And yet: overall, games are not more expensive today than they were in the 80s or 90s.

It's hard to compare today vs 20-30 years ago. Back then the price was set by the market, ie, a good selling game = a few years later lots of used copies would be available on Ebay which limited publishers from "dictating" an arbitrarily high price. The reason PC / console games fell in price is the same reason The Matrix Trilogy on DVD is £6 today on Amazon and not £60 (£20 x 3) = the publishers can't dictate an arbitrary price forever when there's competition from Ebay, Amazon Marketplace, flea markets, etc. Same story with CD's, books, etc. "But it's a good game / movie / album / book" matters far less to pricing 5, 10, 20 years down the line than the presence of a healthy used / resale market.

The "discounts" for digital-only games in the post 2008 era however, aren't there for generosity purposes but to avoid there being a complete reality split between still trying to sell Deus Ex (2000) or Bioshock for £50 in 2024 when you can buy the disc 2nd hand discs for these and many other old games for £3-£5, sometimes as little as £1 each if someone's having a clear-out and selling them as a package. In many such cases the 75% off discount price is the real market competition price and the "full price" mostly a "If we could magic away all competition this is what we would charge" wishful thinking. Same reason for the underlying motives with the current push for disc-less consoles / de-ownership that has very little to do with "user convenience".

With digital only releases the publishers are not only free to leave their games base price remain the same as long as they want, if inflation eventually causes them to be able to buy only half the amount of bread per each sold copy of an old game, they could actually decide to increase the prices of their old games.

These are all good answers on supply and demand. But we know video game projects have an annual depreciation rate that devpubs use for their internal economics. What % rate do you think this should be, assuming it'll be reflected in the price?

I can't link without quoting as I still have negative rep.

Just so we're clear, are we talking about permanently decreasing prices, or discounts when the game is on sale?

But there is no link in the quote? Does simply putting a quote in the post allow you to link elsewhere in the post? This forum, I can't even...

Anyway, this needs fixing. SInce we can't fix the forum, I'll just try to remember to upvote your posts, and others should do the same.

To be honest, I don't think there is a rule. If anything the recent "Low Effort Remaster" bandwagon shows publishers are more interested in bumping any old game they can back up to a fake "repriced like a brand new, designed from scratch game" often with the weakest justification (eg, Blade Runner, The 7th Guest 25th Anniversary, Commandos 2 "HD", etc). Then split off previously included DLC & soundtrack separately as a cherry on top. Occasionally you'll get a good remaster that justifies the typically seen +400-800% price increase (vs what the old game used to be on sale at), but most of the time "Remakeitus" is not very convincing that they accept "depreciation" anymore. As someone said above, it's really the physical media (audio CD's, DVD's, CD-ROM's, etc) resale market that was "keeping it real".

If we talk about annual discount compared to the original price, I would estimate that around 0-100% discount per year would be sufficient. Maybe a bit less or more, depending on the time of the day, and whether I need to take my dog out.

And I don't even have a dog!

All games should be free-to-play. That way they keep their value over time. Problem solved.