I'm not laughing

Larian has made it very clear that you should not purchase it if you do not wish help them beta test by playing and making suggestions.

If you haven't purchased it, what is the problem?

My problem is the incredibly slow march game developers have made over the past 15 years towards making their customers fully fund their games while paying for the privilege of beta testing.

It USED to be a developer would put a game out in early access / development at a substantial discount as a trade off for the fact you are basically a beta tester, but now I guess people have decided they can get away with just charging full retail price

Honestly can't say I'm shocked, just severely disappointed. Especially in Larian.


"what is the problem" is exactly why consumers continue to get screwed over in new ways every single year


lemmings, all of you.

Ive just returned to PC gaming and was shocked to pay 60€ for Wasteland 3.
Maybe they are pitching these new prices because the next gen consoles will be pitching a higher price than last gen consoles.

If you haven't purchased the game, I will ask again: how does this affect you?

Buy the game when it is fully released if you think it is worth it. Do not if you do not.

I can't think of anything more simple.

Not me, I did not buy it ;)

Actually I would not buy anything before its actual release.
Testing games is a job. I expect to be paid to do it, not the other way around.

That's a nice non-counter argument

To be fair? That's about the same price that top-shelf games cost twenty years ago.

The move to digital has let prices remain largely stagnant, even though production values (and costs) have continued to climb into stratospheric heights. If PC game prices had just kept pace with inflation, you'd be paying eighty to ninety Euros, instead of only sixty.

It's not even about that really. I have no problem buying into early access games to help fund their development. But exactly what is the upside for me as the consumer, if I am paying what is likely the base version MSRP?

I'm paying for the privilege to test broken, buggy, unfinished code?? I thought EA was supposed to reward consumers in some way for supporting developers they like. Making me pay full price to test your game for free isn't a reward. "You get to play early and give feedback" isn't really a reward. It USED to be developers would just release a beta version for testing if they felt they really needed to.

Now it's just developers looking to see how much they can front load their development costs before they've even finished things, and they're willing to exploit the consumer to do it. That says they either have very little respect for their customers - or the project is in more dire financial condition than they are willing to admit.

Completely agree, it's insulting. And I can easily afford the money. That's not the point.

Will pass until 1.0 release, and maybe not even then, after this. *shrug*

Edit: And it's not $59. It's $60.

Very true, for example, here in Ireland, the old original black Xbox games were £80, Xbox one games 20 years later are only €70, so including the currency difference, that's a huge drop in price, I think at the time PC games were about £30-40. I think that last new PC game I bought A few years ago, was about €45.
As you say, costs have skyrocketed!

and let me add. This is literally the first time I've ever seen a game post such an absurdly high in-development price.

The fact it's Larian especially stings. They've been more than fair to their crowd-funding customers on past projects, and they come from a part of the world that allegedly enforces very strong consumer-oriented protections/values.

this just looks like an obscene level of price gouging you would expect from someone like EA/Bioware or Blizzard/ Activision. Not a "small indie studio" who finally got a break with a big name Intellectual Property after years of consistently stellar hard work.

Actually, it is the perfect counter.

Or are you always concerned about things that do not directly impact you?

Are you concerned about the weather on Mars? Are you concerned about Bill Gates' utility bills for his mansions?

What else are you concerned about that does not directly impact you?

When the development stage is finished you get to keep the game. It's essentially a pre-order.

I've purchased the game and I'm not thrilled. Yes, I realized it would be buggy; yes, I realized it wouldn't be a 'completed' product.
And yet, I did expect to see something that would hold my interest for more than an hour.
Fine, the graphics are neat; the pseudo-3D aspects are somewhat innovative.
However, other aspects are less than game enjoyable (Binding "N" to Character Screen??? In which native language does 'Character' begin with "N"?) It took me 5 minutes to find the 'brain' I was fighting! Took me forever to scroll through the screen to find umpteen useless 'interactable' objects. (Ctrl Left (or whatever bind it was didn't seem to work)
Haven't gathered enough courage to 'Venture Forth" again, and more importantly, can I multi-class in this game??? What are all of the skills and crafts and etc. so I can create a viable character to get through the game to the ending?
And don't tell me that's the role-playing aspect. If I want to live in a world where I have no idea of what it's like, I'd commit suicide. I play cRPGs because they are familiar; their worlds are well-defined; you know you need a rogue to open chests, a cleric to heal your barbarian's butt when she goes berserk, a bard to play some Beethoven to instill courage.
In this game I'm not even sure if they'd require me to have 12 Int to be a wizard (a problem with Pathfinder that can be solved with a tiara)