Greed...greed never changes.

Not defending Interplay, but inflation is a fact of life. Amazing how mant dib;t get this.
I am willing allow compahies a certain amount of increase through inflation, but Interplay has gone way over that.

This is a gamble because the inflation will continue for sure... as long as they are producing massive amount of money out of nowhere... in order to throw it into a economy that is virtually almost killed already.

Those offering like 1-5 USD games most likely just do not care profit anymore. They know exactly that there are not much more than 150 million "real gamers", not phone-gamers (those are indeed more than a billion)... and only about every 50. might be interested into old classics. While the "newcomers" are not growing on trees... as we never had so few children in western countries ever ago.

If you don't think Interplay has added anything to the games and do not hink the new price is warrented, the solution is simple. Don't buy the games.

This! And this!

And in case OP suffers from FOMO: trust me - you won't miss anything by not having played some video game.
Your life will just go on.

People will pay what they believe a game is worth. If they don’t think it’s worth the asking price, they won’t buy it. If they think the price is fair, they will. No one is forcing anyone to buy anything. If a company can sell a product at the price they are asking, then more power to them. You are not owed the price you personally want to pay, the games will sell for whatever most people are willing to pay. If no one buys at that price, then the company will have to lower it to meet the market, or they won’t make any money. That’s just basic market economics in a capitalist system 101.

Bottom line: if you don’t like the price, the solution is simple - don’t buy the game.

(Also, people, please - do not fall for the trick of seeing 80% of the new price during the Christmas sale. Do not reward this practice)

For me it is clear that many games are currently to cheap to make it worth it for an publisher and for GOG.
GOG is not having live-service-games which could generate them billions... this is the issue... so they have to tackle a "niche-demand" in most cases... excluding the shiny new titles which are rather few.

However... i simply only got so and so much money to spare in a certain time-frame... so i always have to set priorities "what to get first" until the day i hopefully got everything i ever wanted. Unfortunately this can take a lot of years and up to this day... a lot of games for sure will have drastically increased prices. It can not be helped... you can only "invest" if you got... here and yet... the required money for "Investing"... even if you know exactly "the prices can only go up in long term on many games currently pretty cheap".

How much can i actually pay with 5 coins nowadays in real life? A simple coffee, not a special one... not much more than that. It is not much anymore... simply have to face reality. If a game is at that price range, yes it is really cheap, but even 10 coins is still a fair price. I would say, dependable on location it only gets "unfair" above 10 coins in Latin America and above 20 coins for me (on very old classics). However... do never forget... keeping up a server is never free and GOG is continuously paying it. On Steam... they are not doing billions with those "cheap classic games"... they make billions with the most popular franchise titles, including live-service-stuff, those games are the real cash cow.

It is important that publishers get the feeling "their old classics are still sufficiently valued and may still generate a sufficient profit" else they may simply slowly lose interest into even releasing them on GOG. Games such as FF7... if GOG ever got the chance for releasing it... it can only work if the gamers are putting sufficient value into it without telling "it is to expensive" all the time.

This has nothing to do with Steam vs. GOG or live-service games.

Neither GOG nor Steam set the prices - that is up to the publishers. In this case, it only concerns Interplay, not Steam or GOG. The price increase is the same across all stores.

If you really want to go on this non-sequitur rant, then at least say something like, ‘Interplay wants the live-service money.’ It would still be completely wrong, but at least it would be a little bit closer to what is actually happening.

You are missing my pink, but you never seem to listen to most folks judging by your messages I have seen so whatever.

Still my pink is Interplay is like the only one noticeable on these sudden price hikes when compared to most other studios and publishers here. Plus given most people want to own games legally and they seem to cap the sales price/discount at 20 to 30 percent no matter the price changes for nothing added or changed thus its driving people away who wants to go the legal route and at the same time screwing themselves

So ya if prices are two high to warrant purchasing the illegal route is all thats left

Glob, no - that’s just silly. Not only is it a false dichotomy, but you’re also advocating for something that’s clearly immoral and illegal.

You’re not entitled to any specific game. If you don’t like the price, the correct approach is to buy something else that you think is worth the money, and simply ignore those games entirely.

I have no idea why you’d think piracy is ever a valid option just because a particular game is too expensive. Play something else, for Pete's sake.

I have to disagree: Steam is having a massive influence about the price tag and the industry is kinda working hand in hand with Steams expectations. Yes, the publishes can make a own price but it can hit them in the foot if they are almost the only ones driving up the prices, so they are kinda "testing out the waters" in such a term.

GOG on the other hand in usual is only mirroring the Steam price, with the exception of the very low regional pricing which is in many cases not taken care of. It is not a GOG philosophy and a less important market to them (US and Europe are their most important markets) but the publishers can still set it on their own.

Again - Steam did not increase the price; Interplay did. They raised prices across all stores. This is an Interplay issue, not a Steam or GOG issue. Publishers are the ones who set the prices, and those prices are usually the same across stores because price parity is generally more beneficial for publishers than store-specific favoritism.

Steam does plenty of things wrong, as does GOG, but this time for once - neither of them is to blame.

Holly molly... this is just a case of a rather rare stubborn publisher who is testing out the waters... this is not the usual case: If so, perhaps GOG may make some profit soon... or the gamers will be lacking half of the classics in their collection.

Sure, raising it by 2-3 times is huge. I would be more sensitive in their shoes... like 50% increase or something. They can still increase it another 50% if it works out... well... guess they had in mind to offer a massive discount at some point, gamers seem to be vulnerable for.

sigh....

The big seasonal sales are soon upon us, and this is most likely just an old underhanded tactic. While there is no legal requirement, there is the general principle of maintaining a meaningful price period before putting an item on sale, usually around 28 days. That means Interplay may be planning a big sale in about a month (what? around Christmas? Shocking!), and people are easily fooled by an ‘-80%’ price tag. However, what will actually happen is an -80% discount based on the new inflated prices rather than the old ones.

So they’re likely hiking the prices now, waiting for the big sales next month, and can then claim the prices have been stable rather than manipulated right before the sale.