players for $70, it is definitely a poor look at the industry.

Some developers have tried to hide their failures by claiming their games are “beta releases which will receive updates” and start pushing out content updates in the form of DLCs. Some updates, like Shadow of the Erdtree, make sense and are worth the price tag. Others, like Tekken 7’s frame data, are either terrible or are blatant base-game inclusions hidden behind a paywall.

Lackluster Optimization Demanding Better Hardware

Studios are trying to create masterpieces and outdo one another. However, modern games can become unfathomably large with better graphics and gameplay mechanics, like Black Myth: Wukong, which reached almost 130GB on Steam.

Can we discuss how poorly optimized PC games are today?
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Some hardware requirements, like additional GPU and CPU power, make sense, and it’s up to the developers to ensure their games run as stable as possible. Unfortunately, this isn’t often the case, and if it is, it comes at a major price—storage space. MIP mind mapping can render far-away textures at a lower resolution, saving GPU power but dramatically increasing file size.

Gamers scrambling for more space on their computers may need an external disk drive for data storage. However, you can likely encounter some common issues, such as an external drive not recognized on devices like Macs and PCs, compatibility issues, and others. 

From there, the troubleshooting begins—checking the cable and USB ports, updating your operating system, resetting the Finder setting, force-mounting the external drive, and more. Besides this specific issue, tons of other hardware replacements start to snowball, and the only culprit here is the game’s underwhelming optimizations in storage and performance.

The Rise In Microtransactions And Subscription Services

After buying a game, there are also the in-game microtransactions you need to consider—imagine paying $20 for a Call of Duty skin, which will likely become outdated within a year with the next CoD release. This phenomenon becomes an even bigger problem when you consider loot boxes, essentially gambling in video games.

While microtransactions are much more predatory in F2P, you may sometimes excuse them because they are a free game. However, I can’t give paid games like Call of Duty a pass for this. Sure, the skins and cosmetics are optional, but when you start selling bundles with meta-defining guns and loadouts, it becomes a problem. 

Why are skins so expensive
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One way to escape the daunting $70 requirement is through gaming subscription services like EA Play, PlayStation Plus, and, of course, Xbox Game Pass. Unfortunately, these saviors are getting out of touch each year by getting more expensive, like Game Pass becoming roughly 20% more expensive across all its models in 2024. It’s a shame to see, especially when you notice that competitors follow suit.

Conclusion

Gaming was initially an accessible medium that almost anyone with a passion could delve into. Previously, the only major expense was your time, and all you had to do was make sure you weren’t spending an unhealthy amount of hours in front of the screen. Now, however, the space has become too demanding and predatory, souring the entire experience.

While you can resolve these issues with simple solutions by getting better hardware, faster storage devices like SSDs, or just a bigger wallet, they’re neither easy to come by nor sustainable. As a result, the community has become alienated, and AAA companies, rather than creating an experience for everyone, have devolved to exclusively appeasing the whales of their games.